Will the Timberwolves finally be able to win close games?

Wrote about the longest-running debacle in the NBA: the T-Pups’ inability to win close games & habitual underperformance. An excerpt:

Minnesota was outscored by just 91 points last season, an average of just about 1.1 per game. Using Bill James’ Pythagorean Expectation, you’d normally expect a team with that point differential to finish with 38 wins. (Point differential has been shown to be a better predictor of future success than actual win-loss record, and as such a team’s Pythagorean record can generally be considered a more accurate baseline of its actual talent level.) But again, the Wolves managed to win only 31. The seven-win difference between their expected (Pythagorean) wins and actual wins was the largest in the NBA.

While that might seem unusual, underperformance compared to Pythagorean Expectation is actually old hat for the Timberwolves. The 2016–17 season was the 10th straight year during which the Minnesota won fewer games than its point differential suggested it should have.

From 2007 through 2017, the Timberwolves’ point differential suggested they “should” have won 289 games, but they actually won only 251. They were one of just five teams to win at least 10 fewer games than expected during that time period, and their 38-game differential between expected and actual wins was — you guessed it — the largest in the NBA. But it wasn’t just the largest in the NBA; it was actually more than double that of the next-closest team, the Philadelphia 76ers.

Read the full story at The Step Back.