Timberwolves

Dirk Nowitzki and Defending the Stretch-Big

On March 3, 2004, the Minnesota Timberwolves faced Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks. The Wolves entered that game with 43 wins; that’s the same number of wins they will enter Friday night’s matchup, again facing Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks.

Sure, things were different back then.

It took Kevin Garnett, Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell a mere 60 games to tally 43 wins; this year it has taken Towns, Butler and Wiggins 76 to do the same.

But the Wolves can finally say they are playoff-relevant for the first time since the now 39-year-old Nowitzki was 25.

It’s funny to look back at how the league has evolved since that game in that season with the knowledge that a player (Dirk) has stemmed the tide of the evolution while other preeminent stars have since fallen off — Shaq, Tim, C-Webb, Chuck, Mad Dog.

But if one player were to do it, it would be Dirk.

He is emblematic of the shift: He’s a shooter.

Raised in a league that limited players of his size to stay within 18-feet of the rim, Nowitzki has been shaking the status quo since he entered the league. Not only did he expand the reach of the game internationally, he also expanded the floor by stretching out to the perimeter despite being seven feet tall.

Dirk was the league’s first elite stretch-big. He helped inspire a movement that makes it OK for a player like Karl-Anthony Towns to shoot four 3s in a quarter.

In a league that has evolved, Dirk was one of the renegades.

But even he likely couldn’t have predicted the reach of the evolution. Back in that 2003-04 season, Nowitzki’s Mavs were dissenters from the norm, firing 1,456 total 3s as a team. He, Michael Finley, Antoine Walker and Steve Nash were all individually in the top-45 of the league in 3-point attempts.

Yet that total pales in comparison to today’s NBA.

Put those 1,456 attempts as a team up against modern NBA numbers and you will find 24 teams who shot that many by the All-Star break. The Houston Rockets (3,156) have already doubled Dallas’ team total behind James Harden firing 679 on his own.

The perception may be that Dirk has always been a shooter, but even he has evolved with the times. On a per-minute basis, Nowitzki has increased his 3-point volume by 175 percent when comparing his 2003-04 numbers to this seasons.

For his career, Nowitzki’s best field-goal percentage from deep was in 2009-10 — when he shot 42.1 percent. This season, he is shooting 41.6 percent from 3 despite already having shot 199 more 3s than he did in ’09-10 — a season he played an additional 1,210 minutes than the 1,829 he has logged this season.

The Evolution Of The Stretch-Big

The shooting is really only a piece of the big man position’s evolution these days. To be considered a true playmaker at the position, bigs need to be able to post, pass, dribble and shoot.

Anthony Davis will likely win this season’s All-NBA first team center honors and he looks something like this:

Swing back to 2003-04 and you’ll find the All-NBA first team center triangulated deep in the post not dreaming of dribbling the ball.

While Shaq presented an almost unsolvable theorem for defense, his strengths were explicitly understood: Immovable strength near the rim. With Davis, the defending is inherently more complex through diversions.

He can punish opposing defenders through speed, finesse or strength.

While Davis-types do not grow on trees in today’s NBA, there are players across the league on almost every roster who possess a muted version of the same diverse skillset.

For the 2017-18 Timberwolves, these evolved creatures who make plays from the four-man position are just about as big of a problem as defending Shaq was in the 2004 playoffs.

Wolves Defending The Playmaking-Big

The Wolves defense has many warts — the biggest of which is in team defensive concept.

When the defense falters, Thibs refers to it as a breaking of the “string.” This breakage happens a lot to the league’s fourth-worst defense as measured by points allowed per possession.

Opposing pick-and-roll actions are akin to a five-year-old with a set of scissors and a ball of yarn, to extrapolate on Thibodeau’s metaphor. Towns hasn’t figured out how to relinquish his reliance on his instincts, Andrew Wiggins is about as vocal as a mime and Jeff Teague just doesn’t quite seem to see much value on that end.

But outside of team concept, further — albeit smaller — warts are present. One of which is defending a playmaking-big in isolation. This duty typically falls in the lap of Taj Gibson or Nemanja Bjelica.

It is a bit bizarre that this is a weak spot given that Gibson is pretty clearly the team’s second-best overall defender (behind Butler) — with the comparative defensive rating to back it up — and that Bjelica’s defensive numbers are superior to his other bench running mates.

But those facts, even if true, do not absolve the two from their woes in defending bigs who can both shoot and attack off the bounce.

First, with Gibson, this is not a matter of his individual skill — he is an excellent perimeter defender for his size. Gibson’s folly comes from the fact that he does so much on that end of the floor for the Wolves. He is the team’s free safety; no one helps more than Gibson.

However, this can be a hindrance to his individual matchup. Gibson will often be left scrambling to recover to his man. If that matchup is with a player who can punish him with the shot, every quarter-second of help makes a difference.

With Bjelica, his woes in defending the stretch/playmaking-big are inverted when juxtaposed with Gibson’s. Bjelly is hyper-focused on not getting beat by the shot. When defending on the perimeter, no one keeps their hand higher — it’s quite jarring, actually.

These hard and high closeouts leave another door open for the opponent: the drive. Keen counterparts will recognize this and take their time to break Bjelica down off the dribble. The four matchups against Oklahoma City and Carmelo Anthony this season stick out most glaringly.

Here is Melo taking care of Bjelly on consecutive possessions:

In fairness, again, both Bjelica and Gibson’s team defense need to be pointed out as objective positives given the state of defensive affairs in Minnesota. But with the playoffs around the corner, and historical trends pointing to opponents attacking specific weaknesses these seemingly microscopic issues are a safe bet to be exploited if/when that time comes.

All of the Wolves likely playoff opponents have a player with the necessary skills to take advantage. The Rockets have Ryan Anderson, Trevor Ariza, Luc Mbah a Moute and P.J. Tucker. The Warriors have Kevin Durant and Draymond Green. The Blazers have Al-Farouq Aminu. The Pelicans have Nikola Mirotic. The Spurs have Rudy Gay and Davis Bertans. The Thunder have Carmelo Anthony and Paul George.

Related: New Orleans and Portland’s dearth of playmaking bigs is one reason a first-round matchup with the Blazers is appealing — given the alternatives.

While defending stretchy bigs is nowhere near the Wolves biggest concern with five games left in the season following the Friday evening matchup against Dallas — Jimmy Butler’s health is — it does remain a wart.

The Wolves as constructed by Thibodeau — who made his hay in the league while Dirk was still in his prime — are structurally flawed against modern NBA offenses. Because of this, the evolutions of the past decade — like the creation of the playmaking 4 — are going to bring Minnesota problems.

The entity of the stretch-big is not the reason Minnesota has the 27th rated defense in the NBA, but it is a reason.

Friday night against Dirk and the Mavs likely won’t highlight this flaw, given the fact that Nowitzki can’t really move anymore. But come playoff time, the way the game has aged since the last time the Wolves were in the postseason the floor spacing that abounds is certainly an area of concern.


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