On Dec. 12, the Minnesota Timberwolves lost to the Philadelphia 76ers 112-118. In that game, Karl-Anthony Towns was on the floor for 48 minutes and Jimmy Butler 45 minutes — 48:06 and 45:30, to be exact.
In that game, on the other side of the ball, Joel Embiid played a career-high in minutes — 39:26. Entering that game, Embiid was averaging 30.2 minutes per game.
If a player with the injury history of Embiid can be justified to emphatically exceed his normal minute distribution, then it goes to show that overtime is the ultimate justifier for throwing minutes standards out the window.
The strategy of playing your starters all of overtime spreads league-wide as teams very rarely rotate in overtime. Teams justify this through the concept that a win is within reach.
Since Tom Thibodeau arrived in Minnesota – and before that – he has looked for bigger-picture justifications to dismiss standards when it comes to minutes played.
Last season, Andrew Wiggins (3,048) and Towns (3,030) were first and second in the league in total minutes played. They were the only players to play over 3,000 minutes.
Justification Through Youth
Many pundits point to the career arcs of Derrick Rose and Luol Deng, who Thibodeau coached in Chicago to call Thibodeau’s usage of Wiggins and Towns last season as malpractice.
In 2010-11, Thibodeau’s first year as the head coach in Chicago, Rose (3026) and Deng (3208) both logged a career-high in minutes. The three following seasons, Rose played a total of 100 games, suffering an injury in each year. Deng has also never had a fully healthy season since that 2010-11 campaign.
So, to some extent, the pundits are justified. But Thibodeau has found justification in continuing with this tactic.
“You play to your strengths, you cover up your weaknesses when you have young guys. [When] a guy is older or is injured, you don’t play ’em as much,” said Thibodeau after the loss to the Sixers.
For Rose (22-years-old in 2010-11), and Deng (25), it didn’t work. But two anecdotes do not make a law. That same season, anecdotes to the contraposition are LaMarcus Aldridge (3211), LeBron James (3063), Kevin Durant (3038), and Pau Gasol (3037) all in the top-10 in minutes but still finding success today.
What it really comes down to is a risk-reward calculus.
There is a risk of injury in heavy minutes but there is also a reward. What we do know is that being young — like the 22-year-old Towns and Wiggins — lessens that risk factor.
When I asked Philadelphia’s head coach, Brett Brown, he affirmed that youth doesn’t only lessen the risk but also increases the potential reward.
“It definitely plays a role. I think that, from afar, last year, when I was watching the volume of minutes that the group was playing here in Minnesota, I respected it.
“I thought that they’re really going to come out of it with a wealth of experience, for the next year.”
Brown is hinting at the proverbial throwing players to the fire concept that teaches them how to endure.
Can bad habits form? Sure. But that is inherently a different argument than the notion that Thibs is running his players into the ground, as this Deadspin article titled “Tom Thibodeau Is Destruction” implies.
“Everybody coaches and teaches differently,” said Brown, who prior to coaching the Sixers assisted under Greg Popovich in San Antonio for eleven seasons.
“In my old life in San Antonio, it was about ‘how do you deliver a team to May?’ And then you go to a great coach like Mike D’Antoni (eight-man rotations), that is kind of similar to what Thibs is doing. And then, you know, we (Philadelphia) have a different approach too.
“How you rotate your teams, it’s very thoughtful. I sit down with sports science people, I sit down with analytics people, and then I’m the coach and I have a gut feel. But it’s not like you just arrive on the night and figure it out. It’s a very thoughtful plan of what you anticipate the starting point to be. And I’m sure Tom does the same thing.”
While on one hand, the idea of replicating everything the Spurs and Popovich do makes sense because they’re the most dominant franchise of the past twenty years. But it is telling that Brown — a former member of the San Antonio coaching staff — has found a different path to work for his teams.
The Wolves, like the Sixers, are definitively not where Popovich and San Antonio are. In Minnesota, there are simply more holes to be covered. And the Wolves have youth.
Justification Through Familiarity
But not everyone on the Wolves is young.
“They’re still young, but not like we used to talk about young,” said Brown. “They’re the new young.”
The “new” demarcation comes from the excellent additions of Taj Gibson (32-years-old) and Jimmy Butler (28-years-old). Gibson is posting a career-best shooting season — 59.5 true-shooting percentage — particularly near the hoop where he is shooting 80 percent on shots within 3-feet of the rim. Gibson has also maintained his dynamic rebounding presence while also serving as the team’s best interior defender.
And Butler is the heart of the team.
“I ride for everybody in this locker room,” said Butler after a one-point victory over Portland on Monday where he scored 37 points. “Night-in and night-out you want to show you’re the best. I think in order to say you’re the best, you gotta whoop their ass every night.”
Without Butler, the Wolves are bad. They lost both games Butler missed earlier in the season by an average margin of 22 points. He covers over the most holes but in doing so he is playing the third-most minutes in the league on a per game basis — 37.2.
In a seven-game stretch from December 6th through 16th, Butler played more minutes than every player on the opposing team in all seven games.
To some, this is admirable. It shows heart. To others, it’s insanity. In the middle of that stretch, Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer likened the ignorance of this minute load to disregarding climate change.
So, why? Why risk injuring your superstar?
“I feel like there is a level of familiarity that Taj Gibson and Jimmy Butler have with Tom. That is priceless,” said Brown.
“When you have a corporate knowledge and can transfer it from one program to another, it’s priceless. And there’s a toughness in those two players that also is priceless.
“The corporate knowledge, the familiarity with Tom, the toughness you can surround Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins with, there is no value or price tag you can put on that.”
Every additional minute Butler or Gibson play is, of course, a risk. But now, this season, those loads of minutes Towns and Wiggins are playing are shared with not only higher quality players but players that understand the Thibodeau system.
Justification Through Endurance
In any form of exercise, there is a point of diminishing returns. Fatigue kicks in to a point where the advantages of continuing to work become marginalized.
This happens to the Wolves.
In the first half of games, Minnesota is the fifth-best team in the NBA according to net-rating data from NBA.com. In the second half, that ranking drops to 20th. Specifically, in the fourth quarter, Minnesota is 29th. It would be silly to not attribute some of this to fatigue.
But fatigue is not finite. In baseball, pitchers can be “stretched out” to pitch more innings over time just as basketball players can build endurance to last longer. While it appears to be clear the Wolves are not currently lasting, it is not impossible to think this ability to endure is on the horizon.
“The building of endurance,” was the first thing Phoenix Suns’ head coach, Jay Triano, mentioned when I asked him about the benefits of higher minute totals.
“It’s a fine line between wearing guys down and teaching them how to endure 40-minute games,” said Triano. “But I think the thing that I’ve learned over the course of years is that the longer the minutes you play during the year are the more you figure out how to play those late in the year too.”
Suns forward, Jared Dudley echoed this sentiment.
“I dunno what they’re doing in practice but I think it works, you just monitor the effort in practices,” said Dudley. “It’s gotta be about keeping fresh.”
Recently, the Wolves have begun having shorter practices.
At practice on December 11th, when asked about practice length, Gorgui Dieng showed the media how he wasn’t sweaty.
“Practice is shorter, yeah. It’s better,” Dieng said while laughing.
Justification Through Winning
Entering Wednesday’s game in Denver the Wolves currently own the seventh-best record in the NBA and are on pace for 48 wins. Which is to say, the team has met the high expectations they entered the season with.
This can’t be overlooked in the minutes risk-reward calculation.
Dudley, like coach Brown, referenced Mike D’Antoni — who led the early-2000s Suns to the Western Conference Finals — as a beta for the Thibodeau rotation strategy working.
“I know D’Antoni does it too. When you have eight guys (in the rotation) you know you can work through your mistakes. So if you miss a couple shots you know you’re not gonna get a quick yank or anything because it’s just eight guys he’s rotating… That’s a positive as a player.
“Also, I think that your starters play against second-units more, that’s where it obviously helps your stats because you’re playing against second-units.”
The Wolves have feasted on second units this season. They do this in part by having Towns check out earlier than the rest of the Wolves’ starters. Towns, then, comes back to start the second quarter and plays against opponent’s backup bigs.
The Wolves best quarter is the second, according to NBA.com’s net-rating numbers. This is largely influenced by Towns and the rest of the Wolves starters who have shorter bench stints than many other teams.
“The starting lineup is very effective,” said Portland Trailblazers head coach, Terry Stotts, of the Wolves on Monday.
“Wiggins, Towns, Butler can all score in a variety of ways; one-on-one, post-ups, they look for mismatches. Teague does a nice job of running the offense and Gibson is very comfortable in his role. The challenge is that group can hurt you in a lot of different ways.”
When I asked Stotts about Thibodeau’s frugality with his rotations, much like Brown and Triano he viewed it as a weapon.
“In my first three years in Portland, that was a topic for me, having four or five guys play 33 minutes,” said Stotts. “I think all NBA players are capable of playing 33 to 38 minutes. I don’t think that is taxing on them.
“I don’t usually comment on other coaches strategies but having experience in that, if you have a good starting lineup and you want them on the floor, I dunno, I get it. That’s the way it was here.”
Maybe the Blazers serve as a good example of what is to come in the future for Minnesota. Years ago, when they had little in the way of bench resources, Stotts’ rotations were as short as Thibodeau’s.
But as Portland addressed the bench in free agency and the draft, Stotts’ rotations grew. This season 14 Portland players have played in 13 or more games.
And perhaps that is the biggest justification for the rotation frugality in Minnesota; the terrible bench. The Wolves went all-in on their starting lineup this offseason, only addressing the bench with a 37-year-old Jamal Crawford and three minimum salary contracts for Shabazz Muhammad, Aaron Brooks, and Marcus Georges-Hunt.
As time goes on, Gibson, Butler, and Teague are only going to become older. This next offseason will need to be used to address the bench, as depth will become increasingly important in time. But with time comes opportunities — the first of which is the early-February trade deadline.
In the meantime, the rotations will likely remain short and top-heavy in Minnesota. It is a non-ideal strategy but it also has its justifications; youth, familiarity, endurance, and most importantly; winning basketball in Minnesota.
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