The Minnesota Timberwolves have been a difficult team to understand fully. There have been injuries to important players like Karl-Anthony Towns, Taurean Prince, Jordan McLaughlin, and Kyle Anderson. They’ve also had to integrate Rudy Gobert into the offense and suffered from a lack of shooting. The Wolves have been inconsistent game-to-game and often look like a completely different team every night. Some of this is related to the injuries and trying to unlock different players, but it’s mostly the team going through challenging adjustment periods.
The bright side of all this is that the Wolves have produced respectable half-court offensive and defensive stats. Despite the heavy amount of turnover schematically on defense, the Wolves have found an equal mix of great games, average games, and poor games during the month that KAT has been out. This has come primarily from Gobert drop coverage, which has had an overall average output.
Through Monday’s game against the Denver Nuggets, the Wolves rank 9th in the NBA, scoring 99.4 points per 100 plays in the half-court on offense. On defense, they rank 6th in the NBA, allowing 94.7 points per 100 plays in the half-court defense, a similarly impressive standing. That gives them an overall net half-court rating of +4.7 points per 100 plays. All rankings via CleaningtheGlass.com
But while they are succeeding in the half-court, the Wolves need to reduce second-chance points and improve in transition.
Offensively, the Wolves rank 17th in the league in put-back points per miss, with 20.9 points per 100 misses in the half-court. Put-back points per miss essentially measures their second-chance points. The frequency that they allow second-chance point ultimately ties down their effectiveness in the half-court, though, because it puts their total points per 100 possessions at 112.6 points, 20th in the league.
The Wolves have similar defensive deficiencies. They rank 23rd in the league, allowing 22.9 points per miss per 100 misses in the half-court. This brings similar downfalls to their high-ranked half-court offense, putting their overall ranking in points allowed per 100 possessions at 113.5, 14th in the league.
This is where you see the slight difference in overall net rating and why the Wolves are sitting at their below .500 record. The Wolves are +4.7 in the half-court but own a 0.9 overall rating because of their downfalls within transition and second-chance opportunities.
There were perfect examples of how these two factors can get out of hand in Monday’s game against the Nuggets. The Wolves allowed Denver to score 29 fastbreak points.
Here are some egregious examples:
Minnesota took care of the ball against the Nuggets, only turning it over 11 times. A lot of the recent struggles and free baskets have come from turnovers. But in the Denver game there was a lack of attention being paid off of missed baskets and even the opposition pushing the ball after a Wolves made basket.
It is easy to explain statistically why the Wolves find themselves in these tricky situations — for example, the poor rebounding and live ball turnovers. However, there are plenty of inexcusable mistakes that are being made that must be cleaned up. A lot of this comes from simply not knowing who to pick up off of a miss, a player being left behind after they miss their shot attempt, or nobody picking up the ball. There are examples in the video linked above showing these consistent issues.
Luckily for the Wolves, many things are easy to clean up. Much of it can come from simply hustling back on defense and showing effort. However, if they continue to miss long shots and throw the ball away, things can linger for much longer, even when the team is healthy. The Wolves need to end this habit immediately.
