They’re not going down without a fight. As the season’s end quickly approaches, the Minnesota Timberwolves just completed a four-game winning streak and took the New Orleans Pelicans to overtime.
Minnesota is 8-7 since their “Big 3” started to play together consistently for the first time all season. Karl-Anthony Towns, Anthony Edwards, and D’Angelo Russell have been putting up some crazy good numbers lately, allowing the fans to get a little taste of the young core’s potential. As recently as one month ago, the Timberwolves didn’t necessarily have a Big 3 due to injuries and inconsistent lineups. When healthy, Malik Beasley has been a reliable scoring threat, but the organization and fans have yet to see what the team looks like at full strength.
“We’re playing really good as a team,” Ricky Rubio said, “and we want to finish the season strong,”
Minnesota has turned the corner since the beginning of April, and by the looks of it, physicality is a big reason for their recent success.
Throughout their last 15 games, the Wolves rank top five in the league in both points per game and 3-pointers made. However, the one pleasant surprise is how Minnesota is flexing its muscles and getting to the rim. Since April 5, they are second in the league in free throws made per game with 20.7. Back in February, they were the league’s worst free-throw shooting team.
“Chris Finch has brought in an approach where we have good size, we’ve got good length, we’ve got good athletes, we’ve got young players. And he’s doing a great job of making sure that they play active, they play aggressive. And they play physical,” Timberwolves president of basketball operations Gersson Rosas said in an interview on KFAN radio. “It’s been fun to watch, and we’ve played some good teams.”
Now, if the beautiful game of basketball was only played on one half of the court, the young Wolves would be sitting pretty in the standings. Unfortunately for the offensive powerhouse, defense is what brings home the Ws. Sure, they have gone 8-7 over their last 15, but there is so much room to be even better. Minnesota ranks bottom five in the league in their opponent’s points per game, 3-point field-goal percentage, and field-goals made during the previous month.
They’re just making it extremely difficult for themselves to win games by playing so poorly on the defensive side of the ball.
“In full transparency, we have more offensive-oriented personnel than we do have defensive personnel, and that’s just the reality of how our best players play,” Rosas said. “That doesn’t mean you have to forfeit or punt on the other end of the floor.”
Although Minnesota is struggling on defense, it’s not as if we didn’t see it coming. Throughout their 32-year franchise history, they could never have been considered a defensive powerhouse.
We’re talking about a team with one of the worst winning percentages in all of professional sports, so that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. But why has Minnesota been so bad on the defensive side of the ball for so long? How is that even possible? Like you would think eventually they would get lucky and their opponents would just be ‘off’ one year, but no. It’s rather impressive.
The last time the Wolves were NOT in the bottom 10 in the league for their opponent’s field-goal percentage was the 2006-07 season. It’s been 14 seasons since we were considered just a mediocre defensive team.
Of the last 20 teams to hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy, no team has been in the bottom half, let alone bottom 10, in their opponents’ field-goal efficiency. Eighteen of the last 20 NBA Champions have been top 10 in the league in that category. So yes, I very much believe in the adage that defense wins championships.
Sure, you can look to the obvious excuses of injuries, inexperience, and lack of chemistry, both with the players and the coaching staff, but when is enough, enough? In every single sport, defense is synonymous with effort. How hard are you going to work to keep your man in front of you or to get a hand up?
“Our guys are young, and they’re still trying to figure it out, but they are playing with more purpose, and they’re playing with more aggressiveness defensively,” Rosas said of his young team. “That’s where it starts. It’s simple competition 1-on-1 and doing everything you can to prevent your opponent from scoring. We’re doing what we can on the fly in terms of building out our schemes and our strategy, but offensively we know we’re going to be potent. Defensively we need to come together and make that a priority for us in order to be a winning team.”
Frank Martin, a highly respected college basketball coach who’s notorious for overachieving with teams, says that when it comes to the defensive side of the ball, technique is secondary:
No matter how many points the Wolves score or how many incredible dunks Ant treats us to, that’s not the side of the ball that will get Minnesota out of its losing ways. As this team matures with one another and builds chemistry, expect their attentiveness and hustle on the defensive end to heighten. They have all of the tools on offense to compete and even defeat any team. But the best teams excel on both ends of the court.
