Jordan McLaughlin‘s role on the Minnesota Timberwolves has slowly shifted throughout the season. At the beginning of the year, he was primarily the third-string point guard, getting most of his minutes when Patrick Beverley was resting or injured. He often served as the captain of bench units and saw his minutes fluctuate depending on point guard matchups.
However, McLaughlin has been playing some of the best basketball of his NBA career since the All-Star break. As a result, his minutes have increased, and Chris Finch has paired him with new lineups and players he hadn’t often played with before. McLaughlin has been consistently playing minutes with D’Angelo Russell, one of the most interesting lineup changes that have happened due to his improved play.
In the first 50 games of the season, McLaughlin and Russell only shared the floor in eight games for a total of 23 minutes (about 2.9 minutes a game). That’s likely because they are the team’s only true point guards currently in the rotation. Beverley can play point guard. However, since he moved into the starting lineup earlier in the year, he’s played a lot more of his minutes with DLo as a shooting guard and defensive specialist and less as the lead ball-handler off the bench.
Recently, though, Russell and McLaughlin have gone from seldom sharing the court to being an exciting backcourt pairing. In the last 16 games, they have shared the court in 12 of them for a total of 78 minutes (6.5 on average). The consistency with which the two have been playing together lately suggests that their pairing has become a part of the team’s rotation. That will likely continue throughout the rest of this season.
What does Chris Finch see in the pairing?
As Finch alluded to in the post-game press conference after Minnesota’s March 1 win over the Golden State Warriors, McLaughlin has been a huge part of the Wolves’ success on defense lately. Finch tasked McLaughlin with guarding Stephen Curry for a large portion of the time he played in that game. McLaughlin did such a good job that Finch left him in the game for 18 straight minutes. He and the rest of Minnesota’s defense held Curry to 10 of 24 shooting. They put enough pressure on Curry that he only hit five of his 16 3-point shots. McLaughlin had three steals that night, one of which led directly to a fastbreak score by Jaylen Nowell.
McLaughlin’s impressive defense continued on Saturday against the Portland Trail Blazers, a game in which McLaughlin racked up a ridiculous six steals and dished out seven assists on the offensive end. And last night, against the Blazers again, he had two steals and a crafty block on Keon Johnson, knocking it out of his hands as he went up to shoot.
Having a defensive specialist in Beverley next to Russell has been a good pairing all season. Russell is an intelligent defender who reads opponents’ plays. He can call them out for his teammates to help organize the team’s defensive schemes. However, Russell is not quite as quick as some of the league’s premier guards at the point of attack. And he has to expend a lot of energy on the offensive end distributing and setting up plays.
Thus, it’s natural to pair Russell in the backcourt with a player like Beverley, who has quick feet and active hands to grab easy turnovers. Beverley can also take point-of-attack duties on guards when needed. However, McLaughlin has been proving lately that he also can be a great point-of-attack defender. That opens up more opportunities for him to be played in the lineup as a utility guard like Pat Bev and get more minutes overall.
McLaughlin’s pairing with DLo works well on offense, too. McLaughlin has possibly the most pass-first mentality of anyone on the team. He averages only 3.1 shot attempts per game. Instead, he spends his time setting up plays and looking for open teammates who may have a better shot than him. McLaughlin is also a remarkably consistent passer who made history earlier this year by having the best assist-to-turnover ratio of any player over the span of 11 games. The Wolves already have a lot of high-usage shooters, so having a player like McLaughlin who can create shots but doesn’t need to take them is beneficial. It also allows Minnesota to shift Russell to the shooting guard spot and run plays to get him open looks in off-ball actions while McLaughlin distributes from the top of the key.
In addition, both McLaughlin and Russell play at a breakneck pace. You can see it when they’re out on the court, especially with McLaughlin. Both players like to make quick decisions to pass or shoot, and they like to push the speed of their teammates as well. The NBA keeps track of a statistic that attempts to quantify speed of play called PACE, which is defined as the “number of possessions per 48 minutes for a team or player.” Using PACE, Russell plays the fastest of any of the starters (101.96). Jordan McLaughlin has the fastest PACE of any regular rotation player on the team at 104.96.
This season, part of the Wolves’ identity has been running up the court in a transition offense to get easy shots when the opponent is slow to get back. It also forces opponents to make high-speed decisions — and sometimes mistakes as a result — rather than letting them have time to set up in their pre-planned defensive scheme. Both Russell and McLaughlin help create that identity through the speed they play.
It will be interesting to see how much more Finch plays the point guard pairing throughout the rest of the season. There may be times when matchups with teams that have a lot of size dictate that they can’t play small. It’s also possible that as the competition ramps up in the playoffs, we will see the starters play more minutes overall, and there will be less time for the Russell-McLaughlin pairing. Either way, it’s exciting to watch McLaughlin play his way into a bigger role.
