Much like Americans have the gridiron, Australia has the Australian Football League, or AFL for short. You may remember it from the brief love affair American sports addicts had with the game when it was one of the only professional sports being played in the early days of the pandemic.
It has 18 players per side and is played over four 20-minute quarters. In many ways it is the complete opposite of basketball: The field extends well over 100 yards (although it varies from ground to ground), the ball is oblong and kicked from player to player, and it is physical in the way true contact sports are — tactics mixed with brutality.
That said, there are similarities. There is no offside line, but the play still shifts from end to end in search of points. Lean, strong players dominate the game. Perhaps most importantly, the concept that defense wins championships can also be applied but is no longer clear-cut. You have to have the offense to match.
I promise I will get to the Timberwolves angle in all of this.
Why I am taking you through this strange and winding intro to explain Aussie Rules is to help explain my thought process surrounding a decision many have been trying to make about the Wolves: How much defense is enough to match what will likely (fingers tightly crossed) be a pretty damn good offense?
If you ask Chris Finch on record, he says middling defense will get them there. But I wonder where he really thinks the bar should be set.
Just like in the NBA, teams must be balanced to win in the AFL. By the time this is published, my beloved Sydney Swans (you may think that is a bit of a soft name, but have you ever come face to face with a swan in a dark alley?) will have played in their first final in two years. Unlike the Wolves, the Swans are postseason mainstays, even winning the ‘chip twice in the past 20 years, so a two-year gap in their success was daunting. Not to mention, I get an involuntary Wolves-related shiver down my spine any time a team I follow utters the word “rebuild.”
Anyhoo, the Swans are always good on defense, but in order to charge back to relevance, they sacrificed some of their defensive domination for offensive flow. They did that by not selecting more defensive-minded players than they could afford to and urging every player on the ground to give it their all defensively, to lay every tackle they could, and be rewarded with some risk-taking offensive behavior.
The crossover I have been trying to get to for the past three paragraphs is this, and it’s three-pronged:
- Can the Wolves limit the amount of time they have with poor defensive players on the floor?
- Can the coaching staff incentivize the stars and less defensively inclined players to play hard on defense?
- Will that effort, if it manifests, come in tandem with good decision making?
So, to the first question. The Wolves’ rotation will likely be:
- Anthony Edwards
- Karl-Anthony Towns
- D’Angelo Russell
- Malik Beasley
- Jaden McDaniels
- Patrick Beverley
- Naz Reid
- Leandro Bolmaro
- Jarred Vanderbilt
- Jaylen Nowell
- Taurean Prince
Also, there will be some Jake Layman, Josh Okogie and Nathan Night thrown in. In Okogie’s case, I could see him playing in every game or one in every six; it’s hard to get a read on that.
In my estimation, that is five good defensive players (McDaniels, Bev, Bolmaro, Vando, and Prince) firmly in the rotation, with J.O. adding a sixth who will likely play, leaving the other five to dig deep. Naz is an X-factor. He can move his feet well and gets blocks, but his rebounding is inconsistent.
When it’s broken down in this way, I am optimistic that the Wolves could have a half-decent defense, especially if any three of Beverly, Bolmaro, McDaniels, Vando, Prince, and Okogie can be on the court together without cratering the offense. I consider both Beverley and Okogie’s shots to be proven (Bev’s to be good, J.O.’s to be bad), so a lot will depend on McDaniels and Bolmaro making shots when they are on the floor.
That said, size has been a concern at this true low point of the offseason, and it is a worry. As for questions No. 2 and 3, both can be answered simultaneously:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We all know that KAT is willing to play defense, but he’s a perennial block-chaser and fouler when he does. DLo often says he will put more effort in, but he is a sieve made to look even worse by his rather slow nature (by NBA standards). Plus, he has a tendency to try to intercept passes and leave gaps. Beasley is a weird one. He loves to get down in a stance but has yet to show that he can be part of a good defensive team. Nowell has moments of on-ball improvements but continues to let the backdoor man get him a couple of times a game.
Ant is the one who could set the tone here. The team could take a step forward if the lineups where he is the primary ball handler with Beverley and McDaniels at the 1 and the 3 are good defensively. That would set a strong standard.
I’m imagining a situation where those three are on with Prince and KAT, or even in some cases Vando, which could really work if Ant can pick up the defensive schemes and play within them. Like Nowell, Ant had some great on-ball moments last year and showed a feel for playing in the lanes. Edwards makes the most sense to make a jump simply by being the youngest and the most athletic of the stars, which can help the team improve defensively if the others — KAT, DLo, and Beasley — can just fill the gaps and focus.
As the Swans’ season draws to a close, the Wolves’ season inches closer. The Swans lost by a point on Saturday afternoon, despite a jump from 15th to fifth in the standings. Soon we’ll know if the Wolves can do anything even close to that.
