No matter how glamorous it can be, traveling for work kinda sucks at its core. Dealing with airport nonsense, hoarding muffins from your hotel continental breakfast because your per diem won’t cover lunch and dinner, and living out of your suitcase for days or weeks at a time takes a toll on the human soul.
The Minnesota Timberwolves travel in more luxury than I could ever imagine, but that doesn’t mean their performance doesn’t fall off a bit when they’re away from home. Heading into 2024, the Wolves are holding strong atop the Western Conference standings with the best start to a season in franchise history. These Timberwolves are on pace for 62 regular-season wins, should have three All-Stars, and still boast the best defense in the NBA, even after allowing the Oklahoma City Thunder to torch them for 129 points on Tuesday.
If there’s one bug in the system for the Wolves this season (other than the 17th-ranked offense), they are far worse on the road than in the friendly confines of the Target Center. To be fair, “far worse” doesn’t mean bad. They’re still decent on the road and an absolute buzzsaw at home. But the chasm between the home-road splits could start to cause the team issues as the season goes on, especially rearing its ugly head in a seven-game playoff series.
Through 29 games, Minnesota’s home-road splits look like this, according to NBA.com:
| Games | Wins | Losses | OFFRTG | DEFRTG | NETRTG | FG% | 3P% | FT% | TS% | |
| Home | 13 | 12 | 1 | 112.7 | 100.8 | 11.9 | 48.8 | 38.3 | 78.2 | 59.7 |
| Road | 16 | 10 | 6 | 114.6 | 114.1 | 0.4 | 48.2 | 37.4 | 80.9 | 59.0 |
Six of Minnesota’s seven losses have come on the road. There are plenty of good things in these splits. They are almost unbeatable at home with a historically good defense in front of their fans. Their shooting splits are virtually identical, and the offensive production is close enough for Chris Finch’s liking. If you expand the view, Minnesota’s rebound, assist, turnover, steals, blocks, and foul rates all fall within a normal distribution.
But there is one glaring issue the Timberwolves need to clean up on the road.
Minnesota’s top-ranked defense is more than 13 points per 100 possessions worse on the road than at home. So why is it that the Timberwolves are seven points per 100 better than their league-leading defense at home while their road defense would only be good enough for 14th?
The Timberwolves haven’t exactly played a murderer’s row of opponents away from home to begin the season. They’ve had tough games against the Golden State Warriors, Phoenix Suns, New Orleans Pelicans, Dallas Mavericks, Miami Heat, Philadelphia 76ers, and Oklahoma City Thunder away from Target Center. But that slate is hardly any more daunting than the Heat, Denver Nuggets, Boston Celtics, New York Knicks, 76ers, Sacramento Kings, Thunder, and Los Angeles Lakers in Minneapolis. Aside from a few massive clunkers dragging the averages down, Minnesota’s road defense has been consistently top-notch.
The Wolves allowed 127 points to the Atlanta Hawks in the third game of the season, 133 in Phoenix on the second night of a back-to-back, 121 to the Pelicans, 127 to the Sixers, including a Joel Embiid 51-point foul fest, and 129 to the Thunder. But look closer at what Minnesota’s opponents are doing to them on the road, and you can see the root of the problem.
Opponents’ shooting success is night and day when they face the Timberwolves at home versus on the road. Teams are shooting 47.6 percent from the field and 37 percent from three when they host the Wolves. Meanwhile, they only shoot 41.1 percent overall and 29.7 percent from deep when traveling to Minnesota.
- The Thunder shot 60.5 percent from the field and 46.2 percent from three when they slapped the Wolves in Oklahoma on Tuesday.
- The Suns made 17 of 31 threes (54.8 percent) when they put up a season-high 133 on the Timberwolves defense in November.
- And the Hawks went nuclear and made 14 of 30 threes (46.7 percent) when they overcame a 21-point deficit to make Wolves fans soil their pants three games into the season.
To see if that’s normal behavior or something concerning, let’s look at how opponents shoot against the other elite teams in the NBA. Teams shoot about one percent better at home vs. on the road against the Celtics. Denver’s opponents’ home-road shooting splits are almost negligible. The same goes for the Bucks and 76ers, and Thunder opponents shoot better in Oklahoma City than when the Thunder come to town.
Whether Minnesota’s opponents are getting lucky at the right time or the Wolves aren’t bringing the same defensive intensity on the road, Finch and the boys need to figure out how to negate the home road difference ahead of the upcoming road trip that includes games in Houston, Dallas, Orlando, and Boston. Leaving home for work is never all it’s cracked up to be. But the Timberwolves need to take road games a little more seriously before another Western Conference team exposes them in a playoff series.
