Wolves Notes: Garnett, Rotation, Jones, Patton

Kevin Garnett was the greatest player in Timberwolves history, but it seems unlikely that he’ll get involved with the franchise during his post-playing career unless something changes with the team’s ownership situation. Garnett said as much back in April, when he suggested that he could see himself returning to the Wolves at some point, but criticized current owner Glen Taylor in the process.

Asked more recently by Shlomo Sprung of Awful Announcing about the possibility of rejoining the Timberwolves in an ownership or management capacity, Garnett again expressed interest in the idea, but once again indicated that he wouldn’t want to coexist with Taylor.

“I don’t want to be partners with Glen, and I wouldn’t want to be partners with Glen in Minnesota,” Garnett said. “I would love to be part of a group that buys him out and kind of removes him and go forward.”

With Taylor showing little interest in selling his controlling share of the franchise, a reunion with Garnett appears to be unrealistic at this point. Here’s more from out of Minnesota:

• During his time in Chicago, Tom Thibodeau earned a reputation for leaning heavily on his starters, perhaps to a fault. Despite receiving some criticism for that approach, Thibodeau is taking a similar approach in Minnesota, indicating this weekend that he’s comfortable sticking with an eight-man rotation, per Kent Youngblood of The Star Tribune. Jimmy Butler is tied for third in the NBA in minutes per game, while Andrew Wiggins is sixth and Karl-Anthony Towns is also in the top 20.
• Backup point guard Tyus Jones is one of those eight Timberwolves currently in the rotation, and when he replaced Jeff Teague in the starting lineup for three games, he averaged 40.0 MPG. He spoke to Youngblood about Thibodeau’s lineup habits, along with a few other topics.
• Rookie center Justin Patton made his professional debut on Friday with the Iowa Wolves, Minnesota’s G League affiliate. While Patton played well, he’s on a minutes limit, and is expected to remain in the G League for several weeks, Youngblood writes for The Star Tribune. “We want to make sure he can handle playing a certain amount of minutes in a game there,” Thibodeau said. “Basically it’s three, four weeks of games and practices. That sort of thing.”