I watched TAXI DRIVER the other night. I’ve seen it before, at least a couple of times, but it had been a while and in the world of endless-but-mostly-bad streaming options, I’m finding it more satisfying to choose a reliable repeat over the risk/reward of something new.
In any event, it’s a classic you’ve probably seen yourself. (Eds note: If not, I suppose this is where I should insert a #SpoilerAlert.) One scene stood out on this rewatching that I hadn’t paid much attention to in prior viewings. It didn’t stick in my memory, anyway. It’s the one where De Niro’s Travis Bickle stops his fellow cabbie “Wizard” outside the diner, and tries to confide in him that he’s having some dark, dangerous thoughts. We can safely assume that he’s thinking about killing, given his internal monologue as he drives around New York City disgusted by everything he sees, and especially given the recent failed courtship of Cybill Shepherd’s “Betsy.” (Eds note: Who knew a porno theater first date wouldn’t end well?) We know that Travis is spiraling.
In this scene, however, Bickle can’t quite spit this out in enough detail for Wizard to understand the situation’s gravity — Wizard seems to think Travis is just garden-variety “down on his luck,” nothing more. Instead of hearing what he’s really being told, Wizard cuts him off and rambles about life generally, linking a person’s identity to their job and what they do.
What’s brilliant about this scene is that Wizard is both giving Bickle advice that he needs, while also kind of missing the whole point. Would Travis benefit from a social life and a quieter inner monologue? Obviously. But right now there’s the more urgent matter of these bad ideas in his head. Bickle smiles and says that’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard. Wizard cops to being no Bertrand Russell while adding “I don’t even know what the fuck you’re talking about,” patting Bickle on the shoulder, and letting him know he’ll be alright. He just needs to relax.
He does not, in fact, relax.
***
At last week’s post the Wolves were 1-1. One week and 4 games later, they’re still .500 at 3-3. The big story is that Anthony Edwards pulled his hamstring in the first minutes of the Pacers game, last Sunday. That the Wolves managed to win 2 of 4 without him sounds impressive enough, except that in 2 of those games (Pacers/Lakers) the opponent was resting multiple key players.
Without Ant, the offense has mostly been okay and at times quite good. Julius Randle is playing like the All-Star he’s been in the past, averaging 27.2 points on 56.4 percent shooting, along with 5.2 assist versus just 2.2 turnovers. Randle’s assimilation into Finch’s offense has been the success of this early season. He played well with Ant, and he’s proportionally upped his game as the team’s playmaker after Edwards went down. No, he won’t keep making 47 percent of his threes, but his three-point shot rhythm and selection seems smoother than last year. More than that, his role within the offense seems better established both for himself as the playmaker and for his teammates in position to be set up for good shots. He looks more confident and the offensive flow looks less clunky. The Wolves are 12th in offense as of this writing. Considering Ant’s absence for two thirds of the games and some of the other roster/performance issues (more on that below) that’s pretty impressive and a testament to Julius and his ability to carry that side of the floor.
It’s both easy and difficult to have your job be the star of the team. It’s easy in the sense that Wizard described to Bickle – the identification as the star, the go-to guy, brings obvious benefits. Credit, ego, fame, salary, to name a few. What’s better than being the star of the show? Specific to the game itself, it’s more fun to play with the ball than to play without it. The difficult aspects are there, too, however. More is demanded of the star in terms of talent and responsibility. Few are qualified for the job. Blame falls on the star. Randle himself has carried this weight in the past, and he hasn’t always enjoyed it. But he and Finch have found a groove right now, and Randle gets to show up to work and align his identity with his job in a way that brings him real agency and power over the outcome of each game. He probably isn’t thinking too much. He’s just balling.
Of course if the entire six-game season to-date was a story about how awesome Julius Randle is, the team would have a better record. Unfortunately there’s been plenty of bad stuff, and it doesn’t even have a lot to do with Ant’s absence. More than missing Ant’s scoring the team has struggled to get defensive stops. In each of the losses, one specific opponent (Luka Doncic, then Jamal Murray, and then Austin Reaves) really carved up the Wolves defense and single-handedly dictated the outcome. Several Wolves players had individual stretches of embarrassment, though Jaden McDaniels (by virtue of drawing the toughest assignments) was more acutely exposed; especially by Luka.
We know two things about the last couple of Wolves seasons: (1) it’s the best two-year stretch in franchise history; and (2) it had a great deal more to do with defense than offense. Trading a billion draft picks for Rudy Gobert was Tim Connelly’s bet that Anthony Edwards was ready for primetime, and it was a bet that he won. The creeping concern as Rudy ages, however, is “how do we move on from Rudy without falling off a cliff defensively?” We can set that question aside or cross that bridge when we come to it, however, because right now the question is “how do we play decent defense with Rudy Gobert very much in the starting lineup?”
There are reasons to believe this can be sorted out, and the Wolves can remain a contender in the West for years to come. There are other reasons to be more concerned that the roster has crossed its contending expiration date and we’re in for a recession of sorts.
Blended together, the issue is that Finch needs to re-establish roles (“jobs”) and some specific guys need to feel more empowered to do the things they are capable of doing. How might that work? Well, Jaylen Clark seems to be the best perimeter defender on the team. Normally, unless completely inept offensively, that player is a starter. Clark shows up to work each night with a business card that says “Jaylen Clark: Badass On-Ball Defender” on it. He owns that identity and consistently does his job. That’s reliable, you can count on it. Given that the team’s number one issue seems to be containing perimeter scorers, he should probably be cast in the role to slow that down. We have other bench guys to defend opposing bench guys. Clark is going partially to waste in his current role. His return on Saturday was a clear spark for the win.
I doubt Finch will actually start Jaylen Clark because it would mean replacing veterans like Conley and Donte and that just seems unrealistic. But he could increase his playing time to 25 minutes and stagger him into more of the rotations to guard opposing stars.
That’s hardly the only team issue, however. Rob Dillingham doesn’t really know what his job is right now. He showed promise in his minutes at Charlotte. Just visually watching this team, it’s pretty clear that Rob or someone like Rob does a lot to inject speed into this team’s otherwise plodding style. Even if Finch doesn’t know what Rob is, and even if Rob doesn’t yet know what Rob is, I think they’ve gotta let that one play out for a while on the game floor. Whatever it ultimately looks like, they need to be faster with the basketball.
Terrence Shannon Junior’s early struggles prompt a darker question of whether he’s capable of doing his job. We know what his job is – he’s a scorer. Finch committed himself on the record to TSJ as a regular rotation player. That commitment has gone unrewarded so far. Shannon’s averaging 4.0 points on 32.0 percent shooting in 17 minutes per game. His defense is subpar and his 1.2 to 1.0 assist-turnover ratio is not the stuff of a plus playmaker. Simply put: Terrence has one job — to get buckets — and if he doesn’t do that, he has no place in the game floor. I suspect that opponent scouting has wisened up on his tendencies a great deal since last year’s intermittent boomlets. Can he adjust and become a smoother half-court player? If so, that does a lot to boost the bench scoring and get this team offense easily inside the Top 10. If not, he’s probably relegated to an occasional “energy guy,” and Finch’s depth shortens even more than it already has.
If you look at this roster a certain way, you might say that it’s in real trouble. Conley’s too old, Rob isn’t going to replace him, and Bones Hyland has no business chewing up this many game minutes. If Shannon flops, suddenly there’s very little bench at all. Rudy’s past his prime. The future draft picks that exist cannot be traded to find meaningful upgrades.
But, bringing this back to Randle, there’s another perspective. If Anthony Edwards and Julius Randle play together as bona fide All-Star players, they’ve essentially accomplished the roster challenge that separates winners from losers, and from there it’s just on Finch to cast and empower his role players in ways that maximize team success. Jaylen Clark is the low-hanging fruit, but there should be more ways to tinker within this group beyond “Bones can dribble, so we’ll play Bones.” After the last couple years, both Finch and Connelly deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Go Wolves.
Leave a Reply