Minnesota Timberwolves: October player grades

Anthony Tolliver/Gorgui Dieng/Tyus Jones: A-/B/C+

Tolliver: 8 GP, 20.9 MPG, 6.9 PPG, 3.1 RPG

Dieng: 8 GP, 14.9 MPG, 8.1 PPG, 5.0 RPG

Jones: 7 GP, 18.0 MPG, 6.0 PPG, 2.4 APG

They aren’t quite the “Bench Mob” that Toronto has run out the past two seasons, but the Timberwolves’ bench lineups have played terrifically. Honestly, it is hard to imagine where the team would be right now without its bench.

Tyus Jones’s +7.7 net rating leads the team, and Tolliver and Dieng also have positive net ratings at +1.9 and +1.3, respectively. (Derrick Rose, who has come off the bench in seven of his eight games, has a +2.0 net rating.)

Tolliver was brought in to shoot 3s, and boy, has he done that. He’s shooting 48.4 percent on 3.9 attempts per game, which is a big reason for these bench units’ success. His 70.4 true shooting percentage is 15th in the entire NBA for players who’ve played in at least seven games so far.

https://twitter.com/fsnorth/status/1053837605823893505

Tolliver’s release is so quick that it looks like a kid flinging a shot up at the buzzer, and yet it’s going in more often than not. His transition 3s have been some of the most exciting plays of the Timberwolves’ season so far, and he is earning every penny of his one-year contract even if he is only averaging 3.1 rebounds per game.

Gorgui Dieng has returned to the good Gorgui. He still has slip-ups with defensive rotations or flashes of frustration like this:

Still, Dieng is back to providing good minutes off the bench. At this point, he is never going to become a 3-point threat, but his form is decent and he can keep defenses honest from up to 20 feet. The blocks haven’t come yet, but he’s rebounding better than he has in years (at 17.6 percent so far) and he continues to set great screens. As long as he never, ever puts the ball on the deck, Dieng can contribute on both sides of the ball.

Finally, there’s Tyus Jones, another fan favorite. Despite the admiration Wolves fans show him online, most do not think he is the franchise’s savior. However, he is a good backup point guard (and a native Minnesotan) who can play 25 minutes a night and not make horrific mistakes that grind an offense to a halt.

Thibodeau plays him, but never enough and never with enough responsibility. This year Jones’ usage rate is a minuscule 16.5 percent — unheard of for a point guard — but that is actually higher than his career 13.8 usage rate. For a young point guard (and especially for a 22-year-old with just one year of college under his belt) Jones does a decent job taking care of the ball, and that has been the case again this year as his turnover rate is just 5.9 percent.

Why the low grade? Jones is small, so he will always struggle on defense, but he is shooting just 34 percent so far in 2018-19 while drawing just 0.3 free throw attempts per game. That won’t cut it offensively.

He is just 4-of-15 on shots inside the paint this season, a number that will regress back to the mean and pull his shooting averages up. Until that happens though, he only gets an average grade no matter how high his net rating is.