Tomahawk Tuesday: Can the Timberwolves survive without Jimmy Butler?

                                          (Zhong Zi/NBAE/Getty Images) 

The Minnesota Timberwolves are having their best season in recent memory, currently sitting third in the Western Conference standings with a 38-26 record. A major reason for their resurgence has been the addition of Jimmy Butler, who they acquired from the Chicago Bulls during the NBA Draft. Butler has been averaging 22.2 points, 5.4 rebounds, 5.0 assists, and 1.9 steals per game and has provided a veteran presence that the Timberwolves have been missing.

Unfortunately for the Timberwolves, Butler has undergone surgery to repair a meniscal tear in his right knee, sidelining him for the next 4-6 weeks according to Shams Charania of Yahoo! Sports. With Butler possibly out until the playoffs start, the big question is whether or not the Timberwolves can survive until he comes back and not slip too much in the standings.

Jimmy Butler is expected to undergo surgery in coming days and could return within 4-to-6 weeks, league sources tell Yahoo. Final timetable will be set after procedure.

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) February 25, 2018

The teams that are behind the Timberwolves are the Spurs (.5 games back), Pelicans (2 games back), Trail Blazers (2 games back), Thunder (2 games back), Nuggets (3 games back), and Clippers (4 games back). It is hard to see a scenario in which the Timberwolves don't make the playoffs, but it is conceivable that they slip to as far as the 8th seed. The gap between the 3rd and 8th spot is only 3 games, which means things are very tight.

The key to the Timberwolves' surviving Butler's injury is really for Andrew Wiggins and Jamal Crawford to step up at the wing positions. Jeff Teague is doing a good job running the point guard position and Karl-Anthony Towns is anchoring the post just fine. But, whether or not Wiggins and Crawford can make up for Butler's production out on the wing remains to be seen. Personally, I think they should be able to since both of them know how to score. Crawford can still get buckets even in this later stage of his career and Wiggins is emerging into an elite wing in his own right. Offensively those two guys should be able to pick up the slack.

As far as defense is concerned, that's probably the bigger concern. Wiggins is an elite wing on both ends of the floor, but the Timberwolves really don't have any one else who can replace Butler's tenacity on defense. The Timberwolves will really need to do a good job of playing team defense and finding ways to mask Butler's absence out on the wing. Jeff Teague will also need to play an expanded role defensively and be a little bit more aggressive when it comes to disrupting passing lanes and forcing turnovers.

The bottom line is the Timberwolves can survive without Jimmy Butler, but it's not going to be easy. When you are a team that hasn't been in this kind of position before, it's tough to then lose your best player right as you head into the final stretch of the season. It'll be interesting to see if they can hang onto their spot until Butler comes back and whether or not any of the teams behind them will be able to capitalize on their vulnerability.

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Wednesday Windmill: The Atlanta Hawks are tanking and I don't know why

The Atlanta Hawks are tanking and I don't know why. To be clear, I know why teams tank. They tank to get higher draft picks so that they can be better for the long term. The Atlanta Hawks, however, are a team who seemed to tank for no good reason. They went 43-39 last season, which was good enough for 5th place in the Eastern Conference. The year before that, they were 48-34, which was good enough for 3rd place in the Eastern Conference, though they fell to 4th place due to a tiebreaker. In the 2014-15 season, the Hawks finished with the best record in the Eastern Conference at 60-22 with Paul Millsap, Al Horford, Jeff Teague, and Kyle Korver as their core, all of whom are no longer with the team.

Since the 2014-15 season, the Hawks have gone downhill, wholesaling their best players to other teams without wanting anything good in return. Rather than trying build around a core that won 60 games, the Hawks decided to blow the whole thing up and start anew, believing that what they had wasn't going to produce a championship no matter what moves they made.

While I understand the tanking philosophy and acknowledge that it has its place, the Hawks were not a team in need of embracing it. They should have instead embraced the quality roster that they had in the 2014-15 season and done all they could to enhance it for the purposes of better positioning themselves for a championship run.

By embracing the "If you're not first, you're last" mantra of Ricky Bobby, the Hawks have robbed their fans of witnessing deep playoff runs year in and year out. While it is true that the ultimate goal is to win a championship, it's not like the only successful seasons are the ones that result in a championship. Reaching the conference finals is a successful season that gets your fans excited. Winning a playoff series can also be considered a successful season, especially if you are a young and up and coming team.

My point is that if your ceiling is to reach the conference finals for a few years in a row, ride that ship out and see where that takes you. You never know, maybe someone gets hurt and you find yourself in the NBA Finals. If you are positioned to make those kind of runs year in and year out, tanking is not the solution to getting over the hump.

With most teams that tank, I understand why they are doing it. They're far from winning a championship and are in need of replenishing with young talent. The Hawks however were not in either of those camps. They were close to winning a championship and had a talented core that had plenty of years left. Taking a nosedive like this is very perplexing and difficult to understand.

Wednesday Windmill is a weekly piece that focuses on the Eastern Conference 

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Eastern Conference Playoffs Preview: Atlanta Hawks vs. Washington Wizards

#1. Atlanta Hawks (60-22) vs. #5 Washington Wizards (46-36): 

     The Atlanta Hawks come into this series having taken out the Brooklyn Nets in six games, a series many thought wouldn't go past five games. As for the Washington Wizards, they swept the Toronto Raptors despite not having home court advantage. The rest vs. rust factor will certainly be tested in this series: The Wizards came into this series not having played since April 26 and the Hawks played on Friday.

     The Hawks won the regular season series 3-1 and the lone Wizards win was at the very end of the season when the Hawks had everything locked up. Given the fact that neither of these teams have a lot of playoff experience, one definitely has to give the Hawks the edge because they have the best record in the East and home court advantage in addition to winning the regular season series.

     That being said, the Nets stretched the Hawks and the Wizards are certainly a better team than the Nets. In addition, while the Hawks have the better record and more regular season success, the Wizards have the best player in the series in John Wall and the most playoff seasoned player in Paul Pierce. There's plenty of reasons to pick the Wizards based on those two guys alone in addition to the way they dismantled the Raptors.

     If the Hawks are going to win this series, they will have to get good production from Jeff Teague on both ends of the floor. As their starting point guard, he has the responsibility to make sure Kyle Korver, Paul Millsap, and Al Horford get into a good rhythm offensively as well as making sure John Wall, who also plays point guard, doesn't eat them alive. The point guard battle is going to be a key thing to watch over the course of this series and will certainly have a huge impact in determining its outcome.

     The other huge factor in this series is the rebounding battle. The Wizards have some good rebounders in Marcin Gortat, Drew Gooden, and Nene to combat the Hawks on the glass, who rebound very well thanks to Paul Millsap, Al Horford, and DeMarre Carroll. Whichever team wins the battle on the glass will have a definite edge in this series.

     What will ultimately decide this series is which team is able to execute their game plan better. This sounds ridiculously obvious since to a certain extent this is true of every series. But in this series, execution will be huge. If John Wall and his backcourt mate Bradley Beal are able to play big and be the best players in this series, the Wizards likely win the series. If the Hawks are able to get everybody into a rhythm and get some quality production from some of their role players like DeMarre Carroll, they will win the series. If both things happen, then we will see a very tight series that goes seven games.

     When it comes to making a prediction, I'm going to pick the Hawks to win the series in seven games. The Wizards are going to really test the Hawks and give them everything they got, but I have to respect the fact that over the course of the season, the Hawks were by far the better team. I think that if the Hawks are able to play to their highest level, they will win this series. The Hawks aren't afraid to go on the road and get a win, and while they did lose Game 1 today, they had a super quick turnaround from Game 6 in Brooklyn to today. I expect the Hawks to turn it up when they absolutely need to and find a way to get it done.

 ---Ben Parker: follow me on twitter @nba_lord for NBA news 

 

Wednesday Windmill: With the Eastern Conference wide open, don't sleep on the Atlanta Hawks

In a matter of a few weeks, the landscape of the Eastern Conference has dramatically shifted from being a two horse race between the Heat and Pacers to a wide open derby with as much as seven contenders. Of course, this is primarily due to LeBron James' decision to head back to Cleveland to join the Cavaliers, but other factors such as Lance Stephenson going to the Hornets and Pau Gasol going to the Bulls have also contributed to this shift. While everybody is all abuzz about the Cavaliers, Bulls, Wizards, and Hornets, nobody is paying one iota of attention to the Atlanta Hawks and the potential they have to make a run for the Eastern Conference crown.

The reason why they aren't getting any attention is equally obvious as it is incoherent: They haven't added any major free agents to their team this summer. What makes this incoherent is that their star center Al Horford missed almost the entire season with a torn pectoral muscle, and yet they found themselves taking the #1 seeded Indiana Pacers to a Game 7 in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs.  

                                          (credit: soaringsouth.com)

With Al Horford now healthy, the Hawks will finally be able to see how much damage they can do with a frontcourt that features Al Horford and Paul Millsap, two guys who are both all-stars. In my opinion, the damage that they can do is severe enough to come out of the Eastern Conference and stun everybody who follows the NBA. 

Before he went down with his pectoral injury last season, Al Horford was having the best season of his career, averaging 18.6 points, 8.4 rebounds, and 1.5 blocks per contest. As for Paul Millsap, what earned him all-star honors was his season average of 17.9 points, 8.5 rebounds, 1.7 steals, and 1.1 blocks per game. Those aren't numbers to ignore in today's NBA, especially for big men. With Pacers center Roy Hibbert going all coo coo in the head, the door is now open for the Hawks to have the best front court in the Eastern Conference even with the Bulls having Joakim Noah and the Cavaliers potentially landing Kevin Love.

In addition to their fantastic frontcourt which also features the very dangerous stretch-big man Pero Antic, the Hawks have a very dangerous backcourt which features Jeff Teague and also Thabo Sefolosha who they signed this summer in free agency. Like Horford and Millsap, Teague has gotten better every season with this past season being his best, averaging 16.5 points, 6.7 assists, and 1.1 steals per game. 

Teague is not only a playmaker offensively, but he is also a playmaker defensively. By adding Thabo Sefolosha to their backcourt, the Hawks now have a very dangerous defensive team on the perimeter that can give the best backcourts in the NBA serious trouble. In addition, the Hawks also have Kyle Korver knocking down threes at the small forward position, which makes up for Sefolosha's lack of offense. 

As for the role players on the Hawks, I like the pieces that their head coach Mike Budenholzer has to work with. Kent Bazemore, who had a breakout season of sorts with the Lakers last season should be able to provide scoring off the bench, DeMarre Carrol is effective at providing energy and hustle, and Dennis Schroeder is looking like he may become a quality backup point guard. Plus, both rookie Adreian Payne and veteran Gustavo Ayon should be able to provide quality relief in the paint for Al Horford and Paul Millsap. 

The only knock on the Hawks is that they don't have a big name player who will put them on ESPN and TNT every week. They will once again fly under the radar as a result, but don't allow that to make you forget that Hawks still exist as a viable contender in the East. They can beat you in the paint and on the perimeter and they also have quality role players. In addition, they learned that without Al Hoford they can still make some noise in the playoffs. Now that they are getting Horford back, I don't see any reason to think that they can't run the table and come out of the East. 

---Ben Parker: follow me on twitter @nba_lord