Truly changing a franchise starts at the top. The front office dictates the direction. Then comes roster changes. Then comes player development, team chemistry, etc. Here’s the Minnesota Star Tribune reporting on the Timberwolves:
When Gersson Rosas became president of the Timberwolves, he promised to remake the roster by making it younger and finding talent that could play an up-tempo style of basketball. He added that one of the primary ways he would accomplish that was through trades.
Rosas wasn’t hiding much in those statements, because as Rosas marks his one-year anniversary on the job, the Wolves roster looks nothing like the one he inherited — and even nothing like the one he assembled after his first free-agent cycle. Just Josh Okogie and Karl-Anthony Towns remain from the roster Rosas inherited. Several came in the days preceding the trade deadline: Malik Beasley, Juancho Hernangomez, James Johnson and the apple of Rosas’ eye from the moment he took the job, D’Angelo Russell.
“Building an organization, building a foundation, the DNA and the values of who we’re going to be, I feel like we’ve done that in a very tangible way after Year 1,” Rosas said in a phone interview. “Rosterwise, our front office staff deserves a ton of credit because as we sit here, we’ve changed over 13 out of 15 roster spots. … That typically takes organizations two to three years. That we were able to do it by the trade deadline was quite an achievement for our staff.”
Right now, the Timberwolves core is Karl-Anthony Towns up front and D’Angelo Russell in the backcourt. Roster-wise, there’s much work to be done, and it won’t happen overnight.
