New Year Resolutions for NBA's Top 10 teams

#7 Minnesota Timberwolves - Reduce minutes load on star players

The Minnesota Timberwolves core

The Minnesota Timberwolves are 11 games above .500 at 27-16 and look like they can make the Playoffs for the first time in franchise history since 2004. They were 10-5 in December and are currently ranked fifth in the league in terms of net rating (4.0). Everything looks good, right?

Wrong.

Resting players to combat fatigue has been a huge deal in the league but the team's head coach Tom Thibodeau doesn't seem to believe in all that. Minnesota's three biggest stars - Andrew Wiggins (1519), Karl-Anthony Towns (1500) and Jimmy Butler (1476) - rank first, second and fifth in the league in terms of total minutes played.

If you are planning to have a longish postseason, these numbers need to see a dip. A huge reason for these absurdly high numbers is the team's unreliable second unit. This is the wrong approach though. Instead of running your best players, no matter how well they are conditioned, to the ground, it's a better strategy to give valuable exposure to the team's reserves.