Is the sixth time a charm? Minnesota teaches a crash course on how to break through the No. 8 seed glass ceiling after five straight first-round playoff losses - basketball team Minnesota Timberwolves

Basketball Digest, March, 2002 by Brett Ballantini

IT WAS JUST ANOTHER NIGHT AND just another easy win in a season that once seemed certain to spell doom for the Minnesota Timberwolves. After rolling the Chicago Bulls 95-74 in December, ending a back-breaking stretch of eight games in 11 days and eight back-to-back sets in their first 26 games, Minnesota was 188 and setting up camp near the top of the Midwest Division.

The Timberwolves headed into the season still smarting from having first-round picks snatched from them and their front office publicly spanked by the NBA. It appeared that the streak of five consecutive first-round playoff exits would become a franchise peak, and if not that, certainly more than a speed bump on the way to a Finals berth.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the T-Wolves' tumble. The very league that stripped them of five first-round picks, gutting their future, reshaped the rules of the game, which played into the hands of a very few long, lithe teams. On their way from playoff also-rans to just plain also rans, the Timberwolves have made an improbable detour into the NBA's elite.

Minnesota has given the slip to the sad scenes of past seasons, which usually found the club hovering around .500 and a poor playoff slot. This season, it's seemingly solved the secret of attaining a playoff series with homecourt advantage.

A cursory look at one of the clubs curious to crack the top four in one of the toughest basketball conferences in NBA history reveals five handy steps the T-Wolves have taken toward a postseason run that might well last past the first round for the first time in their history.

Step 1: Begin the slide in the post

When the Timberwolves re-signed Joe Smith last July, most saw it as some sort of make-good or, at best, a mediocre move by a salary-cap stropped club. Why else would a six-year veteran with career averages of 14.2 ppg and 7.4 rpg be brought back into the fold so heartily? Especially when that power forward and his pedestrian numbers were largely responsible for all the woe wreaked on Minnesota in the past season-plus?

But getting Smith back in T-Wolf blue to man the 4 has slid the lineup a bit and clicked it into perfect place. Kevin Garnett came out of his one-year exile in the paint, and with the continuing emergence of Rasho Nesterovic (who has been roughly doubling his 2000-01 numbers) Garnett has been free to vacate the paint and roam the entire floor, effectively upgrading him from All-NBA to all-world.

Smith flourishes in Minnesota, and ifs not just because he and Garnett are fight enough to gab back and forth like two oldsters passing time around a checkerboard. The pressure of being a messiah for both the Golden State Warriors and the Philadelphia 76ers wore at him. As an at-best second (or, ideally, third or fourth) option, Smith is able to sneak his numbers into the boxscore, yet avoid much of the glare of high expectations. So while statistically Smith's two prior Minnesota seasons are unremarkable, insert him as a means to an end, and his contributions begin to take on Horace Grant-or A.C. Green-like yeoman significance.

Step 2: Shooting from A to SZ

KG's slide to the 3 pushed 6'7" Wally Szczerbiak to the 2. In a typical 1990s basketball season, the offensive benefit from having an ace shooter playing big minutes in the backcourt might have been canceled out by Szczerbiak's limitations as a defender. But in the 21st Century NBA, where nearly every file on the floor is designated a free-zone zone, the offensive benefits of Szczerbiak's slide rise and the defensive misgivings are less worrisome.

Few shooters in the league can match the third-year player for sheer accuracy. A career 51% shooter, Szczerbiak takes full advantage of the Timberwolves' unmitigated devotion to deep spacing--and he boasts the bravado shared by every legendary sharpshooter before him.

"We shot the ball like practice," Szczerbiak said after the Wolves' easy win in Chicago. "It was basically target practice out there. When we play unselfishly and space the floor, we play very well and get lots of open shots."

Some say Szczerbiak gets trigger-happy, but when you're hitting more than half your shots, some seemingly from as far away as Minnetonka, you're entitled to an itchy finger.

While Garnett, the established superstar and emotional leader, and Szczerbiak, who was perceived as a lottery-pick golden boy, clashed upon the latter's arrival in Minneapolis, it's evident that from a hustle perspective, Szczerbiak ("A lot of players have tried to bully me, but that just makes me work harder at my game.") takes his cues from The Kid.

"On this team, it starts with Kevin and how unbelievably he handles the ball and helps everyone on the team," Szczerbiak says. "He knows if there is a hot guy and keeps getting the ball to him."

And Garnett, enjoying his freedom from the paint, knows he can't roam without gunners who have his back and a proper flow on offense: "We have to have good spacing. When we beat teams, we're beating teams with our spacing, back picks ... the small things."