The Rudy Gobert trade created a lot of roster turnover. For it to succeed, the new players need to adapt to different playstyles and fill the gaps of role players. It is taking time, and we now have a larger sample size to decipher how well the team has read and reacted to having two centers on the floor for most of the game. The Minnesota Timberwolves’ biggest issue? The large discrepancy between their team shooting compared to how poorly they have defended the three-ball.
With the way teams across the league attempt and are making more threes in the last decade, it is vital to be able to shoot to stay within games. This season, the Wolves have shot 8.3 fewer threes per game than last year. This is the lowest amount of total attempts per game from three since the 2018-19 season. Furthermore, they aren’t having much success, shooting 33.4% in total. That puts them at their lowest percentage since the 2014-15 season, where they went 16-62.
On the defensive end, the Wolves have the league’s third-worst three-point shooting percentage, allowing their opponents to shoot 36.1% from beyond the arc. The most telling statistic? The Wolves are giving up open shots.
The Wolves lead the league in three-pointers allowed and makes, with 20.4 attempts allowed and 8.0 makes a game. Somehow they fall in the middle of the pack in percentage allowed (39.1%), but those allowed shots can lead to easy buckets for the opponent. Some of this could come from scouting reports on players, but many have come from Minnesota’s inability to properly rotate.
This stat shows the massive difference between the two sides of the ball compared to the rest of the league.
The Portland Trail Blazers and Golden State Warriors were nightmarish matchups because they highlight Minnesota’s greatest weaknesses. Portland and Golden State utilized high-ball screens to get downhill. They lined up their impressive three-point shooting threats along the arc while a point-of-attack defender and Gobert attempted to stick onto the ball screening actions up top.
When teams make the Wolves help any dribble penetration and get back to the perimeter to defend the kick-outs, they struggle to find the open man or are just slightly late in doing so. When Gobert is out and Karl-Anthony Towns and Naz Reid are covering, they tend to keep them more at the level of the screen to stop the ball handler. This forces the backside help to come from corner defenders and also leaves them susceptible to kick-outs.
Overall, the coverages haven’t been quick enough against good shooting teams, and the team often seems confused about whether they are in the drop coverage with Rudy or the level-hedging with KAT and Naz. For example, in the Portland game this past Monday, Damian Lillard burned the Wolves on drop coverage with Rudy because they had a poor scramble.
The discrepancy between Minnesota’s poor team shooting and their poor team defense at guarding the perimeter can cause a lot of chaos for the Wolves. Building and holding leads is difficult enough. But when teams can shoot the lights out and get poor defenders to pick up multiple players in space, it can instantly change the course of the game.
It does not appear to be a Towns issue, either. KAT has visually struggled at times to defend away from the basket. The Wolves have had many of the same defensive issues without KAT, even when they have had Jaden McDaniels, Kyle Anderson, and Anthony Edwards picking up opponents on the perimeter.
Losing these battles can cause the team to get behind quickly. Then they force more shots and miss them, leading to long rebounds and easy transition run-outs for the opponent. Not to mention the number of second-chance opportunities the Wolves still give up on defensive rebounds that they can’t corral, many off three-point attempts. If the Wolves want to clean up multiple issues, much of it comes down to cleaning up the defensive rotations and limiting the three-ball.
