At 15-53, the Minnesota Timerwolves find themselves sitting only a game back from having sole possession of the worst record in the league.
No doubt, the Wolves did not plan to #LoseMoreForOkafor or #PlayDownForTowns, but their rash of early season injuries suffered by their core of veterans quickly eliminated Minnesota’s hopes of contending for a playoff seed in the Wild-Wild-West.
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Alternatively, their stroke of misfortune forced coach and President of Basketball Operations, Flip Saunders, to focus the incumbent season on prospect development and stealth tanking.
As hard as it has been watching Zach LaVine struggle to handle basic point guard duties, it has been just as gratifying watching Andrew Wiggins evolve into a pinch-post savant.
It was especially enjoyable when the Wolves actually played with a healthy slate of players. Their blend of exuberant youth, in conjunction with their crafty warhorses, instantly made Minnesota the prime candidates to serve as this year’s spoilers against teams jostling for playoff positioning.
However, things took a turn, once again, for the worse recently. Chiefly, the injury bug made a steep U-turn to bite Ricky Rubio‘s ankle, Kevin Garnett‘s knee, and Nikola Pekovic‘s foot over the past week.
Sure enough, playing without three of their most impactful players — most notably, their two best defensive players, in KG and Rubio — the Wolves have reverted back to their early-season lethargic ways, losing nine of their last 10 contests and giving up a near league-worst 110.7 points per 100 possessions over the stretch, per NBA.com.
With no concrete timetable for the returns of their aforementioned wounded veterans, the attention is once again shifted on the progression of their youngsters. With that in mind, here are three things to keep an eye over the final month of the season:
Will Wiggins Snap Out Of His Shooting Slump?
The rise of Andrew Wiggins has been well-documented.
After somewhat of a sobering start to his highly-anticipated NBA career, Wiggins exploded during the month of January.
Playing primarily at the shooting guard position, alongside the burly Shabazz Muhammad on the wings, the willowy 6-foot-8 swingman was freed to capitalize on his athletic gifts and advantages in length when facing smaller twos.
In fact, he averaged 19,8 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 2.5 assists per game on 54.6 percent TS% (true shooting percentage) and an individual offensive rating of 109 during the previously-mentioned 17-game stretch, per Basketball-Reference — by far the best month he has had this season.
He began to earn the respect of pundits everywhere, particularly those who had long doubted his inherent basketball acumen and legitimacy as a number one overall pick. Specifically, Wiggins’ footwork in the post and ability to slither through the tightest of quarters silenced his harshest of critics.
When operating as a post player, Wiggins most often overwhelms the opposition with his Michael Jordan-esque first step. If the help manages to come quickly enough, he’ll usually unleash his signature spin towards the middle of the lane.
When all else fails, and the defense zones up on young Andrew, he has the length and leaping ability to shoot over nearly every wing in the association via a step-back J or turnaround jumper. Additionally, on the rare occasion, he’ll pump-fake, showcase his refined footwork, pivot around his defender, and create an open look near the basket.
As such, Wiggins scores on roughly 41.5 percent of his post touches, per NBA.com’s SportVU Data. More impressively, he gets to the line approximately 17.1 percent of the time when operating on the block.
Wiggy is also, predictably, a terror in transition, producing 1.23 PPP (points per possession) when he is discharged on the break, which ranks him within the top 75-percentile when compared to his contemporaries around the league.
Even though his much-maligned ballhandling skills are shaky at best, the 20-year-old Canadian has shown glimpses of how devastating of a two-way force he can be even without a refined, functional handle.
However, as we reach the stretch run of the season, Wiggins seems to be worn down. Playing over 38 minutes a game over the months of January and February, the former Kansas Jayhawk is playing like a player with overworked legs as we approach March Madness.
While, over the past 10 games, Wiggins is still averaging a highly-respectable 16.2 points and 4.4 rebounds per game, he is also averaging nearly as many assists as he has had turnovers (1.5 vs. 1.7), and his TS% has plummeted to a banal 49.8 percent over said stretch — his most inefficient span of games since December.
More alarmingly, he has abandoned his post-game as of late, and instead, has fallen back in love with settling for long twos — a.k.a the worst shot in basketball.
Undoubtedly, anyone who watches the Timberwolves on a regular basis will point out the fact that he’s, once again, playing primarily at the three, alongside Kevin Martin. And in addition, he experiences an absurd amount of no-calls (a.k.a rookie discrimination) when he vivaciously attacks the tin.
However, Wiggins has lost his confidence in shooting the three-ball, and in turn, has increased his reliance on long contested twos.
As shown through the shotcharts above, Wiggins is still getting to the front of the rim at a similar rate. But, approximately 24.1 percent of Drew’s shot attempts are coming from the 16-24 feet areas of the floor over the past 10 games. More damagingly, he’s making 26.5 percent of his attempts from said area over the stretch.
Comparatively, only 16.2 percent of his shots derived from the 16-24 feet area during the month of January. Conversely, in addition to attempting nearly half of his shots from in close, Wiggins also took 17.3 percent of his shots from beyond the arc, where he converted a healthy 34.0 percent of his attempts from out deep.
It will be interesting to see how Wiggins finishes the season. Can he muster up his last ounce of energy to solidify his case for Rookie of the Year? He was a lock to win the award just two weeks ago; however, Nerlens Noel is making a rampant late push for the award, putting up historic defensive numbers for a rookie (averaging 12.6 points, 10.5 rebounds, 2.7 steals (!!! for a big !!!), and 1.9 blocks per game over his last 10 games).
Will Wiggy rise to occasion, reincorporate his post-game, and recapture his position as the unanimous ROY?
Can LaVine Keep His Turnovers Down And Sustain The Momentum When Running The Point?
While I have been steadfast in my opinion that Zach LaVine is not a point guard — and would be better served developing at the two — Saunders has insisted on playing the newly-crowned slam dunk king almost exclusively at the Wolves’ point of attack.
Watching LaVine run an NBA offense can, most times, be infuriating. In particular, he continues to repeatedly commit the handful of cardinal sins no pro lead guard should ever make — most notably, telegraphing his passes, inexplicably killing his dribble on the perimeter, and jumping in the air, with no definitive course of action, as he tries to find an open teammate.
For such reasons, with Zach running the attack (rhyme intended), the Timberwolves are usually marred by a cavalcade of unforced turnovers.
Consequently, opposing teams often ambush the Wolves on such occasions by, either, extending their lead, or eradicating their deficit.
More explicitly, in the 26 games in which LaVine has served as the team’s starting point, he has given up nearly 3.3 turnovers per game in the 29.6 minutes he plays, on average, during said contests. In fact, he has relinquished a total of 11 turnovers over his last two starts; contrarily, LaVine only dished out nine assists.
Perhaps, more alarmingly, over 28.3 percent of his possessions, when used as the ballhandler in pick-and-roll situations, result in a turnover, per NBA.com’s SportVU Data.
Not surprisingly, LaVine ranks within the bottom-fifths, among all NBA rotational players, across a bevy of advance statistical measures, such as WS (Win Shares), PER (Player Efficiency Rating), BPM (Box Score Plus/Minus), and VORP (Value Over Replacement Player), per Basketball-Reference.
That is not to say that the 6-foot-6 (in shoes) human trampoline is not laced with an abundance of inborn talent. Potential is one thing Zach does not lack (rhyme intended, part deux). If you ask Memphis Grizzlies’ head coach, Dave Joerger, he’ll be the first to tell you that LaVine has “talent flowing out of his fingertips.”
His lethal combination of expeditious straight-line speed and nuclear explosiveness off of one foot, makes him a breathtaking proposition in transition, his pull-up game is effortlessly aesthetic, and he is undoubtedly the most electrifying, gravity-defying dunker this side of Gerald Green.
LaVine’s immediate set of NBA-ready skills is more suited to serve in the capacity of a role-playing wing, as oppose to a primary ball-in-hand creator. For all intents and purposes, he should be tethered with Rubio, or a distributor of a similar ilk, to fully capitalize on his unrivaled open-court athleticism.
All things considered (namely, the team’s slew of injuries and roster makeup), however, the LaVine point guard experiment will continue to march on for the foreseeable future.
For now, here’s to hoping that LaVine can limit his turnovers to a manageable level, sustain his aggressiveness in attacking the rack, and avoid the embarrassment of being outplayed by Lorenzo Brown.
Can The Wolves Stop Giving Up Layups Without KG And Rubio In The Lineup?
For a temporary while, it looked as though the Timberwolves were poised to turn their early season apathetic defensive efforts around.
Specifically, spearheaded by the return of Rubio, Pekovic, and Kevin Martin, in addition to the injection of vocal leadership and unwavering intensity provided by KG’s homecoming, Minnesota managed to decrease their defensive rating, or points allowed per 100 possessions, down to 103.9 over the month of February — nothing to write home about, but a stark improvement nonetheless.
However, their lackadaisical brand of D has reared back its ugly head.
Over the last 10 games, the Wolves house the second worst defense in the association. Worst yet, Minnesota has allowed an unfathomable 49.4 points in the paint per game over the stretch — by far the worst mark in the league. To compound their dire defensive performance, they also give 14.8 second chance points a contest, fourth most of any team over the past 20 or so days.
Their ineptitude on the defensive end culminated this past Monday when the Wolves gave up, an NBA-high this season, 78 points in the paint during their contests against the erratic Brooklyn Nets.
With KG sidelined indefinitely with an ailing knee, the team’s interior D has completely fallen apart. While the entire blame cannot be heaped upon the Wolves’ mismatch of bigs, as replacing Rubio, who reinjured his ankle four games ago, with LaVine ensures the opposing point guard of a free lane and a full head of steam almost every time they turn the corner off of a screen-and-roll.
Dunking with Wolves
With that being said, however, Minnesota’s battalion of inexperienced big men — in particular, the duo of Adreian Payne and Gorgui Dieng — are avid shot-blocking fiends. More specifically, they often choose to give hard-charging penetrators an open lane for a layup in their plight to accumulate shot blocks, as oppose to playing an honest, conservative brand of help defense.
As such, they often not only concede an avalanche of high percentage opportunities, but they also put the rest of the team in an uncompromising position, as their man is usually left unimpeded to attack the offensive glass.
With less than four weeks left before the regular season ends, it will be interesting to see if KG can command the respect of his young pups and inspire the Wolves’ bigs — namely, Dieng and Payne — to play a more considerate brand of team oriented defense; or alternatively, will Saunders have to continue bench their youthful power forward and center, and rely on the likes of the Robbie Hummel‘s and Justin Hamilton‘s of the world to send across his message.
*All stats current going into Mar. 19’s slate of games
Next: March Madness 2015: Top Plays From Day 1
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