No NBA team has ever won the Larry O’Brien trophy after the season’s first week, but plenty have lost it after seven days. However, in 2020, the Los Angeles Lakers won a championship in October during the COVID bubble run. Still, teams generally use the fall months to work in their new players and find an identity before Christmas. At 2-2, the early return on the new-look Minnesota Timberwolves has been mostly positive as they look to build on last year’s most productive season in franchise history.
After a lethargic loss to the Lakers in the season opener, the Wolves came back with back-to-back wins against the Sacramento Kings and Toronto Raptors before a tough loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday. Julius Randle looks at home as Minnesota’s No. 2 option. Donte DiVincenzo seems comfortable in his prominent bench role while struggling to find his shot four games into the new season. And the 11th-ranked offense looks its best in years under Chris Finch.
However, as the offense finds a new gear, Minnesota’s defense has taken a step back.
Last season, Minnesota’s identity was as a nightmare defensive matchup that could shut down crafty guards on the perimeter and deter bigs from entering the paint on a nightly basis. The Wolves boasted the No. 1 defense for nearly the entire 2023-24 NBA season. Rudy Gobert won his record-tying fourth Defensive Player of the Year award. Jaden McDaniels was named to the All-Defensive second team. And Anthony Edwards, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Naz Reid hounded opposing teams inside and outside.
It’s early yet, but the defense has not nearly been as stout with Towns out and Randle and DiVincenzo in the mix. Through the first week of the season, Minnesota’s once-vaunted defense is allowing 112.9 points per 100 possessions, 13th-best in the NBA. Last year’s top-ranked defense allowed just 108.4 points per possession, a full 2.2 points per 100 ahead of the second-ranked Boston Celtics. It’s just four games but something feels off about the defense.
The Timberwolves are not going hard in the paint to begin the season. Last year, Minnesota’s stout interior defense allowed the second-fewest points in the paint in the NBA. This year, the team allows the second most at 55 points in the paint per game. That’s the second-most in the NBA and 15 more per game than last year.
The Wolves gave up 72 points in the paint in the season opener against the Lakers, when Anthony Davis had his way with Minnesota’s frontcourt all night. They allowed the Toronto Raptors to score 56 points in the paint in the home opener. And 52 to Luka Doncic and his minions in another demoralizing loss to Dallas. Blocks are down from 6.1 per game last year to 3.1 this season, and Rudy Gobert is only averaging 1.3 blocks per game through four games, which would be the lowest mark of his career since his rookie season.
Minnesota sacrificed defense in the KAT trade and is seeing the side effects early on in the season. Julius Randle and Rudy Gobert have played 88 minutes together in Minnesota’s first four games, with a net rating of plus-0.1 to begin the season. Towns and Gobert had a plus-8.6 net rating together last season while allowing fewer points in the paint.
Randle is a decent rebounder for a 6’8” power forward but has never offered any rim protection, with 268 blocks in his career compared to KAT’s 723. Gobert isn’t the easiest player in the world to play with, as we saw during Gobert’s first season in Minnesota in 2022-23. But Randle will need to find out how to unlock the duo’s potential to help Minnesota’s defense get back on track.
The good news is that we had similar questions about Minnesota’s defense early last season. The Wolves began the 2023-24 season with an inauspicious 1-2 start, including a historically bad shooting performance against Toronto and a second-half meltdown against the Atlanta Hawks. The Timberwolves only had the ninth-best defense through three games in October last year before turning the screws and vaulting to the top spot by season’s end.
Four games is too small a sample size to declare the defense as mid this early in the season. Still, it’s something to monitor going forward. Upcoming games against the San Antonio Spurs, Chicago Bulls, Charlotte Hornets, and Portland Trail Blazers should allow the Timberwolves to get the defense right and find their identity this season. It will take some growing pains, but the team is too talented and athletic to be towards the middle of the pack in defense for the rest of the season. Gobert, Edwards, and McDaniels should have the squad performing up to expectations soon.
