Every season for the past eight, the Timberwolves and those who still cared about them looked forward to the proverbial promise of next year.

This season truly, really, finally is — for bad or for good — next year.

The plan in place is a win-now proposal still constructed around youthful Kevin Love, Ricky Rubio and Nikola Pekovic but now supplemented by former NBA All-Stars Brandon Roy and Andrei Kirilenko and orchestrated not by President of Basketball Operations David Kahn so much as head coach Rick Adelman.

It’s a philosophical shift created by a 71-year-old owner who intends to sell the team, by a 66-year-old coach who is working the final job in his accomplished career and by a basketball-ops president whose team very likely needs to reach the playoffs for the first time since 2004 if he intends to keep his job.