Monthly Archives: November 2015

The Wolves played against the Clippers this afternoon at Staples Center. They lost by 8, but nobody felt too bad about the proverbial “moral victory,” because, well…

For the second consecutive game, Ricky Rubio sat out with what is being described as ankle soreness. It is the sixth game he’s missed of this 17-game season. The Wolves are 7-4 with him and now 1-5 without him. The only Rubio-less win came on Friday night against the Kings who did not have DeMarcus Cousins, their only great player. The Wolves cannot realistically compete against good teams without Rubio, so a reasonably-close loss (they beat the spread by 1.5) has to suffice.

On Saturday, Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune wrote that Rubio “began to experience that soreness two or three games ago, then jammed the ankle just before halftime in Wednesday’s home win over Atlanta.” According to Darren Wolfson of KSTP — as reliable a Minnesota-sports beat reporter as there is — Rubio wants to play, but is being held out per the decision of others. In both the Hawks and 76ers games — the last two that Rubio has played in — he has looked every bit his usual self, having a noticeably-positive effect on both games, particularly on defense. The only evidence of injury concerns was the wrap he put on his leg during his stints on the bench.

As was the case last season when Rubio was being held out of games that he reportedly wished to play in, he can be seen going through pregame work with assistant coaches, demonstrating no apparent disability; at least not to my untrained eyes in the times I’ve witnessed it. Rubio was described as a “gametime decision” today, but nobody paying attention believed he would play after that much was announced. It feels the same as last year, when his ankle never gets better despite the passing of time.

This leaves us with two general possibilities, and you can decide for yourself which is better or worse, and more or less likely: either Rubio’s ankle has not recovered well from the “diagnostic” surgery that he underwent back in April, over 7 months ago — a procedure described as minor and “clean up” — and he is increasingly unreliable as a healthy starting point guard, or he is able to play but the Timberwolves don’t want him to. The latter sounds like a juicy conspiracy theory, until you consider a few different things.

First, the Wolves used this precise tactic last year with great success, when the franchise goal was to lose games and improve draft position. They sat Rubio out and subbed in the 19-year old shooting guard, Zach LaVine. The rookie had no idea how to play point guard, but he had endless athleticism and general potential as a player. His on-the-job basketball training doubled as effective tanking. Rubio was held out of 60 games due to ankle issues. They were 7-15 in the games in which he played, and 9-51 in the games in which he sat out. The 26-win pace with Rubio would’ve placed the Wolves between Orlando and Sacramento for the 5th worst record in the league, and 5th best odds of winning the lottery. Holding him out led to the lottery win and budding superstar Karl-Anthony Towns. On draft night, after selecting Towns, Flip all but admitted to the tanking in his remarks to the press, made with an ear-to-ear smile.

Second, the Wolves have another tanking incentive this year. No, they will not be bad enough to draft at the top again; not without incredible Magic/Webber or Bulls/Rose type of lottery luck, anyway. But the Wolves owe their first round pick to the Boston Celtics, unless it falls inside the top 12 of the draft. Why do they owe this pick, you ask? Well, because David Kahn included it in a trade with the Suns that sent out Wesley Johnson’s contract. That’s right, the Wolves had to pay the premium of a protected first round pick in order to unload the salary of the player drafted ahead of DeMarcus Cousins and Paul George.

Importantly, if the Wolves keep the draft pick this year, they do not owe a first rounder for that trade and it instead becomes a pair of second-round picks; a much lower cost.

Also importantly, the Wolves owe their 2018 first-round pick to the Hawks as partial consideration of the Adreian Payne trade. In other words, they risk losing 2 first rounders in 3 years if they win too much this year.

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So the Timberwolves won another game, another road game actually, and are back up to .500 at this not-quite-so-early point, 16 games into the 2015-16 season. This is an overwhelmingly-positive position for the team to find itself in, for the reasons mentioned in yesterday’s post that took a shot at evaluating Sam Mitchell’s performance as coach.

In and of itself, yesterday’s win was nothing too special. This is because their opponent, the Sacramento Kings, was missing its by-far-and-away best player, DeMarcus Cousins. When Boogie plays, the Kings are a respectable 5-5. When he has been out with injuries, they are a not-so-respectable 1-6, after last night’s loss to the Wolves. When assessing the difficulty of last night’s Wolves win, however, it must be noted that they were once again without both Ricky Rubio (ankle soreness) and Nemanja Bjelica (knee contusion). The combination of Rubio and Bjelica might approximate the importance to the Wolves’ present-day competitiveness of Boogie’s to Sacto. The Wolves had lost their previous 16 games without Rubio, if that seemed like an unrealistic comparison.

The Wolves won for a few reasons. On their own end, Andre Miller came off the bench and played some of the most spectacular old-man ball you will ever see. If Miller wasn’t knocking down an open shot, he was posting up a skinny opponent. Or he was using his will-always-be-quick hands to poke away a pass. Or, as things went, he might randomly open field tackle Willie Cauley-Stein, who didn’t even have the ball. (Yes, that actually happened. Upon review, it was deemed a Flagrant One.) Anyway, Miller ended up logging 18:46 seconds of vital action off the bench. In that time, the Wolves beat the Kings by 12. He had 12 points and 4 assists, without missing a field goal or free throw. In the minutes that Miller sat out, the Wolves were outscored by 2 points. He was possibly the biggest difference in the game.

Andrew Wiggins played his usual brand of aggressive-scorer basketball. It seemed like his most physical drives to the hoop were not rewarded as usual with free throws (he shot 6, probably could’ve had 12 attempts with favorable whistles) but he managed to score a reasonably-efficient 22 points, and pulled down an unusual 5 offensive rebounds.

Zach LaVine filled the stat sheet, as he is prone to do, with 19 points, 8 rebounds and 4 assists. LaVine was not without mistakes, and his (-2) probably represents the all-around game he played pretty well, but his production was not inevitable for the Wolves team by any stretch of the imagination and it is really encouraging to see his play improve, even if it remains at the wrong position.

Shabazz Muhammad came off the bench to score 15 efficient points (8 field goal attempts) in 15 minutes of action. When Bazz provides this spark, the Wolves have a much greater chance of winning games. Their first unit has had a lot of success this year — built on its defense — and a bench scoring burst will tip the scales for them more often than not.

On the Kings side, they simply got a terrible game from Rudy Gay, who shot 1 for 13 from the field. Credit to Andrew Wiggins for his defense — after a shaky first quarter, it was very solid — but a lot of this was Gay’s own difficulties. Had he played well, this game would’ve gone down to the wire. He didn’t, so the solid performances they got from Rajon Rondo, Marco Belenelli and Kosta Koufos were for naught.

The elephant in the room, with respect to last night’s game which came in the wake of the win over the Hawks, is the limitation put on Karl-Anthony Towns’s playing time. Without any injuries or foul trouble, Towns has had his minutes cut in favor of Gorgui Dieng for two straight games. Last night at Sacramento, Towns played 21:20, while Dieng played 26:40. Towns had 6 points on 3-5 shooting, along with 8 rebounds and 2 blocks. Dieng, to his credit, had 8 points of his own (2-4 shooting) along with 8 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 steals. The plus-minus differential between the players (minus 4 for Towns, +14 for Gorgui) is effectively attributable to everything Andre Miller did, which came exclusively during Dieng’s stints.

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Since we last posted, the Wolves have played three times. They won at Miami in another impressive road performance. By this early stage of the season, these young Timberwolves have now defeated the best Eastern Conference teams outside of Cleveland: the Bulls, Hawks, and Heat. The next night, in an always difficult second end of a back to back, they narrowly lost to the Orlando Magic.

In both games, Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns gave Wolves fans more to be excited about. Wiggins continues to produce points with aggressive drives to the basket that often end in thunderous dunks or free throw attempts. Towns is playing at a higher level than any NBA rookie in recent memory. The future here is obviously bright, if for no other reason than the Wolves have Wiggins and Towns.

Last night, the Wolves lost another home game – they remain winless at home – this time to Stan Van Gundy’s Detroit Pistons. Detroit did not play particularly well on offense in the first half, but seemed to have the Wolves’ strategy mapped out well and exploited its limitations, such as the inability of Tayshaun Prince and Kevin Garnett to threaten defenses. Probably more than any other time this season, the limitations of those two cagey veterans has people wondering if Sam Mitchell should consider a lineup change. Beyond that issue, the Wolves got bad performances from the second-unit front line. With Nemanja Bjelica out nursing a knee contusion, the combination of Adreian Payne and Gorgui Dieng struggled. Each player has a good motor and athleticism that suggests an upside might be in there somewhere, but each also tries to do too much, too often. Instead of making simple rotation passes to more competent playmakers, Dieng and Payne like to hold the ball for a moment or two, and try to initiate a play of their own. The results are usually not good.

In any event, the Wolves are now at 5-8, and host the winless Philadelphia 76ers on Monday night at Target Center. It’s a game they will be predicted to win; probably by double figures.

As a way to keep the conversation moving, and without any new hot takes or conspiracy theories about Wiggins struggling to score or Rubio sitting out with injuries, I thought I’d just run through the roster of players and identify something good, and something bad, in the stats about their play, to date.

We’ll do this by position, beginning in the backcourt:

Point Guards

Ricky Rubio

GOOD: On/Off Differential of 13.1 points per 100 possessions.

As always seems to be the case, the Timberwolves play much better with Rubio on the floor than they play when he is on the bench or sidelined in street clothes. So far this year, Rubio has played 277 minutes. In that time they outscore opponents by 7.0 points per 100. He has been off the floor for an unfortunately-large 357 minutes. In that time they were outscored by 6.1 per 100. Whether Rubio plays determines if the Wolves are a good team or a bad one.

BAD: Field Goal Percentage of 36.3.

Rubio’s shot is not going in, and — notwithstanding that first game against the Lakers — does not look different in any significant way than it did in years past, before his well-documented work with Mike Penberthy last year. Sometimes when Rubio catches a pass with an open, seemingly good shot for the taking, there is a palpable hesitation in his slow setup, as if (R. Kelly voice) ‘his mind is telling him no’ the whole time before he finally, slowly releases an errant shot. That is no way to play and he’ll never be any good at shooting if he doesn’t want to take shots.

Zach LaVine

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The Warriors used to be the team of counterintuitive truths, the one that went against old conventions. They built an offense around a skinny 6’3″ jump shooter. Instead of trade for Kevin Love, a 26 & 12 superstar, they thought it made more sense to hold onto Klay Thompson and Harrison Barnes. Instead of starting Andre Iguodala, a recent All-Star and First Team All-Defense performer, Coach Steve Kerr thought it made more sense to start Barnes, a significantly worse player at that time. David Lee was likewise a former All-Star, and was the team’s highest paid player. When Lee suffered an early season injury, Draymond Green took his spot and never gave it back. Green was a second round pick making less than a million dollars a year.

There are a lot of ways that Mark Jackson’s and then especially Steve Kerr’s Warriors have bucked conventional wisdom in becoming what appears to be an all-time great NBA basketball team. Now, we’ve reached a point where the wisdom of those decisions and tactics are long past doubt.

Curry is not just a great shooter, but a great player; quite possibly the best in the NBA today. Instead of last year’s MVP being some type of fluke, it seems more likely that it is the first of more to come. Kevin Garnett compared Curry to Michael Jordan yesterday, saying both were like this “whole other thing,” that is beautiful for basketball. He’s not wrong. Curry had 46 points last night, shooting 8 of 13 from downtown. When dribbling off of ball screens way out court — 26 or more feet from the hoop — Curry draws double teams. He’s plenty clever as a dribbler and passer, so this early action inevitably leads to the screener receiving the ball with a scrambled 3 defenders trying to stop 4 Warriors.

Green is often times that roll man, tasked with setting up the score. And last night, he could hardly have done a better job of doing it. A bulky 6’8″ former college center, Green has become the most versatile player in the NBA. He can defend all five positions, he can shoot from the perimeter, he can post up, and — maybe more than anything — he can facilitate offense for his teammates, off the dribble. When he catches that roll pass from Curry, and it’s 3 against 4 for the defense, Green is looking to the corners for three-point shooters, or up high to Festus Ezeli for a lob dunk. Last night, he made both passes look effortless. The lobs were dunked. The kick-outs were converted for threes. Green, the former second-round pick, had 23 points on 8-10 shooting, to go along with 8 rebounds and 12 — TWELVE — assists. He’s become undeniably one of the best forwards in the league.

Last night, the Wolves played their second straight game without Ricky Rubio, who is battling a sore hamstring. When this “gametime decision” was announced, a great deal of the excitement for this matchup was drained. The Warriors — 9-0 and coming off another big win at Memphis — are bound to lose a game eventually and these upstart Timberwolves playing on more rest seemed like a potentially sneaky and fun team to hand them their first L. Without Ricky, that simply was not possible. Rubio’s replacement, Zach LaVine, is one of the worst defensive point guards in the league, and the Wolves had no chance with LaVine defending Curry. Had Coach Sam Mitchell instead put Andrew Wiggins on Curry, and had LaVine guard Barnes, it’s possible some of the damage could’ve been mitigated.  But Mitchell has been pretty clear on the LaVine issues in terms of what he’s trying to accomplish with him this year; it is about development — even in the middle of real games — more than it is about short-term strategies for team success. In Mitchell’s plans, LaVine had the good learning experience of defending Steph Curry MVP last night, which is more important than the Timberwolves trying to win that game.

Curry had 21 points in the first quarter, most of which came on LaVine. The crowd mixed oohs and ahhs, with groans of frustration.

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In these rebuilding stages that the Timberwolves have unfortunately found themselves in for the better part of the last decade, it seems there are two basic ways to watch their games. One way is to watch them as if what happens on the floor matters, and the other is to watch them as if it doesn’t.

Last season, we were basically forced to go the latter route.

The Wolves began with high hopes; higher than most people found reasonable, anyway. Flip Saunders was running the front office, and named himself head coach after Rick Adelman stepped down. In a move that signaled an interest in coaching a competitive team, Flip added a detail to the Love/Wiggins swap that sent out a future first round pick to bring back Thaddeus Young, a quality veteran forward. Coming off a 40-win season and having replaced Love with Young, Flip spoke confidently that he could lead his team to a competitive season, while also developing his new young talent.

He might have been right, if not for some early injuries and then his organizational audible to focus on the next draft instead of that season’s win-loss record. Consider that the Wolves opened the season with a close road loss to the Memphis Grizzlies, who went on to lead the Warriors 2-1 in the Western Conference Finals. After beating the Pistons, the Wolves lost a heartbreaker to the Eastern Conference Finalist Bulls; you might remember Andrew Wiggins fouling Jimmy Butler with a second to play. After that, the Wolves beat the Nets by 7 to get back to .500.  The Nets were not bad, and that was a decent road win.  And after THAT, at Orlando, Ricky Rubio sprained his ankle, causing the Wolves to lose in overtime and then tank the season.

Once Rubio went down, Saunders saw that his team had no chance to contend for a playoff spot.  Rather than grind out 24 or 25 wins, he sat his quality veterans for most of the season’s games, and instead won 16, and eventually the draft lottery, too. He drafted Karl-Anthony Towns, and the rest is history.

It’s great that the Wolves got Towns. It really is. David Thorpe just tweeted that Towns has a higher ceiling than Anthony Davis. That seems like hyperbole — it probably is — but enough people latched onto it that it shows how much excitement there is right now about Towns’s potential. Between he, Wiggins, Rubio, and maybe one more of the Wolves youngsters with upside, there might be a nucleus forming that can make the playoffs in a few years and contend for a championship a couple years after that.

But for now, there’s the question of what happens in a typical game at Target Center. We go to 41 of them each season, and expect to draw some takeaways. If the games are going to be like last season’s, that becomes very difficult. Zach LaVine was producing like an All-Star last April, but nobody thought too much of it, because of the context in which those numbers came. More advanced stats pegged him as one of the league’s worst players. Andrew Wiggins also produced a lot, and looked more professional doing it – hence his Rookie of the Year award – but likewise drew skepticism from the analytics crowd that felt he was inefficient and not necessarily a future star.

The point is, when the games are not competitive, the entire framework of the discussion is destroyed. It is supposed to begin with each team trying to score as many points as possible, and prevent its opponent from doing the same. When one of the teams has a different objective, then we begin to wonder why we are watching in the first place.

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Glass Half Empty: Andrew Wiggins is off to a pretty terrible start to the season.

Glass Half Full: How so?

Empty: Well, he’s shooting 30 percent from the floor, and averaging just 1.3 assists compared to 3 turnovers. He’s got a PER (7.6) you’d more expect from Adreian Payne, to go along with negative win shares.

Full: Yeah, but there’s only been three games. Small sample size much? Last year, when he played 82, he was the runaway Rookie of the Year. Plus, isn’t he injured?

Empty: Good point. Small sample size, and possible minor injury noted. Still, it’s the WAY that he’s struggling that is sort of discouraging. The types of things I hoped to see from him to take the next step – like shoot less contested two-point shots, more threes, and develop synergy with Ricky Rubio – we have not seen much of. Instead, it’s been a worse-looking version of the 1994 Isolation stuff that they did with him last year, only without such sympathetic defenses facing a tanking Wolves opponent.

Full: That’s a little unfair. Wiggins was going at real defense last year, when he was drawing 10 free throws a game in the last month of the season. Plus, he worked out with that special coach in the offseason and he supposedly improved his handles quite a bit.

Empty: Yeah, I remember reading about that. They edited up some cool highlight videos. But so far his handles look about the same. He has that nice spin move, but still looks shaky off the dribble. He lost the ball twice during crunchtime last night when the Wolves needed points. He needs to spot up for 3 more, and cut to the basket more. Maybe the handles will improve slowly over a few years, but there’s no reason to force it.

Full: What about defense? He locked up Kobe during crunchtime the other night?

Empty: Kobe isn’t good anymore. But you’re right, Wiggins looks like he might become a very good defender. It’ll be more telling to see him guarding Klay Thompson (or even Steph Curry) and the top scorers in the Western Conference. Dwyane Wade is in town on Thursday, so that’ll be a better test.

Full: He’s probably just adjusting to a different role; one that doesn’t involve him as a primary go-to scorer. With his size, athleticism, work ethic and shooting ability, there’s no reason to have doubts that he’ll figure it out. It might not even take very long.

The Wolves lost by 5 to the Blazers tonight. For a recap of sorts, I’ll do this one Good/Bad/Ugly style which is an inherently more sensible structure following a Timberwolves loss.

The Good: Everything about how the night started.

In the days leading up to tonight’s game the Timberwolves put out the word that fans should try to be in their seats early, and in time for the tribute they planned to remember Flip Saunders. By the time Tom Hanneman grabbed the mic at center court, Target Center was nearly filled to capacity. Hanny said a few words before turning it over to the jumbotron, where they showed a series of touching testimonials from both around the NBA and then within the Wolves organization. There was live music accompanying a bunch of old Flip photos and videos. The whole thing was done spectacularly well; so much so that not only were there few dry eyes in the arena stands, but on the floor as well. Karl-Anthony Towns was seen crying during the tribute, and later admitted that it may have drained some of his energy for the game.

Bravo to everybody involved in putting tonight’s events together. If you missed the FSN telecast and were not in the arena, much of the tribute is available or viewing at timberwolves.com.

Along with the Saunders tribute, the opening to the game falls decidedly in the “good” category. Whether it was due to extra hype, playing for Flip, or just sound execution of a gameplan, the Wolves first unit came out strong against the Blazers. They built an immediate 7-point lead after a couple of quick baskets from Towns. Ricky Rubio made three pull-up jumpers, and the second unit even came in and kept things rolling. The Wolves were up by 17 points late in the first quarter, and maintained a 13-point lead as late as 7:07 to play in the second.

From that point on, things just didn’t go their way.

The Bad: Coach Mitchell’s Rotations

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