Motivation is the great equalizer in sports. You can have the talent, the pedigree, size, skill, or any advantage you can think of. Still, without the proper motivation, even the best player or team can fall to a motivated underdog on any given night.

Team USA can beat the Soviets in the Miracle on Ice for good old Uncle Sam. Leicester City can win the Premier League in 2016, for a city that looks like a Foot Locker. And the New York Football Giants can beat the 18-0 New England Patriots to prove that the fourth-best Manning is and will always be better than Tom Brady.

The ultimate goal for any NBA season is to win a championship, but NBA players can find motivation in anything. Money, fame, glory, pride, personal vendettas, selling shoes, or social engagement. Whatever it is, athletes can find any reason to get some extra juice for a game.

LeBron James is playing through sciatica and arthritis into his 40s to play with his son prove to everyone on the internet that he’s better than Michael Jordan. Nikola Jokic plays basketball to fund his passion for horse racing in Serbia. And the Oklahoma City Thunder are going to win 74 games this season, so they can see just how many towels they can stack on top of Nick Gallo before he collapses.

It’s harder to figure out what motivates the Minnesota Timberwolves as we barrel towards 2026 and the inevitable fall of modern civilization. The Wolves are 15-9 and in sixth place in the Western Conference. It’s an improvement from last season, when they were 13-11 and in seventh place through 24 games last year. Still, it’s a disappointment from the sky-high expectations for the team coming off two consecutive runs to the Western Conference Finals.

The Wolves have beaten two teams with winning records, the San Antonio Spurs and Boston Celtics, and have two of the most mind-numbing meltdowns in recent NBA history against the Phoenix Suns and Sacramento Kings in back-to-back games.

They won five games in a row and beat the hell out of the Utah Jazz, Kings, and Dallas Mavericks. But the Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks, and Denver Nuggets also killed them. They lost to the Lakers without LeBron James and Luka Doncic and lost to the Suns without Devin Booker. They’ve lost on last-second shots to Austin Reaves and Collin Gillespie, struggled to beat the New Orleans Pelicans twice, and had to come from behind to beat the 6-18 LA Clippers.

It’s another roller coaster ride with Chris Finch at the helm. The Wolves don’t have a viable starting point guard and still turn the ball over too much. The defense has slipped, especially when Rudy Gobert sits (or gets ejected for a kidney shot on Mark Williams).

And yet the offense is rolling. Anthony Edwards has hit yet another level of stardom in Year 6. Julius Randle is playing his best basketball, and Jaden McDaniels has finally arrived. For all the successes and failures, what drives this team is still a mystery.

Is it the pursuit of regular-season success and day-to-day perfection that gets the Wolves out of bed in the morning? It certainly looked that way during the 2023-24 season when the Wolves raced to 56 regular-season wins and sported the best defense for most of the season. That year, the Timberwolves never lost more than two consecutive games on their way to the second-most wins in franchise history.

This year, Chris Finch said the Wolves started the season “bored” on defense, and Jon Krawczynski quoted Anthony Edwards saying, “Finch told us we can’t just wait for the playoffs to start playing defense” after the Wolves pulled out a 149-142 overtime win against the West bottom-feeding Pelicans.

“It seems like we don’t want to play these games,” he also said. “We just want to fast-forward the season to the playoffs and then play all-out defense and play super hard. It just don’t work like that. We gotta be ready to play on any given night.”

It sounds like the two trips to the West Finals have given the Wolves a good old-fashioned case of complacency. For an example of how not to get complacent, the Timberwolves just need to look across at the team that bounced them from the playoffs last year.

The Oklahoma City Thunder won 68 regular-season games last year and took home the first NBA title in OKC history. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander won the scoring title, MVP, and Finals MVP. Jalen Williams scored 40 points in Game 6 and had his first drink after popping champagne after Game 7.

The Thunder accomplished everything there is in the NBA. Nobody would blame them for taking it easy over the summer and flying through the regular season on autopilot before kicking things into high gear during the playoffs to try to become the first team to repeat as champions for the first time since 2018.

Instead, the Thunder are the third team in history to start a season 23-1 or better. They’re beating teams by a would-be record scoring margin. And they’re on their way to Las Vegas and the NBA Cup semifinals after beating the hell out of the Suns. They are motivated to win every game, no matter the stakes.

Meanwhile, the Wolves only want to turn the dial when their backs are against the wall.

They don’t even seem to get motivated when there’s money on the line. They’ve never reached the knockout stage of the NBA Cup in three years, and blew a 10-point fourth quarter lead to the Suns when a win would have all but secured their place in the final eight.

But when the playoffs come around, and it becomes do or die, the Wolves clearly play their best basketball. They slogged their way to 49 wins and the sixth seed during the disappointing 2024-25 regular season. But in the playoffs, they dominated the Lakers in the first round and dispatched LeBron and Luka Doncic in five games. They discarded the mostly Steph Curry-less Golden State Warriors in another five games in Round 2 before getting blown out by the eventual champs in conference Finals. The year before, they swept the Suns and knocked off the Nuggets in an emotional seven-game series that propelled the Wolves to the conference finals for the first time since 2004.

More than a quarter into another season, and the Wolves seem to be content going through the motions and saving their energy for another deep playoff run. There’s just one problem, Happy, the West is really f—ing good again this year. You think it’s okay to just coast through the regular season and turn things on as long as you make the playoffs? Okay, you sneak into the playoffs as the sixth seed again. Congratulations. Your first-round opponent would be the 17-6 Denver Nuggets, who are playing their best basketball since the championship run.

Maybe you feel the heat and want to make sure that doesn’t happen, so you turn on the jets at the end of the season and get the fifth seed. Cool, here’s the Houston Rockets with the fourth-best offense and second-best defense in the NBA. Mess around in the Play-In Tournament, and you’re bound to run into the Lakers or be sentenced to a first-round exit against Oklahoma City.

The Timberwolves will need to find some way to get motivated to play the remaining 58 regular-season games. They’re on pace for 51 wins and another fine but not spectacular season. If they want to get over the hump and make it to the finals, they’ll need the fire burning red hot every time they step on the court.