With Jimmy Butler having exploded his meniscus (what is a meniscus? do I have meniscuses? how would I know if I exploded mine?), a lot of dudes on the Timberwolves are gonna have to step up to replace not only the lost production, but the lost leadership as well.
Crawford, theoretically, can step up in both areas. He’s been a lot of teams, is old (old = leadership until demonstrated otherwise) and he’s a been a big scorer on a lot of those teams. He’s probably too old to give you more than thirty minutes a night, but he probably can score more efficiently than Wiggins so I’m sensing some big games in his future.
I personally think that this minutes-void in the Wolves’ lineup can be fixed by shifting Towns down a position and giving Cole Aldrich a good twenty minutes off the bench. I mean, who else on the team is ready to absorb those extra minutes? Certainly nobody who plays a position similar to what Butler played. That’s why Aldrich needs to get in games and then dominate because that’s what he always does when he receives more than one minute of playing time at the end of a blowout. Yes I’m salty.