This NBA offseason has been far more compelling than this year's playoffs. Unfortunately for most teams, all of their hard work is tantamount to shuffling the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. There are only two teams who have any real hope of making it to the 2018 NBA Finals. Those teams are of course the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

However, there is a third team who may have a season that actually matters.

Three of the locations on this map may actually be happy next June.

Some may argue that fans of the Celtics, Thunder, Rockets, and Spurs may be able to convince themselves that their team has a legitimate chance to make the finals... but unless LeBron gets injured or the Warriors' team bus crashes, they are fooling themselves. Although they might still enjoy watching their team in the regular season, come June they will be sitting at home frustrated and watching the Warriors defeat the Cavaliers once again.

Surprisingly, there is a third fan base who might actually be happy come June. Even though their team will have long been eliminated from the playoffs, they will be able to look back at the season as a success.

That team is the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Please don't get me wrong. I do not believe for one second the Timberwolves will challenge the Warriors for the top spot in the West. I do think they can give their fans something they have not had in 13 years... an opportunity to attend a playoff game.

For the teams mentioned above, just making the playoffs is not a big deal. They are all expected to make the playoffs. Most of them have made the playoffs for many years in a row. Three of those teams have multiple championships and the other made it to the NBA Finals in 2012. So when they are eliminated from the playoffs, their fans will feel disappointment.

Wah! My team got my hopes up! Wah!

But I predict that the Timberwolves are going to do something they have only done twice in their 28 year history. They will accomplish something they haven't in 13 years. The Minnesota Timberwolves are going to win a playoff series next year. There fans should be ecstatic!

The Timberwolves may have had the best offseason of any team. They added a legit superstar in Jimmy Butler, picked up a solid defense-first veteran in Taj Gibson, essentially flipped Ricky Rubio for Jeff Teague and a future first round draft pick and signed one of the best bench scorers of the past ten years (perhaps the best) in Jamal Crawford.

These players were added to a core that already includes two budding starts in versatile big man Karl Anthony Towns and a long defensive wing in Andrew Wiggins who were the number one over-all pick in the draft in 2015 and 2014 respectively.

Their team is now incredibly deep. The pretenders in the West should be very worried.

Whooo! We got Butler, Teague, Gibson and Crawford!

Although those acquisitions are quite impressive, the number one reason I am confident that Minnesota will win a playoff series is their coach Tom Thibodeau.

I was a Bulls season ticket holder for each of Thibodeau's five seasons as the coach of the Bulls. During that time, the one thing I learned is that he is freaking crazy.

He has an unnatural desire to win not only every game but every possession of every game. It is a mania. He has never been married. He has no children. Basketball is his life. Even though this mania eventually cost the Bulls dearly by putting too much strain on his players' bodies, his teams always had a chance to win on any given night. He valued regular season wins more than any other coach I have ever seen. He would rather play his star player the last two minutes in a game with his team leading by 14 than risk losing a regular season game. As a result, he burned out Luol Deng, Joakim Noah, and Derek Rose.

But overplaying those guys was not his fault. When he had a bench filled with players he trusted, he had one of the best rotations in the league. In 2010-2011 when the Bulls won 62 games and made it to the Conference Finals, his "bench mob" was the best in the league. Unfortunately, the front office dismantled that weapon and left him with no choice but to run his players into the ground in an attempt to win every regular season game. And it worked. He got more out of undermanned teams than anyone I have ever seen. In 2015, instead of giving him a bench, the Bulls fired Thibodeau. After sitting out the 2015-2016 (and getting paid by the Bulls.. one last F.U. to the organization) Thibs was hired as the coach and GM of the Timberwolves.

There are 8 seconds left and we are up 17 but you didn't get back on defense! I'm going to eat your soul!

In just over one year, Thibs made more excellent acquisitions than the Bulls have in the past 15 years combined. Thibs isn't changing. He's not going to ever accept losing a regular season game. So he did the smart thing. He gave himself a bench. He does not have to kill his young stars now.

He also added his two favorite players from his Chicago days: Jimmy Butler and Taj Gibson. They know his defensive system (which is all that really matters). They share his desire to win every possession. They are the leaders the young players on the Wolves need. If one of those youngg players fails to get back on "D" or misses an assignment... they are dead. They will learn to defend or they will sit. Thibs doesn't mess around. Now he has players in his locker room to back him up.

I anticipate the Wolves starting lineup will look something like this:

C Towns
PF Gibson
SF Wiggins
SG Butler
PG Teague

That lineup has three lockdown defenders in Gibson, Wiggins and Butler along with an athletic big who Thibs will coach up to become a defensive force (Joakim Noah won defensive player of the year under Thibs... and he did it with no real talent). In addition, Butler, Wiggins and Towns can all score.

If Thibs runs things the way he did in Chicago, when it comes time to rest his starters, I expect him to leave Butler on the floor with four bench players.

Sadly, due to injury, Superman's enemy Non will not be on the team next season.

In that lineup, I would actually expect Butler to run "the point" with Jamal Crawford playing off the ball. That leaves three from a very deep mix of Dieng, Payne, Casspi, Aldrich, Bjelica, Patton (my gosh he has a lot of big players), and Rush. None of this even includes minutes for PG Tyus Jones. Thibs has proven over and over that he can take small point guards and get them PAID (see John Lucas III, Nate Robinson, D.J. Augustin, Aaron Brooks). Can he do the same for Jones? Why not?

I also would not rule out one more addition to the roster. Rajan Rondo, who played for Thibs when he was the defensive coach for the Celtics, was released by the Bulls. Perhaps he could sign with Minnesota to further solidify their bench.

I think this is the perfect recipe for the Timberwolves to finish with the second best record in the West.

But that does not mean I believe they will be the second best team. Other teams will be better... but they won't try to win every single game the way the Wolves will. Therefore, Minnesota could very well end up the number two seed with home court advantage in the first two rounds of the playoffs. If that happens, they will play the seventh best team in the conference. That scenario should result in the Timberwolves' first playoff series win since 2004.

Color photography had not been invented before the Timberwolves last playoff series win.

Even though the best the Wolves can hope for is playing until May, a playoff series win will mean a tremendous amount to a fan base who has suffered through watching some of the hottest garbage on the court for the last 13 years.

I doubt I will be watching many Bulls games next year... but I will do my best to catch a few Timberwolves games.

What do you think? Can the Timberwolves compete for second in the West?

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