Timberwolves

FAKLIS: This is Where the Schedule Gets Tough, But the Wolves Should Be Up For It

(photo credit: Jim Faklis)

Things are about to get tougher.

For the rest of January, the Minnesota Timberwolves play 15 games. Of those 15 games, 10 will be against teams with winning records. Of those 10, seven will be against top-five teams record-wise in either conference.

It’s going to be a tough road ahead for the Timberwolves, who have yet to play the Rockets, Celtics or Cavaliers, and have only played the Warriors once. In fact, all four of those teams are on the docket for the Timberwolves in January, with the Celtics matchup taking place in the immediate future.

Photo courtesy of schedule on ESPN.com

Coming into Friday’s game with Boston, the Timberwolves have played the 26th-easiest strength of schedule to this point, according to ESPN.com. Every team in the Western Conference will end up (mostly) evening out by the end of the year, but the fact of the matter is the Wolves have had an easier run as of late, and that is about to change.

They’re about to play a series of games with the teams – like Toronto, Cleveland and Houston – that are ahead of them in offensive rating, something the Wolves – currently fifth – have yet to do much of at all.

The trick there, of course, is that those teams – like Boston, Golden State and, again, Houston – are also ahead of them by a substantial margin in defensive rating.

This is concerning for those that have seen the Wolves win games – barely, sometimes – against shorthanded opponents like Denver and Miami, or against “new team, early-season struggle” teams like Oklahoma City.

And some of their losses have been poor, too. Their loss to the Grizzlies came without Mike Conley. One of their two losses to Phoenix came without Devin Booker. Their loss to the Wizards was without John Wall. And their recent loss to Brooklyn – perhaps the biggest outlier of them all, considering how they’d been playing in the immediate past –was without three of its key options.

With the exception of a few – namely the win against Portland in mid-December – the Timberwolves don’t have a ton of wins against good, healthy teams yet.

But that’s okay, and there are a few reasons why.

The first is the eye test.

Anyone who has watched even a second of the Timberwolves this year knows this isn’t the team of last year, and it’s not going to start looking like that now.

As promising as Zach LaVine looked last year, Jimmy Butler has proven to be beyond the point of promise. He’s already arrived. In one of the first big wins of the year, Butler showed fans how badly he wants to win games.

At one point in the season, it appeared Butler alone could be seen as the lone separator from last season. He was good enough, on his own, to carry the Wolves to a significantly better record than what they hit on last season.

But Butler isn’t alone anymore.

While Andrew Wiggins continues to work out his shooting struggles, Karl-Anthony Towns seems to have recently taken his game to the next level, on both ends of the floor.

While his defense has been documented as below-average-to-bad in the past, it improved a ton in the month of December. He led the team in net rating that month, and the team posted a 104.5 defensive rating with him on the floor.

For reference, the Wolves had a 109.2 defensive rating with him on the floor from the season opener and through November, and he was seventh on the team in net rating.

It’s more than those two, too. Taj Gibson is having a career year at 32 years old. Tyus Jones has shown at moments why he could, and perhaps should be regarded as a starting-caliber NBA point guard.When Jeff Teague was healthy, he was one of the best shooters on the team – something they missed badly in their recent loss to the Brooklyn Nets.

Most importantly, this team has been flat-out good over the past couple weeks. For a while, they had the NBA’s best offensive rating, and were in the top half of the league in defensive rating.

This was all happening at a point while, via the eye test, things were starting to come together for them. They started beating teams they were supposed to beat – like the Lakers and the Oladipo-less Pacers – by a lot. They started winning the tougher games – like their wins over Portland and Denver.

The individual success is starting to coincide with the team’s success. The team is coming together as this newly-formed roster starts to form its identity.

The games are going to get tougher, and the losses will come periodically. They probably aren’t going to sweep the Rockets, Celtics, or Cavaliers, but they have also proven they’re too good to get swept. While their strength of schedule has been one of the easier ones in the league, the way they’re playing is what should be the main story here.

As long as the Timberwolves stay the course and keep playing the way they have, the schedule shouldn’t matter.


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