The Minnesota Timberwolves 33rd season in the NBA has resulted in the team’s 10th appearance in the playoffs. They open the Western Conference Playoffs in Memphis Saturday afternoon against the Grizzlies.
Minnesota has won a total of two playoff series. And both came in the same year.
The Wolves entered the league for the 1989-90 season and made their first trip to the playoffs in the 1996-97 campaign and lost 3-0 to the Houston Rockets in the first round. At the time, the first round was a best-of-five series.
That was the first of seven straight first round postseason exits for the Wolves.
The Timberwolves finally broke through and won a series in the opening round of the playoffs in 2004.
Minnesota won 58 games in the 2003-2004 regular season, which is still a franchise record and one of only four times the team has won 50 or more games.
The Timberwolves were 58-24 to earn the number one seed in the Western Conference, winning one more game than the Los Angeles Lakers and two more than the San Antonio Spurs.
That matched the Wolves up with the eighth-seeded Denver Nuggets.
The series opened with a pair of Minnesota wins at Target Center, 106-92 and 95-81.
The Nuggets won Game 3 at Pepsi Center in Denver 107-86, but the Wolves won s close Game 4 on the road 84-82 before wrapping up the series at home with a 102-91 win in Game 5.
Kevin Garnett, who was named MVP that season, had a great series.
He averaged 25.8 points, 14.8 rebounds, seven assists, two blocks and one steal per game. He shot 45.4 percent from the field and 72.1 percent from the free throw line.
The other two members of the Wolves’ Big 3 had good series as well.
Sam Cassell averaged 20.6 points per game, while shooting 48 percent from the field and 50 percent (10-for-20) from the three-point line.
Latrell Sprewell averaged 19.8 points per game while shooting 44.9 percent from the field and 56 percent (15-21) on threes.
There was a familiar face to Minnesota fans in Denver’s lineup.
Former Gopher shooting guard Voshon Lenard led the Nuggets in scoring in the series, averaging 17 points per game.
That first-round series win put the Wolves up against the fourth-seeded Sacramento Kings, who had won 4-1 over the fifth-seeded Dallas Mavericks.
Minnesota won the series with the Kings in seven games, setting up a matchup in the Western Conference Finals vs. the Los Angeles Lakers, who had called Minneapolis their home from 1948-1960.
The Lakers eliminated the Timberwolves in a six-game series.
A few fun facts to go with the Wolves’ first-round win over the Niuggets.
The series ended on April 30.
On that date, the number one song in the U.S. was Yeah! by Usher featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris:
The top movie was Man on Fire starring Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Christopher Walken, Marc Anthony, and Mickey Rourke.
Here’s the trailer:
The number one TV show was CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on CBS.
Third on that week’s ratings was Friends, which would end its run on NBC on May 6.
A few other fun facts:
Karl Anthony Towns was in elementary school.
Zach Randolph, who had his number retired by Memphis in 2017, was still five years away from his first season with the Grizzlies.
A flash animation of badgers singing "badger, badger, badger" has become extremely popular on the Internet.
A popular software program called LimeWire was being used by many people to share music, software and videos. It was also a haven for computer viruses.
A social networking service called FaceMash was launched on Oct. 28, 2003, before changing its name to TheFacebook on Feb. 4, 2004.
Cameras on phones were beginning to become more and more popular, although the photographs that they take were still lacking in quality.
The first iPhone wouldn’t be released for three years.
Internet users were using MSN Messenger to chat with each other online.
It would be two years before Twitter was launched.
Popular toys at the moment included the likes of Betty Spaghetty (doll), Bratz dolls, the Xbox and RoboSapien (toy robot).
Playoff results
All-time results in playoff series for the Minnesota Timberwolves:
1997
Lost first round to Houston Rockets 3-0
1998
Lost first round to Seattle Super Sonics 3-2
1999
Lost first round to San Antonio Spurs
2000
Lost first round to Portland Trail Blazers 3-1
2001
Lost first round to San Antonio Spurs 3-1
2002
Lost first round to Dallas Mavericks 3-0
2003
Lost first round to Los Angeles Lakers 4-2
2004
Won first round over Denver Nuggets 4-2
Won conference semifinals over Sacramento Kings 4-3
Lost conference finals to Los Angeles Lakers 4-2
2018
Lost first round to Houston Rockets 4-1
Series records
Denver Nuggets 1-0
Sacramento Kings 1-0
Dallas Mavericks 0-1
Portland Trail Blazers 0-1
Seattle Super Sonics 0-1
Houston Rockets 0-2
Los Angeles Lakers 0-2
San Antonio Spurs 0-2
Game records
Denver Nuggets 4-1 .800
Sacramento Kings 4-3 .571
Seattle Super Sonics 2-3 .400
Los Angeles Lakers 4-8 .333
San Antonio Spurs 2-6 .250
Portland Trail Blazers 1-3 .250
Houston Rockets 1-7 .125
Dallas Mavericks 0-3 .000