The Minnesota Timberwolves seemed to have fun at All-Star weekend in Indianapolis, even though most fans watching in the arena and at home were left wanting more from the experience. Anthony Edwards messed around (maybe a little too much) and shot lefty during Team Top Picks’ third-place finish in the skills competition.
Karl-Anthony Towns made the finals of the three-point shootout. But a very Towns-like blunder of stepping on the three-point line on several of his attempts kept him from hoisting the trophy for a second time. The four-time All-Star also dropped 50 points in the main event on Sunday and was trolled online for actually trying — even though that’s what everyone wants. And Chris Finch and his coaching staff again got blown out by an inferior team as the West lost to the East 211-186.
Aside from the husk of what was once my favorite weekend of the year, the Timberwolves are firing on all cylinders heading into the stretch run. The Wolves are riding a four-game winning streak in which they dominated their opponents by an average of 23.5 points. Tim Connelly used the break to ink Mike Conley to a 2-year, $21 million contract extension. The Wolves have a 1.5-game cushion over the Oklahoma City Thunder at the top of the Western Conference standings, and they will play 17 of their remaining 27 games in the friendly Target Center confines.
It’s a good time to be a Timberwolves fan, so far be it from me to tell them how they could be even better heading into the playoffs. But there’s one non-turnover aspect of Minnesota’s game that could improve, which would strike fear in the hearts of the rest of the NBA. In layman’s terms, if the Timberwolves took more threes, they’d make more threes and score more points. Minnesota takes only 32 threes per game, which is 24th in the league.
However, they hit a blistering 39.3 percent of their three-point attempts, leaving them percentage points behind the Los Angeles Clippers and Thunder in the race to lead the league in three-point percentage. To put that number in historical context, the Wolves are shooting better from three this season than every team besides the two ahead of them this year, the 2014-15 and 2015-16 Warriors and the 2020-21 Clippers over the last 10 seasons.
All of Minnesota’s contributing players, minus Rudy Gobert and Kyle Anderson, are plus three-point shooters. Towns, Conley, and Naz Reid are all shooting well over 40 percent from deep and having their career-best shooting seasons. Edwards is at a very efficient 38.6 percent on 6.7 attempts per game. And Jaden McDaniels, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, and Jordan McLaughlin can knock down a shot.
Chris Finch celebrated the third anniversary of becoming Minnesota’s head coach this week. His teams have had a love-hate relationship with the three-point line in those three years. After he took over for Ryan Saunders in 2021, Finch’s Wolves shot the 27th-best three-point percentage on the sixth-most attempts per game. In his first full season in 2021-22, the Wolves hoisted the most threes in the league and were 12th in percentage. Last season, they were 13th in percentage but dropped to 15th in attempts.
Minnesota’s attempts are down partly because they don’t have a true volume three-point shooter on their roster. Edwards is attempting the fewest threes in his career. Towns’ attempts are down a tick from last season. Conley attempts between 2 and 3 fewer threes per game than D’Angelo Russell did in Minnesota. And nobody on the current roster comes close to the volume Malik Beasley attempted when hunting threes from 2020 to 2022. Edwards’ team-leading 6.7 three-point attempts per game is 38th-most in the league.
Things have begun to move in the right direction recently. Minnesota went 21-41 from beyond the arc in the win over the Milwaukee Bucks before the All-Star break. They struggled against the Clippers, making just 11-34 threes in the 21-point win and 13-33 and 11-30 in back-to-back wins in Portland, which included plenty of garbage time.
As we veer into the second decade of the three-point revolution, the Wolves could afford to toss up a few more threes per game because their playoff competition is getting their money’s worth behind the three-point line. The Boston Celtics lead the league in three-point attempts per game at 42.7 and are sixth in percentage. Other playoff-bound teams, including the Dallas Mavericks, Sacramento Kings, Golden State Warriors, Bucks, and Cleveland Cavaliers, are nestled in the top 10 in three-point attempts per game.
The Minnesota Timberwolves have built the second-best record in the NBA by playing basketball their way. But that doesn’t mean a few tweaks here and there couldn’t help them bring home their first NBA Championship in June. Chucking up a few extra threes per game could help their struggling offense score a few more points and be the difference in a playoff series. The Wolves are a great three-point shooting team, and it’s time to start trusting those shooters and lean into being a jump-shooting team that can absolutely win a championship.
