Let’s begin with this cheery declaration: The Minnesota Timberwolves are playing the worst defense in the already sordid 26-year history of the franchise.
Watching the Wolves try to stop their opposition from putting the basketball through the hoop is literally a dreadful proposition; seriously contemplating Minnesota’s ineptitude triggers the apprehension that the team has no meaningful chance of winning the game against a quality foe, making one’s patronage of the process a waste of time. These are not the sort of feelings you want to instill in your fan base.
The numbers are damning. According to Basketball-Reference, the Wolves are currently giving up 114.4 points per 100 possessions to the other team, which, if it holds up through the entire season, is considerably more generous than previous editions of the ballclub. The previous benchmark for porous defense was 112.4 points per 100 possessions (which we’ll shorten to pp100), reached by the 1991-92 and 1994-95 Timberwolves. In more modern times, the 2009-10 Timberwolves yielded 111.6 pp100.
It doesn’t work to try and explain this away as part of an NBA-wide trend toward more offensive-oriented performance. The worst Wolves defense relative to the rest of the league for an entire season was that 1991-92 ballclub, which ceded 4.2 pp100 more than the NBA norm for that year. Thus far this season, the Wolves are a whopping 8.3 pp100 ahead of the NBA average for points allowed.
Common sense and the record book concur that if you can’t stop the other team from scoring, your chances of winning plummet. The worst won-lost records ever posted by the franchise are during those 1991-92 and 2009-10 seasons cited earlier, when the Wolves finished 15-67. By comparison, the current Wolves are 4-12, which works out to somewhere between 20 and 21 wins over the 82-game season. Then again, they were 2-2 and ahead in their fifth game of the year when Ricky Rubio rolled his ankle in the first half against Orlando.
The defensive chasm at point guard
When people think about Ricky Rubio, splendid passing and panoramic court vision highlight the conjured memories that come to the fore. The young point guard has also received ample attention for his wayward shooting during his initial seasons in the NBA. Even after he led the league in steals last season by a significant margin, Rubio’s exploits and value to the Wolves on the defensive end of the court are typically discounted. But more than any other factor, his absence due to injury explains why this ball club has been historically awful on defense.
It is a fairly small sample size—just 144 of the 773 total minutes played by the Wolves this season—but with Rubio on the court Minnesota has yielded just 101.7 pp100, well below the NBA average of 106.1 pp100 for the 2014-15 campaign thus far. By contrast, heading into Monday night’s game against the Los Angeles Clippers, the Wolves were giving up 117.2 pp100 when Rubio is off the court. Given that the Clips torched Minnesota for 127 points and 127.4 pp100 on Monday, that gaping disparity has become even more blatant.
Rubio is tall and rangy for a point guard, and blends keen instincts with intelligence and anticipation to perform as a quality defender. The Wolves have yielded fewer pp100 when he plays, compares to when he sits, in each of the first three years he has been with the team.
But the scope of the team’s defensive dissolution has never been as pervasive as in this current season, which points to the shoddy performance of those who have replaced him. Mo Williams has never been regarded as a particularly rugged defender, and now that the 11-year veteran is in the twilight of his career, shouldering more playing time than expected and is undersized to boot (at 6-1, he’s three inches shorter than Rubio), he tends to conserve his energy at that end of the court. Heading into the Clippers game, Wolves opponents were scoring 110.8 pp100 when Williams was on the court.
This brings us in turn to Zach LaVine, the teenaged rookie who has been hopelessly overmatched on both offense and defense the vast majority of the time he has set foot on the court. Not even counting the debacle against the Clippers on Monday, opponents of the Wolves have scored an eye-popping 123.8 pp100 during the 246 minutes LaVine has impersonated an NBA defender.
Breakdowns everywhere
Of course offense and defense aren’t played in separate vacuums during the games. It makes sense that LaVine is perpetually out of position on the defensive end — after a mere 904 minutes of playing time in college, he is suddenly lost in space out on the perimeter coping with the largest, fastest and most talented and experienced opponents he has ever encountered. But it also doesn’t help that LaVine is almost equally at sea trying to run the offense. As a result, the Wolves’ extensive playbook is abridged, causing the offense to become both more predictable and more reliant on individual matchups instead of team synergy. That leads to more turnovers, which generate more easy points in transition for the opposition. And that produces ridiculously inept defensive numbers when LaVine is on display.
Truth be told, however, nobody besides Rubio and perhaps Andrew Wiggins and Thad Young look capable of playing quality defense on the Wolves current roster. Opponents are scoring 112.9 pp100 when Wiggins is on the court (not counting the Clippers game), a normally terrible figure that looks better when you consider Minnesota is yielding 115.8 pp100 when he sits. Wiggins has also logged a team-high 158 minutes alongside LaVine, who causes any cohort’s defensive numbers to mushroom.
Young’s on/off the court defensive numbers are even better than Wiggins’, but it is hard to single him out for praise after he frequently stopped putting forth a defensive effort in the second half of the blowout versus the Clippers. He was also helped by being absent for the beat-downs Minnesota received in New Orleans and Dallas while he was away due to the illness and death of his mother. (The flip side of that argument is that the defense would have improved if he had been in the lineup.)
When you crunch the numbers beyond points allowed per 100 possessions, the caliber of the Wolves defense becomes even less defensible. According to NBA.com, Minnesota allows the highest percentage of opponents’ field goal attempts on shots from 0-5 feet from the basket—64.9 percent. Minnesota allows the highest percentage of opponents’ makes on shots from 5-9 feet away from the hoop—49.2 percent. They allow the highest percentage from 20-24 feet away—43.6 percent, and are third from 25-29 feet away, 38.4 percent.
Generating offense in the modern NBA is about scoring from the most efficient areas on the court. Those areas are right at the rim and from beyond the three-point arc. As the above numbers indicate, the Wolves are most porous at precisely the spots on the floor where the defense needs to be most resistant. (They allow an NBA-high 41.9 percent shooting from three-point territory.) It is only in the less efficient offensive areas of the court — on midrange shots from 10-19 feet away from the basket — where opponents shoot less than the NBA average in accuracy.
The perpetually walking wounded
Just as the point guards bear heavier responsibility for a team’s defensive prowess out on the perimeter, the big men patrolling the painted area are most accountable for deterring shots attempted at the rim. Alas, the Wolves’ contingent of centers has been decimated by injuries this season. Unfortunately it has become a familiar pattern.
In August of 2013, Nikola Pekovic signed a five-year, $60-million contract that currently makes him the highest-paid employee in the Timberwolves organization. (Rubio will supplant him in that distinction when his contract kicks in next season.) The problem with Pek has always been keeping him healthy enough to justify that kind of investment. His career-high for games played in a season is 65, accomplished in 2010-11 as a rookie. He has never logged 2,000 minutes—an average of 24.4 per game over a full season—coming closest with 1,959 in the 2012-13 campaign.
At 295 pounds, it is perhaps understandable that the bulk of Pekovic’s physical woes have occurred in the feet and lower legs that support him. In an attempt to safeguard his precious playing time for moments that matter, coach and President of Basketball Operations Flip Saunders used him sparingly in the preseason. It cost the Wolves on opening night, when Pek wasn’t physically or mentally ready to joust with the stalwart front court players in Memphis during a narrow Wolves loss to the Grizzlies. And it proved fruitless when Pek went down again during the ninth game of the season and his second painfully slow performance in a row.
The diagnosis is a “sore right foot” and, for variety, a sprained right wrist. There is no timetable for his return—he’s “out indefinitely.”
Second-year center Gorgui Dieng has stepped into the breach, but once again backup center Ronny Turiaf is physically unavailable. Like Pek, Turiaf has never played 2000 minutes in any of his nine NBA seasons, coming closest in 2008-09 with 1696. Last season he played 606 minutes in 31 games and has missed all but 19 minutes in two games this season due to a “sore hip.”
Pekovic and Turiaf are two of the most decent and likable players on the Wolves roster. Both are infectiously fun-loving and impish. But it is no barrel of laughs for Wolves fans to see them in street clothes night after night while Dieng valiantly holds the fort down near the hoop. Then, right around the time Williams needs a break at point guard and is replaced by LaVine, Dieng too must sit, leaving Saunders with his choice of woefully undersized replacements—6-8 forwards Anthony Bennett and Robbie Hummel have both been matched up on players three or four inches taller and fifty pounds heavier in recent games. Then, surprise surprise, the Wolves get blown out in the second quarter.
To address this disturbingly chronic problem, the Wolves successfully applied for an injury exemption that enabled then to add a 16th player to their roster. Ironically, and sadly, the person they tabbed is Jeff Adrien, who likewise vertically challenged at just 6-7, although he is inordinately strong. He made his Wolves debut versus the Clippers. Adding him means that either Pekovic and/or Turiaf must remained sidelined at least another two weeks.
Soon — maybe even the next column — I’ll go back to trolling for bright spots, which could include the inspired improvement of second-year swingman Shabazz Muhammad, the way Mo Williams has re-tailored his game to accommodate a heavier load strictly at the point guard position, and the positive aspects that second-year youngsters Dieng and Bennett have exhibited thus far.
Meanwhile, the winless Philadelphia 76ers arrive at Target Center on Wednesday night. They are by far the worst offensive team in the NBA — a worthy challenge for the Wolves D.
Great stuff, Britt.On one
Great stuff, Britt.
On one hand, I really like the fact that Flip is using the Rubio injury as he should: He’s playing his young guys since the playoffs are totally unrealistic. In particular, he’s challenged Wiggins with assignments ranging from Carmelo Anthony to Kobe Bryant to Chris Paul. Bennett, in less playing time, has faced LaMarcus Aldridge and Blake Griffin. That’s great, I think.
On the other, the team defense is so unbelievably bad. Even acknowledging the Rubio to Mo & Zach downgrade, and the undersized front line, the team has all sorts of rangy athleticism at every position. I would think they could — at least on SOME nights — show decent results against good teams. But that just isn’t happening and the zone defense they open every game with just concedes open corner threes. I think the players will improve with more experience in individual matchups and Flip seems to be encouraging that on both ends of the floor (aside from when they play zone). But at some point in time — probably soon — I’d sure like to see a more coherent strategy to stop the bleeding on defense and spread the floor and encourage ball movement on offense.
It’ll be very interesting to see what changes when Ricky comes back. Another subject, but that sure is a long healing process for an ankle sprain.
thanks for remembering the zone
I was originally going to include talk about the zone in this piece, but waking before dawn and trying to crank this thing before 10 a.m. necessitates me throwing things overboard on occasion. So I forgot about the zone until I read your reply.
What bothers me about it is that Flip used it extensively against teams that are pretty lights-out from long distance, such as the Blazers and Clippers, with predictable results. I know he is a big zone fan–he used it more than anybody even before it was legal and pushed it to the edges when defensive three-seconds was more stringently enforced–but as you mention, he has athletes whose development would be better served getting after players individually. Yes, it puts Dieng at risk and bad health makes that a center-less proposition, but a natural gambler like Corey Brewer isn’t going to be disciplined enough to stay home in the zone and yet will necessarily be constrained enough to lose the chaos that is his metier. On the Clips very first possession, when Redick had all day to get set and launch as an out of position Brewer came belatedly flying at him, I knew it was going to be another long night defensively.
Great stuff as usual. For those who don’t know, Andy is the primary voice at Punchdrunkwolves.com, a strong analyst and superb in-game tweeter who was one of the first and most perceptive about Shabazz Muhammad and has an open but insightful mind when it comes to the Wolves potential on the roster.
so many dunks
Thanks, Britt. It is amazing to see all the easy buckets the other teams are getting in the paint. I like Pek and Turiaf as people but then I like a lot of people that aren’t ready to play in the NBA. Pek and his salary look ready to drag this team down for several years. For him to break down so fast, it should have been obvious in the off season this would happen.
Why was Levine taken in the first round? Playing so little in college, would anyone but us have taken him in the first round? But having old, one way players like Martin and Williams seems like a bad idea. I won’t be having any fun until Rubio comes back. I would think the Rubio haters would have to admit that his presence on the floor is a huge plus.
In defense of the LaVine pick
Bill–
I know I am really hard on LaVine and so people might be surprised that I feel the pick is at least partway defensible. (Confession first tho: In brief NBA action seen, I prefer his UCLA teammate, Jordan Adams, who was taken by Memphis.) Flip came right out and said he wasn’t aiming for a single or a double but a home run with the LaVine pick. What he meant was that LaVine is really raw but his athleticism is off the charts and if he can put it together, you have selected a top 3 or 4 talent with a draft slot much further down the list. Now of course, to continue Flip’s baseball analogy, swinging for the fence also increases the risk of striking out altogether. I believe the jury is still out on that one.
I will say, however, that LaVine’s breakout game against the Lakers did not impress me as much as it did others. First off, as terrible as the Wolves are on D, that are only next-to-last in pp100 because the Lakers are worse. Jeremy Lin was especially wretched in forcing LaVine out of his comfort zone. And the fact is that there are plenty of instances where eminently forgettable players have erupted for 25-35 points on a given night. Sustainability is the key and LaVine obviously hasn’t sustained that hot game thus far.
Bottom line, LaVine lacks the court vision and instincts necessary to be a really good point guard. He has learned the point guard position more by watching and trying to copy great point guards he’s watched rather than coalescing his natural ability and instincts into a signature style, as most of the true point guards do. But I am impressed with the form and lift LaVine gets on his jumper–given his size, he’s going to be hard to guard when hot. And his arrogance is more of a two-guard arrogance than a point-guard arrogance. So he may eventually become a quality two-guard. Time will tell.
Scrap the zone
Sunday night, I noticed this scene several times: opponent PG is picked up by both guys at the top of the zone, opponent PG gets past both with little resistance, guys at top of the zone fail to effectively contest wing 3. The zone only works when an opponent misses shots; it’s not forcing turnovers or shutting down the paint.
Beyond that, these guys just don’t seem to understand a) the opponent’s sets or b) when and where to help. These are the fundamental aspects of a good NBA defense; they’re as important as individual personnel. I overrated Young’s ability to use his athleticism (I thought he’d be a great pick-and-roll defender), we all knew Brewer was average at best on that end, and it’s tough to evaluate Dieng when he could just be overwhelmed by how poorly his teammates are helping.
You hit the nail on the head with the centers. Ronny’s one of my favorite Wolves, but this is the 2nd straight season the team has had to deal with these injury problems, and they don’t have Love to torture backup centers as a fallback option. It’s just bad contingency planning. It’s as if the roster was constructed to compete if everything went right but tank if a few bad breaks happened.
Zoned out
Ha–looks like I was replying to Andy right around the time you were weighing in, PSR.
As I said above, my biggest problem with the zone is the seeming lack of context for deploying it. I mean, not only Lillard and Matthews from deep, but Aldridge from midrange seems like a zone killer, plus Lopez isn’t enough of a threat to have to protect Dieng and yet Flip still used it a fair bit against Portland.
But you were talking about execution, which is another problem. The perimeter guys don’t seem to know how to play a zone. Brewer is too antsy and Williams simply runs out of gas runnng the offense. (My polite excuse for his lack of energy on D.)
Maybe you are right about the tanking. I know the Wolves PR folks were selling a playoff push to the season ticket holders, at the same time they were emphasizing the brave new era of the young kids. Something had to give and somebody was getting fooled. Seems to me Saunders gave it away when he went with LaVine at the point when Rubio went down. I’m not complaining–I prefer development over a veteran fueled 29 wins. But as you say, that doesn’t mean development automatically happens with minutes. And that has been the most discouraging thing about the defense thus far–precious little actual learning on the job.
Zach Lavine
Hey Brit,
I love reading your articles.
So I have a quick question about Zach Lavine. I don’t understand why Flip is trying to make Zach in to a point guard. It seems like he has shooting guard written all over him but Flip wanted him to play point guard in the summer league and they could’ve gotten a point guard while Rubio was out pushing LaVine to the shooting guard position. Anyway, do you know if Flip wants him to be a point guard for the long term? if so, why? I think it’s going to screw up any chance Lavine had at being a good player and he would’ve been more effective as a shooting guard. What do you think of him long term point guard or shooting guard?
Thanks.
Jeff
The Shabazz Comment
Thanks again Britt for an insightful piece.
I found it very interesting that the Wolves were “somewhat adept” at defending mid range jumpers. I am not a defensive x’es and o’es mind by any means. Do you think this is a systematic choice by design? How does this make you feel about Flip or what does it say about him? How much do you pin on his tactical choices vs. youth? Has to be a mix of both as you addressed in comments above. But it is a little concerning to me that Brewer and Dieng “in theory” should make the defense among the starters better in lieu of the notorious swiss cheese duo of Martin and Pekovic. But those two have their own warts on D.
This level of valid and warranted concern towards Flip is supported by a very troublesome comment Shabazz Muhammad made after the Clippers game. This went unnoticed by the local beat and fans but I picked it up out of the post game video and tweeted it out from the Twolvesblog handle in my typical highly opinionated fashion, and it certainly caused quite a bit of chatter. ‘Bazz stated roughly that “giving the Clippers 3’s in order to defend inside” was part of Flip’s game plan. As you are surely aware, the Clippers subsequently outscored the Wolves by 39 from 3 and won by 26.
I would certainly value and consider a Devil’s Advocate opinion here, but I find these sorts of decisions and philosophies to be awful, damaging and eerily similar to the old Kurt Rambis/Randy Wittman catastrophes. Even more frustrating was the Wolves weren’t able to make up for the 3 barrage in any meaningful way defensively (or offensively, but that will always be the case with Flip). Very troubling as far as I’m concerned, if indeed Shabazz conveyed the message accurately.
I’ll chime in a little bit
The main concern with Pek is being able to contest shots, but Dieng has such problems holding post position that contesting shots almost becomes irrelevant. In some cases, that can be the difference between being stonewalled into a 5-foot hook shot or getting backed under the rim and dunked on. Turiaf can do both, but he’s also not healthy and wasn’t effective offensively last season unless Rubio and/or Love were also on the floor.
As for the Clippers strategy, the only justification I can see is that he thought it was their only shot to win, and they would either keep it close or get blown out. There’s some merit to that type of David/Goliath strategy, but they have enough athletes to help inside and contest 3s. Their answer every game to “what shots are we going to let them have?” seems to be too long to mount an effective defense.
Late to the party
Mike–
Sorry I didn’t respond to this sooner. Yes, Bazzy’s comment did generate quite a bit of comment and people who are disinclined to like Flip have some confirmation for their bias.
I’ve said it before: Flip taught me as much about basketball as anyone in the game (Globe sportswriter Bob Ryan is also in the running, as I read him religiously growing up in Massachusetts). His willingness to engage and talk hoops was a godsend to me when I was fresh on the beat and to this day he remains really open and as honest as possible to anything I ask him.
That said, his actions speak louder than words when it comes to long-distance shots. I believe his distaste for them is extreme and damaging, based on the long evidence of how his teams have played. Yet I remember right after he was named POBO saying that Golden State’s upset of Denver in that year’s playoffs was evidence of the need for long-range shooting. His first re-signing was Chase Budinger; his first free agent signing was Kevin Martin.
The guy has a solid basketball mind. I wish he would put it to better purpose in the contours of the more modern game.
As for Pek vs Dieng, PSR has it right as usual, although I would argue that he purposefully takes angles in his coverage to better become a rim protector and also to seal off dribble penetration. That he prioritizes this over man-on defense in the low block is problematical, but I do think the flaw isn’t totally physical and more a matter of choice.
BTW, I haven’t forgotten the spat we had this summer, PSR, about the rookies ability to shoot. The success of Wiggins and to a lesser extent LaVine in that regard puts you more in the right than I was thus far. Kudos.
Appreciate the comments and responses Greg and Britt.
The pack the paint, give them the 3 strategy would potentially work well against some teams (Lakers, Grizzlies, Kings), so there is a place for it. I guess I would have rather seen the Wolves do their best to continue to develop a scheme that addresses the strengths of the other team. These blowouts don’t bode well for building confidence in both short and long stretches. Choosing not to defend the 3 against Portland (educated assumption) and the Clippers is simply ridiculous.