One Last Lottery Trip? Minnesota Timberwolves Set Sights On Future
Can Tom Thibodeau channel unlucky number 13 into Minnesota’s final visit to the lottery?
For what is now thirteen-straight seasons, the Minnesota Timberwolves have been out of the playoffs and therefore will be in the NBA’s Draft Lottery for the thirteenth time in as many years. Teams that find themselves in the lottery are gifted an exhilaration that comes with the theoretical hope of landing a transcendent talent but the lottery also hints at a sadness. Those ping pong balls are a reminder that your team, currently, kinda sucks. The greater the level of excitement — higher odds of landing a top-3 pick — the greater the current quantity of suck — losses the prior season.
In Minnesota, there has been a lot of excitement surrounding the lottery the past thirteen years because the quantity of suck has been through the roof. In a baker’s dozen of playoff-less seasons, the Wolves have averaged 53 losses per season.
This reality has brought a begrudged reluctance to this lottery for the Wolves and their fan base. Speaking on behalf of the fanbase; we are sick of this. I’m going to go out on a limb and say, no team has ever been less excited about their ping pong balls. The excitement that comes with adding a 19-year-old to an already young core has run its course in Minnesota. Every person in and outside of the organization is ready for this to be the last lottery.
This sentiment is born out of the feeling that the Wolves already (and finally) have their core. The days of shuffling in veterans in around The Kevins — Garnett, and Love — are finally over. This franchise has “blown it up” twice since the last time they made the playoffs. That process has been painful, but it has led to something that resembles hope.
For once, that hope feels real and justified. The Wolves roster features eight first-round draft picks that have played their entire career in Minnesota. This past season, 84 percent of the Wolves total minutes were played by homegrown first round picks. Seven of those eight players were still on their rookie scale deal this past season.
The lottery gives teams the notion of hope on the horizon, but what that hope is or who that hope may be is ambiguous by it’s very nature. The Wolves have stepped out of that ambiguity as the future is no longer an existential question. In Minnesota, the future is already under contract. Most teams enter the lottery searching for an identity the Wolves already have one. Or, at the very least, when Benjamin Button-ing the Wolves season, it appears they have found a few things that began to “click” in 2016–17.
Three Unexpected ‘Clicks’ for the Wolves This Season
Karl-Anthony Towns’s Effectiveness Inside and Out
If you think back to Towns’ season at the University of Kentucky, he was the Wildcats’ defensive anchor, got a ton of rebounds, and dominated when he posted up on offense. His rookie season in Minnesota featured that same post dominance and he even became a distributor occasionally out of the high post.
In lieu of Sam Mitchell’s dismissal as the Head Coach and the insertion of Tom Thibodeau as coach and President of Basketball Operations, Towns’ offensive role again shifted. More post-ups, more threes, and less mid-range action.
The biggest shift, for Towns, came in taking the proverbial “step back.” Fully 27.9 percent of his shots as a rookie came from 16 feet to just inside the three-point arch, a staple of Mitchell’s fossilized 1990’s style offense. Under Thibodeau, only 10.9 percent of his shots came from that range. Towns took the step back and shot 275 threes this season, 187 more than he did as a rookie.
Karl-Anthony Towns 2015–16 Shot Chart
Karl-Anthony Towns 2016–17 Shot Chart
His ability to shoot the three was the key to opening the door to overall offensive effectiveness. In the final 41 games of the season, Towns shot a scalding 44.4 percent from deep. With both the volume and efficiency of his three-point shooting, Towns began to be guarded differently. From this, he adapted and when the defense stayed glued to him on the perimeter, he would further probe the defense to areas that were then guarded with less vigor.
After the All-Star Break, Towns’ field goal percentage in the restricted area increased by 7.9 percent, the efficiency of his shots from the paint increased by 9.8 percent, and his attempts from the mid-range increased by 9.9 percent.
DeAndre Jordan leads the league in field-goal percentage every season which makes him an asset in his own right, but he does this on a very low volume of shots almost exclusively developed by his teammates, namely alley-oops or missed shots that Jordan rebounds.
After the All-Star break, Towns began to approach Jordan’s efficiency — 72.2 percent — in the restricted area but on a higher volume — 7.8 field goal attempts. Like Jordan, Towns can catch oops but he also has the ability to create his own shot near the rim.
As the season came to a close, Towns was suddenly DeAndre Jordan in the paint, Ryan Anderson from three, and even became Dirk-esque from the mid-range when he added the one-leg fadeaway. A truly scary creature is developing in Minnesota, at least on the offensive end.
The Zach LaVine and Gorgui Dieng Combo
LaVine’s season will be viewed as a bust as he suffered a torn ACL fifty games in. But, the starting shooting guard made some serious strides to put himself on the map as more than just a dunk champion.
LaVine cemented himself as a bonafide three-point shooter, twelve games with four-plus made threes and was an overall 38.7 percent from deep on 6.6 attempts per game.
A problem in LaVine’s first two seasons was figuring out how to unleash his speed in space, which is actually his most important athletic feature. His rookie season, under the late Flip Saunders, was an unsuccessful endeavor as a point guard. After accruing a god-awful turnover rate (turnovers committed per 100 plays) of 20.4 percent his rookie year, the number was halved to 9.9 percent as an off the ball player this year.
The Wolves found out how to effectively limit LaVine’s shortcomings of decision making while accentuating his strengths of speed and shooting ability. This was most noticeable in his pairing with Gorgui Dieng. LaVine and Dieng developed excellent chemistry this season.
Dieng who profiles as a low usage but high I.Q. big man made the match perfect. One action that particularly highlighted LaVine was the dribble handoff from Dieng. DHO, as it is more commonly referred to, functionally works like the end of game play where the inbounder passes the ball to the big man only to immediately have the ball returned for a jump shot. Like such:
At the end of the quarter or more often at the end of the shot clock, this became the Wolves go to action. While this may not render the highest percentage of shots, it is better than the typical one-on-one isolation often used when the clock winds down. Dieng’s duplicitous presence of ball handler and screener forces the defense to move. And it is in those holes of shifts or switches that shot efficiency improves.
The residual effect of LaVine’s atrocious rookie season is still apparent when he is the ball handler, particularly in the pick and roll. LaVine still struggles to read the defense and making pocket passes is a calculus he still has not solved. However, when LaVine is in ball screen action with Dieng, some of that ball handling anxiety seems to dissipate as he knows he has the DHO to fall back on.
Around the Wolves pillars of their core, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Andrew Wiggins, it will be the key to have continued success in actions that use the external pieces.
Ricky Rubio Proved He Can Fit
The NBA trade deadline was February 23rd, and as is par for the course Ricky Rubio’s name was, again, heavily bantered about. The longest tenured Wolves player has heard his name amidst the trade rumor mill for years, but this year the murmurs turned into a dull roar. He even scored a Woj bomb early on deadline day.
Amidst the Wolves fan base there is a bit of “group think” that happens in our justification of “our unicorn,” Sir Ricardo Rubio. While the eye sore of Rubio’s shot chart remains a difficult hurdle to overcome when assessing the Spaniard, those of us who have used the eye test argue for an intangible importance to Rubio’s pass-first style of play, with or without the jumper.
Rubio is undeniably flawed, but through that it feels as if he also has never been properly rated. There was no better indication of this than when Rubio’s name was brought up as a trade target of the New York Knicks. While “reports” are hard to trust as complete truth, taken at face value, the market for Rubio was Derrick Rose. (There were even times surrounding the deadline when it was suggested that the Wolves would need to attach an asset — Nemanja Bjelica or Shabazz Muhammad were speculated — in order to land Rose.)
In the media, the platitude of “former MVP” was often used in reference to Rose and Rubio was regarded as a “career loser.” While both statements are inherently true, they couldn’t be less indicative of what the two point guards value are in 2017.
I realize I am running the risk of sounding like a complete “homer,” but I believe Rubio was simply a far superior basketball player to Rose when the trade deadline approached. The reality is, Rose has become a disintegration of everything that once made him good; athleticism, shooting, and an irrational confidence in his body that he used to hurl at the rim.
Rose was once a fearless and athletic player who could shoot. He is now none of those things. Comparing his value to the, now, peaking 26-year-old Rubio seemed preposterous. That’s all before considering the difference in the financial commitment the two present — which, again, favors Rubio. Rose was on an expiring contract worth $21.3 million and therefore up for a new contract under a new and inflated salary cap that would, at best, pay him current market value. Conversely, Rubio has two years and $29 million total left on his current deal he signed multiple iterations of the salary cap ago. That $14.5 million per season puts Rubio definitively below market value.
If you don’t see this to be true, check back in July after Jrue Holiday, Jeff Teague, and George Hill sign four-year contracts that make you squint.
The anger these trade rumors inspired in Minnesota fans were only rivaled by Rubio’s own ferocity. After the deadline, an angry Rubio tapped into his Spanish roots and went full-Zorro slicing up any and all opposing point guards. Rubio had the best month of his career in March, averaging 17.8 points, 10.4 assists, and shot 43.9 percent from three.
In a string of six days from March 8th to March 13th, Rubio left his mark on three wins against Chris Paul, Steph Curry, and John Wall consecutively.
March 8th: Wolves 107 — Clippers 91
Rubio: 15 points, 12 assists, offensive rating: 127
Paul: 7 points, 10 assists, offensive rating: 91
March 10th: Wolves 103 — Warriors 102
Rubio: 17 points, 13 assists, offensive rating: 134
Curry: 26 points, 7 assists, offensive rating: 90
March 13th: Wolves 119 — Wizards 104
Rubio: 22 points, 19 assists, offensive rating: 125
Wall: 27 points, 5 assists, offensive rating: 106
Rubio was still the player who had intangibly made his team better for years, but the stats and results became tangible following the deadline’s ruckus. He was the epitome of efficiency and crucial to what might have been a playoff run had LaVine not got hurt.
Conversely, after the trade deadline, Rose had 68 total assists while taking 231 shots, none of which were a made three. (Yes, Rose made zero threes after the trade deadline.) Not exactly a modern day point guard or, for that matter, a good basketball player.
In the same period of time, Rubio “the terrible shooter” made 24 threes and chipped in 252 assists.
While this is all fantastic, it would still be a massive stretch and just patently a lie to say Rubio has locked himself in as the Wolves point guard of the future. The free agent market place and the draft itself are full of point guards who create in a different way than Rubio. But now, and finally, it feels as if Rubio has made his case that his way works too. Rubio has proven he could be “the guy” going forward.
The Wolves are a team betwixt between two realities. One reality of finally having tangible hope of an existing, not fully matured core. And, another reality of said core’s effectiveness being definitively poor, evidenced by the league’s sixth-worst record. This duplicitous reality puts the Wolves back in the lottery whether they (or we) like it.
The hope is, this is the end. In Minnesota, this has to be the last lottery. As annoying as it may be to be quantify the suck through the counting of ping pong balls (again) rather than tallying playoff wins, this is the path of franchises that live in the shrapnel of blowing up their team. Aesthetically the season was a failure, that is the definition of 31 wins, but in this season some things clicked. Through that process, a theoretical contender is forming. There’s never been a worse time to be a contender in the shadow of the Warriors and Cavs, but there’s maybe never been a better time to be four years away from contention.
If the Wolves can maintain their sanity for four more years, theoretically the Cavaliers and Warriors will have, by then, fallen off. Wiggins and LaVine will be 26-years-old, Towns will be a ripe 25, and lottery pick-X will be 23. That is the hope the lottery gifts fan bases. For Minnesota, it means time to grit our teeth through another lottery. And, perhaps this time unlucky number 13 proves to be the Wolves catalyst out of the lottery.
