Timberwolves quickly abandon plan; do they deserve scorn, praise or both?

The Timberwolves held their annual media day a little over three weeks ago, giving reporters access to head coach Sam Mitchell, GM Milt Newton and all the players on the roster in a session just before the start of training camp.

It was very much a time of transition, with Newton and Mitchell both assuming bigger roles in the wake of Flip Saunders' health problems. But both men presented a unified message on that day, stressing that the youth movement put in place by Saunders would continue in the 2015-16 season. Specifically, Newton said:

"Most definitely the vision is still to develop our young players. We'd love to make the playoffs, but we're not going to circumvent the process that it's going to take to be a perennial playoff team. You have to win to learn how to win, but overall the vision is to develop that young core we have to become that perennial playoff team."

Mitchell, for his part, said he understood that it would be tough to eschew veterans like Tayshaun Prince, Kevin Garnett and Andre Miller in favor of inexperienced players, but that in many cases sink or swim would be the philosophy.

Mitchell at media day on Sept. 28 said: "Kevin's not going to be here three years from now. Andre's not going to be here three years from now. Tayshaun's not going to be here three years from now. I have to make sure I'm doing right by the organization first. Doing right by them is making sure these young guys get a chance to learn how to play in certain situations. It's tough as a coach because you want to have a chance to win. Obviously veteran guys give you a little bit better chance to win."

Three weeks later, the Wolves and Mitchell have at least partially veered off course from that direction. We're not even to the regular season yet, and already the experiment of having Zach Lavine start at the shooting guard spot and presumably play heavy minutes there has been scrapped. In his place, Andrew Wiggins is moving into that spot … while Prince, one of those veteran security blankets, is getting a lot of run at the small forward spot and very well could wind up as the starter. Mitchell explained the move to our own Jerry Zgoda as one that takes into account physical stature and simply not liking what he saw from the initially planned lineup:

"I had some great ideas in my mind before we started training camp, and we're doing some things differently than what I had initially thought," Mitchell said. "At the end of the day, it's how it looks on the floor. You have all these great ideas, and you think things are going to work in your head and on paper. But when you actually start seeing guys play and see different combinations play, then you have to make adjustments. That's what the preseason is for, just learning. We're learning about our players every practice and every game."

On one hand, I think this is a refreshing explanation from Mitchell. He's not sugarcoating it; basically, he's just saying it was a bad idea and now they're trying something else. Sports could use more of that.

On the other hand, though, not everything adds up. If you go back to the initial quote and philosophy from Mitchell — which didn't specifically mention LaVine at the shooting guard spot, it should be noted in the interest of fairness — he was basically admitting the team was going to be sacrificing some productivity and possibly victories in order to try to develop players. He already knew that a lineup with more veterans would, in the short-term, be more productive and give the Wolves a better chance to win. So this amounts to a philosophical shift as much as it is just a lineup shift.

It could just be that LaVine was SO bad in the preseason that Mitchell felt compelled to back off the idea, which would be bad nes for the Wolves. Still, it feels like if the whole idea is to play through those growing pains, the plug has been pulled awfully early on this experiment. That's not to say the starter is going to play all the minutes, but rotations and playing time will certainly bear watching.