Are the Wolves good?
Objectively, it’s a simple question that should elicit a yes or no answer. However, 22 games into the season, if you were to ask 100 fans, you’d probably get 20 nos, 20 yeses, and 60 people would say, “Eh, I don’t know.” Thankfully, the Minnesota Timberwolves are 27% of the way through their season, and the team’s numbers and record are starting to become reliable enough to answer the question.
Who have the Wolves beaten?
The case that the Wolves aren’t a very good team is pretty straightforward. Their record and play often don’t pass the eye test. They are currently 14-8 and the sixth seed in the West, 2 full games behind the Los Angeles Lakers for the two seed. However, the Lakers have the tiebreaker and are 7 games behind the top-seeded 21-1 Oklahoma City Thunder.
Minnesota has also had some gut-wrenching losses. They had a late-game implosion against the Phoenix Suns, followed two days later by another late-game collapse to the Sacramento Kings. They lost a game to the Lakers in that Luka Doncic and LeBron James didn’t play, and the rival Denver Nuggets have beaten them twice.
The Wolves didn’t beat a team above .500 until November 29, when they beat the Boston Celtics without Jayson Tatum. Their other win against a winning team came over the San Antonio Spurs without Victor Wembanyama. Most recently, they allowed a 3-20 New Orleans Pelicans team to hang around into overtime and the fourth quarter in back-to-back games. It’s easy to look at that track record and say, “Well, they aren’t a good team.”
They’ve been good offensively, though
However, Minnesota’s statistics paint a different story. The Timberwolves have the seventh-best offensive rating in the NBA at 118.0, just 1.0 behind the Thunder and Lakers for fifth. They are fifth in the league in true shooting percentage, which weights field goals, threes, and free throws to estimate the true percentage a team is shooting. They are just 0.5% behind the Thunder for third. The Wolves are also fourth in three-point percentage (38.7%).
They rank in the top 15 in almost every other offensive analytics category:
- Field goal percentage (7th)
- Assists per game (12th)
- Assist percentage (14th)
- Assist-to-turnover ratio (14th)
- Offensive rebounding percentage (15th)
- Pace (14th).
That suggests that the Wolves are above average in most analytics and borderline elite in shooting and offensive rating. They have a net rating of +7.7 per game, which ranks 6th in the league. All of this suggests the Wolves are a good offensive team.
The Wolves have also played good defense
Defensively, the statistics tell a similar story. The Wolves are:
- 10th in defensive rating at 113.2
- 12th in defensive rebounding
- 18th in steals
- 12th in blocks
- 9th in defensive field goal percentage
- 3rd in defensive three-point percentage.
The stats paint a picture of an overall above-average defense, like the offense, elite at certain things, such as guarding the three-point line. Defensively, it would appear the Wolves are a good team.
They’re still in the hunt
Even with their record, they are just 2 games away from being the 2-seed in the West, and they’ve had two historic collapses. Being that close to a top seed again suggests the Wolves are a good team.
If you value the strength of opponents and win-loss records, the Wolves are padding their record by beating up on lesser opponents. If you’re a stat nerd, they are a good team with a couple of bad breaks that led to losses.
But if that’s the case, why is the question so hard to answer?
Ultimately, the Wolves have been inconsistent
My theory is that the eye test and the data don’t always match up. If you catch the Wolves on an off quarter, they look like a lottery team. Likewise, if you catch them when things are clicking, they can look like they can beat anyone.
That bears out statistically. If you only catch the first quarter of a Wolves game, they look pretty good. They rank fifth in offensive rating and have the seventh-best net rating. They have the sixth-best assist-to-turnover ratio in the league.
On the defensive side, they rank 17th overall. However, they are 2nd in defensive rebound percentage and typically outscore teams by 1.7 points in the first quarter.
The second quarter tells a different story. The Wolves outscored opponents by only 0.8 points per quarter. Their offensive rating dips to 16th overall, and their true shooting also falls to 16th, but their defense rises to 8th. Still not bad, some shifting, but overall a positive team.
If you only catch the first half of Wolves games, you’ll think they are either a good offensive team (first quarters) or a good defensive team (second quarters)
Without boring everyone with all the statistics, the second half plays out exactly the same way. The Wolves are a top-5 offense in the third and a bottom-half defense, but a top-10 defense in the fourth, while the offense dips to the bottom half of the league.
Why are they inconsistent, though?
The consistency of this inconsistency is remarkable. An elite offense looks great in odd-numbered quarters and is hampered by a pedestrian defense, and it completely flips in even quarters. The pace at which the Wolves play remains pretty consistent throughout the game, even ranking 8th in the fourth quarter, when the offense is at its lowest.
Lineups and rotations could factor into this, but Rudy Gobert and Jaden McDaniels typically play as many minutes in the first as they do in the second. Likewise, in the third and fourth, but that theoretically would mean the defense is always consistent.
The offensive lull in the first and third quarters can likely be attributed to Edwards typically sitting out the first four to six minutes in the second and fourth quarters. Still, at the same time, Edwards has been a plus defender this season. Oddly, the defense gets better with him off the court.
The Jekyll and Hyde nature of the Wolves is likely the reason it’s so hard to say whether they are good or bad. It turns a simple question into a thought-provoking analysis, and even after that analysis, the question remains hard to answer. Their record, overall stats, and quarter-by-quarter breakdowns can suggest different answers depending on when you catch the Wolves or who they play.
It all leads to many unsatisfying answers when someone asks Are the Wolves good?
