Monthly Archives: March 2016

This Timberwolves season has involved some clear trends, with clear reasons for those trends. In the early part of the season, they won a surprising number of games — 8 of their first 16 — largely because of the exceptional team defense played by lineups that included Tayshaun Prince and Kevin Garnett. When that success started to seem unsustainable, the “youth movement” became a greater priority. With more Zach LaVine, and less Prince and KG, we saw better offense, but much, much worse defense. Overall, team performance suffered mightily in the middle months of the season. The consistency of their mid-season slumping is partly evidenced by the same net rating of -5.7 in December and January. To put that in perspective, only 4 teams in the league post worse net ratings than that: the Nets, Suns, Lakers and 76ers.

When LaVine and rookie phenom Karl-Anthony Towns thrived in the spotlight of All-Star Weekend, it seemed like exactly what the doctor ordered; it was not a fun point in time for the Timberwolves, and the youngsters finally had some positivity.

In March, things have seemed to get better; a bit more stabilized. The offense is performing well, and the defense is performing less bad. The Wolves net rating in March is -1.5, which matches November for the best of their season (not counting the +12.5 they posted in 2 October games). My “eye test” has told me that one significant reason for their improved play is that the most athletic players on the team — Zach LaVine and Andrew Wiggins — have begun to cash in on fast-break scoring opportunities generated by point guard wizard, Ricky Rubio. A common play in recent games has been either a long rebound or outlet pass to Rubio immediately turned into a shove-ahead assist to LaVine or Wiggins, streaking up the floor for a dunk.

Things are far from great, however. That season-best net rating is still negative, after all, and the improved offense has continued to be offset by crappy defense. Again going mostly by eye test, my take has been that the team’s recent lineup of choice — Rubio/LaVine/Wiggins/Dieng/Towns — is not big enough inside to rebound opponent’s missed shots. Sometimes, the ongoing struggle to get rebounds leads to these fast-break opportunities. Basically: opponents are willing to sacrifice some transition defense if it means crushing the Wolves on the glass all night. Add it together, and it ends with the Wolves struggling to keep up in high-scoring games.

So let’s look at the month-to-month numbers and try to spot some trends. Please note that Garnett’s month-to-month minutes played, beginning with November, go 202, 191, 127, 0, and 0. Prince’s go 307, 322, 377, 133, and 161. LaVine’s playing time was stable from November through February, but his position changed from combo (mostly point) guard, to almost exclusively shooting guard in mid-February, when Tyus Jones took over the backup point guard spot. The LaVine/Prince swap (Wiggins moves to the small forward and Prince goes to the bench when LaVine starts at the two) has a huge bearing on offense (better with LaVine), defense (much better with Prince), and pace (much higher with LaVine).

Here are some month-to-month stats to chew on:

Offensive Rating, and Percentage of Points Scored on the Fast Break

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On Wednesday night, the Timberwolves faced a Memphis Grizzlies team that was absolutely depleted. The Grizz were without their best players: Mike Conley, Zach Randolph, and Marc Gasol. They were also missing Vince Carter on Wednesday. Thankfully, the Wolves won. Zach LaVine had a big night, scoring 28 points. Tyus Jones played one of his best career games, racking up 10 points and 5 assists in 19 minutes of (+10) action off the bench.

Tonight, the Wolves face a Houston Rockets team that recently acquired Punch-Drunk Wolves favorite, Michael Beasley. Supercool Beas was recently named Foreign MVP of the Chinese Basketball Association after posting averages of 31.9 points, 13.4 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 2.0 steals and 1.3 blocks per game. He will be missed by the Shandong Golden Stars… at least until next year.

Yesterday was the first day of NCAA Tournament games. March Madness is upon us.

When teams are ravaged by injuries, Michael Beasley is back from China on a Why not? flyer, and the Big Dance is underway, you know that the NBA season is winding to a close. With that being the case, and with the Timberwolves headed to their umpteenth draft lottery, discussions about the team tend to skew toward the bigger picture, and the future. There are numerous questions, ranging in specificity, that can drive this conversation about the Wolves at this stage in their building process.

What do they need? That’s probably the most general. My knee-jerk reaction to this one is “a reliable veteran big man.” I prefer that they find a full-sized big man who can slide Karl-Anthony Towns over to the four spot (just for a few seasons, until he gets bigger and stronger) and help the Wolves defend the paint and rebound opponents’ missed shots. I know that some other people prefer the Wolves address perimeter shooting, and others feel that a “small-ball four” would be a smarter acquisition than a traditional five.

Who should they draft? This is related to the question of need, and that relationship is an interesting conversation itself. (More on this below.) The NCAA Tournament increases draft chatter, as many of the best prospects are playing in the biggest games of their careers, and NBA fans are actually watching.

Finally, I think a lot of people ask whether Ricky Rubio is, or should be (potentially a crucial distinction) considered a part of this team’s core. The Wolves are undoubtedly planning ways to contend for championships when Towns and Andrew Wiggins hit their primes. That will be in 3 or 4 years. Will Ricky still be around?

All of these questions are intertwined.

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The Timberwolves 2015-16 season is starting to wind down. They’ve played 64 of 82 games as I begin this writing at Target Center, during pregame shootaround of the Wolves-Spurs tilt on Tuesday night. I posted quarter report cards after the first 20, and then 41 games had been played. The first quarter was optimistic. Fans recall the hot start to the Wolves season when they racked up surprising wins against the Heat, Bulls and Hawks, setting unsustainably-high expectations that would lead to eventual criticism of interim coach Sam Mitchell. The first quarter report card was brighter than the second one.

This third quarter report card covers player performance in Games 42 through 62 of the season. It’s a 21-game sample that showed a few interesting trends. They went 7-14 in that stretch; worse than their first quarter, but better than the second. Kevin Garnett played a grand total of 3 games and 40 minutes. Kevin Martin played in only 8 games. So did Andre Miller. Both of them player for the Spurs now.

The third quarter commenced the full youth movement, with the following players leading the team in minutes played:

1. Wiggins
2. Towns
3. Dieng
4. Rubio
5. LaVine
6. Muhammad

Since Coach Mitchell has trimmed the rotation down to mostly those 6 players, I only graded them, along with rookies Tyus Jones and Nemanja Bjelica.

Here are the grades:

Ricky Rubio: A- (Previous Grades: A-, B+)

Rubio grades high for a few different reasons. First, he stayed healthy, which is never taken for granted with this player. He played in every game, averaging about 31 minutes per. Second, he posted his usual, stellar assist-to-turnover ratio of 8.6 to 2.5. Third, he shot the ball better than usual, connecting on 40 percent of field goals. Fourth, the Wolves — as always — played much better with him on the floor (-0.5, close to even basketball) than when he was off the floor (-6.1).

Zach LaVine: B- (Previous Grades: B+, D)

LaVine had a terrible second quarter of the season, and has bounced back with decent play for a pretty clear reason: He has been moved from playing mostly point guard to playing about half of his minutes at shooting guard. In the second quarter, LaVine played next to Rubio for 316 of his total 635 minutes. Averaging 30 minutes a game, LaVine put up per-game averages of 15.1 points (on 48.8 percent shooting, including 41.0 percent from downtown), 2.9 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1.8 turnovers. His 2.1 turnovers per 36 minutes revealed improvement in the ball-control department; he was averaging 3.1 per 36 through the first two quarters of the season. LaVine would grade out better if not for his on court/off court differential. When LaVine was on the floor the Wolves were outscored by 5.6 points per 100 possessions, and when he sat on the bench the Wolves outscored opponents by 2.8. He continues to correlate with worse team performance, albeit less than last season and hopefully to a decreasing extent.

Tyus Jones: C (Previous Grades: Incomplete, D+)

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The Wolves have now played 60 games, and will cross the season’s three-quarter mark after their home game tomorrow night against the Washington Wizards and their Friday night tilt at Milwaukee, against the Bucks. I’ll be out of town over the weekend but will prepare another quarterly report card early next week, assessing each player’s performance in Games 42 through 62.

For now, a couple different Wolves-related discussion topics:

Sam Mitchell’s Future as Coach

Jon Krawczynski dropped a bomb on Wolves Twitter this past week:

The report is pretty simple and understandable. If the Wolves demonstrate some improvement in the win/loss column from last year (when they won only 16 games) then Mitchell might keep the head coaching job. Once “interim” is removed from his job title, Sam is the team’s coach going forward into the future. He’ll be the guy leading Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns into the prime of their careers.

My first reaction is to repeat everything I wrote last week about improvement. Specifically, it isn’t clear that this year’s team is improved from last year, after you take Ricky Rubio’s health and Karl-Anthony Towns’s presence (and immediate greatness) into consideration.  Everyone paying attention knows how much Rubio matters to this team’s performance.  Regarding Towns, Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle emphasized that KAT is “already a great player” in his pregame remarks the other night. I am not convinced that 27 to 29 wins would mark improvement over last year, once you consider these two major roster additions.

My second reaction is to think about Randy Wittman. In case you forgot, back in 2012 Wittman replaced Flip Saunders in Washington in an interim capacity just like Mitchell has, here in Minnesota. (Tragic difference of circumstances this time around goes without saying.) Wittman coached young phenom John Wall, much like Mitchell is doing with Karl-Anthony Towns, and they showed what was interpreted as “improvement” by finishing that season 18-31 after starting out 2-15 under Flip. The Wizards decided that was good enough, Wittman kept the job full time, and they’ve probably underachieved to a significant extent because of that decision. It is not unreasonable to fear that keeping Mitchell here, in lieu of some bigtime available alternatives, would lead to a very similar conclusion: progress into a middle-seed playoff team due to the immense talent of Towns (like Wall) but nothing approaching real title contention. If the Wolves can hire Tom Thibodeau this summer but instead stick with Mitchell because of perceived progress, it will be a huge mistake.

My third reaction is to think about why retaining Mitchell would be less surprising than it might at first seem.  (If it must be said, I have expected a summer coaching change because of the constant criticism leveled at the Wolves in-game strategies, Mitchell’s intentionally-salty relationship with the local media, and the team’s decision to announce him ALWAYS as “Interim Head Coach Sam Mitchell.”) Interim coaches have the benefit of an audition, and the benefit of selling the job they’ve done to the public.  Maybe more than anything, they have the benefit of establishing relationships with the players.  Mitchell was criticized anonymously by some players in a different Krawczynski report from a while back, but it does not seem as if he is at risk of “losing the locker room” right now. Kevin Garnett has spoken out in full support of Mitchell. He’s going to be an owner of this team soon. Karl-Anthony Towns only says great things about Mitchell, and he is the most important employee that Glen Taylor has right now and for the foreseeable future. Andrew Wiggins is already on his second coach in his second NBA season, and might not want a third one in Year 3. There are some reasons to believe the team might prefer continuity to change.

My final reaction to this news is to think about what it means for the remainder of the season. Is Glen Taylor really monitoring the win-loss column and planning to keep or change coaches depending on the final tally? Given some of the team’s managerial decisions (mostly sitting Andre Miller in favor of Zach LaVine and now Tyus Jones, not finding a reliable backup big man) it has not seemed as though they are seriously trying to rack up wins. But if Taylor is actually going to base this monumental decision on the final win tally, should Wolves fans be cheering for losses? Normally, we do that to boost draft position. This would be to force a regime change. I really don’t know. It’s something to think about though. When the Wolves beat the Anthony Davis-less Pelicans in a close one, only to get blown off the floor by Dallas the next night, should we feel good that they split a road back-to-back or wonder if the added win — which was not at all impressive on its own — might lead to a bigger-picture problem down the road?

It’s a complicated and “fluid” (David Kahn voice) situation. Stay tuned.

The Bizarre Relationship Between the Front Office & Zach LaVine

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