In 2016-17, the Miami Heat went on a 13-game winning streak after starting the season 11-30. Due to their brutal start, that Miami team was the only one to have a winning streak of six or more games and not make the playoffs.
The Wolves enter their Wednesday evening matchup against the Golden State Warriors on the heels of a five-game winning streak, with that sixth straight win in their sights. For Minnesota, this dominance has been a surprise to many. All of a sudden, the team that perhaps needed time to gel has changed the conversation — the playoffs are no longer a theoretical talking point, they are the expectation.
“This city is hungry. They’ve been without the playoffs and a really good team for a while and you can feel that.” Jamal Crawford told Zone Coverage at practice. “I was at Dave and Buster’s at The Mall and the fans are so passionate. I go into Lunds and Byerly’s and the people working there are really excited about our team. That stuff is really, really cool, because you don’t usually get that just walking into a store like that.”
If the fans are hungry, Tom Thibodeau and his players have shown they are starving. Not just to be good, but to potentially be great. While Thibs is quick to downplay the importance of a Wednesday evening national television game against the Warriors, this matchup can’t help but serve as a barometer for how high this team can ascend in the Western Conference playoff hierarchy.
“Every time you play against the champs, you see where you’re at,” said Crawford in advance of the Wednesday matchup against the Warriors. “Obviously, it’s gonna be a tough test — they’re the champs until someone knocks them off.”
This type of test — one with true playoff implications — is a new thought exercise for Minnesota but the noise feels warranted. Playoff basketball in Minnesota is becoming less foreign in nature with each (consecutive) win. That said, winning in the regular season, and the idea of sustaining wins into the playoffs brings questions. One key question being: how would this bench perform in a playoff series?
A playoff-caliber bench?
The gelling process of the starters was probably Minnesota’s biggest question entering the season, but the bench brought questions of its own. Is Tyus Jones ready to be a true backup point guard? Can Jamal Crawford (still) be an effective sixth man? How will Shabazz Muhammad respond to a smaller role? Where is Nemanja Bjelica’s confidence level? Is Gorgui Dieng the same player off the bench as he was in the starting lineup?
Thus far, many of those questions have been muted by Crawford’s ability to – again – defy age. He is scoring 19.2 points per 36 minutes (more than Jimmy Butler and Jeff Teague) and is shooting 43.6 percent from three. Nemanja Bjelica has been scalding with a league-leading 3-point effectiveness at 62.5 percent. Tyus Jones has controlled units without Teague and even Gorgui Dieng — who started very slow — has begun to develop chemistry with second unit members similar to the ways in which he and Zach LaVine spear-headed groupings without Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns last season.
If anything, the only qualms with the bench have come from a desire to have them play more. Cries for more Bjelica and Crawford (averaging a combined 35.7 minutes per game) would have seemed laughable three weeks ago but now, those gnashings seem warranted.
But this outcry, if it were to be answered, would require a rotation tweak elsewhere.
An answer could be less – or no – Muhammad, as that would mean more minutes for Crawford. Through a couple rotation shifts, it would also allow more minutes for Bjelica at the four. Bjelica has lost back up power forward minutes to Jimmy Butler who has played a fair amount of small-ball power forward.
Muhammad has yet to make a three this season in 146 total minutes. Additionally, his patented lefty hook-floater combo has been off as he is shooting a dismal 44.7 percent from within 10 feet of the hoop. In terms of shortening the rotation, all this is leaving some to point Muhammad’s direction.
A move like this — shrinking the rotation — has historically been the Thibs way dating back to his time in Chicago where his rotations were infamously short. Thibodeau has always had a short leash with players who don’t produce. Last season, the Minnesota rotation shrunk as small as eight players as many of the bench pieces struggled to find traction in a sub role.
However, this does not seem to be the Thibs objective this season. Thibodeau has shown a commitment to running ten-deep by playing Muhammad, Jones, Dieng, Crawford, and Bjelica in every game thus far, regardless of effectiveness.
“Bjelly has been terrific from the start, Jamal is Jamal, Gorgui is really starting to come on, Tyus has kept us organized, and Bazz has had his moments as well,” said Thibodeau Tuesday afternoon’s practice. “We know we have to have versatility. Most of the teams out west have size but they also go small so we have to make sure we’re ready for that… I think [the bench] makes us hard to guard but it also makes us a little tougher defensively, it allows you to do a little more switching without sacrificing your defense.”
‘We have to make sure we’re ready for that’, means this team has to be ready for the many wrinkles of various opponents. The Western Conference — the conference in which Minnesota will be competing against in the actual playoffs — has varying archetypes of teams from the hulking San Antonio Spurs and Memphis Grizzlies to the stretchy Houston Rockets and Golden State Warriors. As Minnesota cannot predict which team they will be playing against in the playoffs an extended rotation serves as a preparation of sorts for all possible opponents.
That preparation seems to be driving the minutes distribution this season, unlike last season that clearly held an impetus on development.
Perhaps the rotation was shorter a year ago as extending the rotation would have mitigated the development of young bench players like Muhammad and Kris Dunn by playing them less and/or with inferior players. Through this thought, maybe this season’s rotation has been extended so as to keep ten players engaged and therefore individually prepared. In theory, by preparing ten different weapons, Minnesota will have a Swiss Army Knife of sorts to throw at whichever opponent they do draw in the playoffs.
But rotations shrink in the playoffs, right?
Yes, historically teams increase the minutes to the starters and often shrink the rotation down to eight total players per game. However, an often missed anecdote is the fact that the eight players per game can change game-to-game. In the playoffs that allow for far more preparation, a single game’s rotation can be a gameplan specific and not just a preconceived understanding.
Wednesday’s opponent, Golden State, is an example of this. In last years playoffs, the Warriors played thirteen players in meaningful minutes — gameplay while the score was still in-hand. The Warriors bench rotation evolved series to series and, at times, game to game, dependent on the opponent.
In the second round of the 2017 playoffs, Golden State matched up against the Utah Jazz — a team playing two traditional big men — and the Warriors shied away from using the frailer Ian Clark (40 total minutes in the series) and Patrick McCaw (9 total minutes in the series). However, when their playoff opponent showed a willingness to throw out smaller lineups, such as the Portland Trail Blazers did in the first round, and the Cleveland Cavaliers did in the NBA Finals, Clark and McCaw saw their roles increase.
This concept is not unique to the Warriors; 186 players played meaningful minutes last season in the playoffs, meaning that 11.6 players per team played meaningful playoff minutes. The meaning of those minutes varied from team to team, of course, but this idea of needing to have numerous prepared options on the bench is a staple of all playoff coaches rotational strategy.
Sure, larger roles for Bjelica and Crawford may make sense in the immediate future, but Thibodeau is taking a longer-term approach. This approach ignores the solid logic that a regular season Muhammad minute over a Crawford minute is a likely net-negative, and instead hones in on the macro-scale positive externality of keeping ten players engaged. For now, the plan is clear: ten deep because when the high-leverage moments (the playoffs) come, all hands could be needed on deck.
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