The Wolves played four times since last week’s post, and trends and themes largely continued.
Facing bad teams like the Kings and Jazz, the Wolves rolled. They won a road back-to-back on Sunday and Monday, blowing out Douglas Dale Christie’s Kings first, before grinding out the second one at Utah on tired legs. On Friday Night with the radioactive-green “Cup Court,” the Wolves again beat Sacramento, in a sloppy performance that ended with a somewhat misleading 14-point margin.
Then Saturday Night, again at Target Center but this time facing a strong Nuggets team, the Wolves were outmatched. They lost 123-112 to Joker and Murray, and looked like the inferior team that they clearly are right now.
Having an 8-5 record is pretty good, but it has to be acknowledged that the best wins thus far are the season opener at Portland and the recent “road back to back” win at Utah. Neither of those teams will meaningfully factor into this year’s Western Conference Playoffs, if they even manage to sneak into the play-in tournament as a 9 or 10 seed. The Wolves’ 5 losses have come against the 3 strong teams they’ve faced through 13 games: the Lakers and Nuggets twice each (one of the Lakers losses in a game Luka sat out) and to the Knicks at MSG.
You don’t apologize for the schedule you face – you just play the games, and amassing wins is more important than anything else in November. But when you’ve made the conference finals two years running, there’s always one eye looking ahead to the playoffs and wondering if the team you’ve got has a chance. The bad news is that, right now, the Wolves don’t seem to have one. The good news is that there’s about five full months yet to get it right.
Every bigger-picture discussion about the Timberwolves or any other team requires a caveat of sorts, regarding the Oklahoma City Thunder. The defending champions are 13-1 right now, with a net rating of +15.4. Their defensive rating is 102.8, which is 6.6 points per 100 possessions better than 2nd Place. The first to second place dropoff is on par with the Cadillac Eldorado to set of steak knives.
The Thunder are doing this without Jalen Williams, reigning All-NBA Third Team and All-Defensive Second Team. He’s been out all season recovering from an offseason wrist injury. Lu Dort’s missed the last 6 games with a trap injury – he was first-team All-Defense. They figure to get even more dominant when each returns.
The Thunder are so much better than everybody else right now that it’s almost not worth fretting over title contention right now. In order for the Wolves or 28 other teams to have a real shot, the Thunder need to get worse.
By Timberwolves team stats, there aren’t any glaring strengths or weaknesses at this point. The offense is ranked 4th which is inflated a bit by playing so many games against the league’s worst defenses. The defense is ranked 17th and climbing, but again that seems pretty heavily dependent on opponent quality. In several other broad measures of performance, the Wolves are middle of the pack, including: assist-to-turnover ratio (14th); offensive rebounding percentage (18th); turnover percentage (15th); and pace (15th). They stand out in EFG% (2nd), but like the 4th ranked offense that’s probably a little bit tilted due to the opponent (lack of) quality, through 13 games. They rank poorly in defensive rebounding, which certainly tracks with the eye test.
There are some candidates for feel-good-story optimism if the Wolves start to win some games against stronger competition. Jaden McDaniels breaking out as a viable third wheel offensive producer and Julius Randle consistently performing like an All-Star. Maybe Anthony Edwards making another step toward MVP conversations. Jaylen Clark!
But there are likewise candidates for feel-not-so-good pessimism if the good-opponent losses keep piling up and especially if the Wolves begin to drop a few against the bad teams. Terrence Shannon struggled mightily before going on the shelf with foot pain. He was supposed to be a real factor this year, and it’s been a total loss. Rob Dillingham looks less confident in Year 2 than he did in his first minutes as a rookie, and it would surprise nobody if Tim Connelly is on the phones everyday, searching for a new point guard. Rudy Gobert has stepped up with some dominant defensive performances of late, but he more than perhaps any other player represents the “great versus bad teams” dynamic of this team. (That talking point should not be applied retroactively to Rudy, however — he was second (to Jaden) in playoffs net rating in last year’s run, and first amongst regulars in the playoff run the year before that.)
This week the Wolves soft-ish schedule marches on, with home games versus Dallas (Monday), Washington (Wednesday) and then a road game at Phoenix on Friday. The thing that needs to happen — piling up wins against the winnable — won’t teach us anything about this team’s title prospects, but that’s just the way things are right now. If you want to look ahead a few more days, we face the Thunder in Oklahoma City the night before Thanksgiving. That should give your family some meaningful updates to discuss over Turkey.
Go Wolves.
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