2015-16 NBA Preview: Minnesota Timberwolves

MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES

A year removed from trading another Kevin, this time Kevin Love, the Timberwolves have an uphill climb in three feet of Minnesota snow but they’re ahead of schedule, having nabbed the number one pick two years in a row while retaining the services of a young high-level point guard in Ricky Rubio. Sadly, Flip Saunders passed away on Sunday. The outpouring of emotion showed how beloved a figure he was and what influence he had. This team was his project, and they’ll begin the season with heavy hearts.

2015 in review:

The Timberwolves came into the season with a fascinating case study where they lost a polarizing all-star, Kevin Love, and had a historically unique disparity between point differential and total wins. Most statistical projections had the Timberwolves somewhere in the 30 to 40 win range. Instead, due to injuries, the team completely fell part, and they somehow outraced the 76ers to the league’s worst record. It’s tough to say how good the team could have been last year with all the moving parts, but losing Rubio early derailed the season irreparably.

Rotation players in: Karl-Anthony Towns, Nemanja Bjelica, Andre Miller.

Rotation players out: Thaddeus Young, Chase Budinger, Mo Williams, Anthony Bennett. 

Minnesota skipped over highly coveted prospect Jahil Okafor for Karl-Anthony Towns, and in so doing, as I argued, they actually chose the more old-fashioned center with a varied skillset and range. He probably won’t be good right away as most rookies aren’t, but he’s a tantalizing prospect. To add to the logjam in the frontcourt, Nemanja Bjelica is coming off a performance in the EuroBasket tournament where he played well against NBA players like Nikola Mirotic and Pau Gasol to add to his recent Euroleague MVP. In fact, Nikola Mirotic is a good comparison because Bjelica is a forward with NBA-ready range and scoring skills. Andre Miller will presumably serve as a veteran presence for their young guards and hold down the point guard position for stretches due to Zach LaVine’s struggles there. Thad Young was traded midseason, and they don’t have room for him anyway. He was used to summon Kevin Garnett, who returned from the dark recesses of the East. Chase Budinger’s shooting could have been useful, while Mo Williams had his veteran point guard job usurped by Miller. Anthony Bennett was laid out on an ice floe somewhere in Canada.

2016 Projected

For the first step in an evaluation, Minnesota should be significantly better simply because it’s unlikely they’ll quite as unhealthy in 2015-16 as they were in 14-15. According to ESPN, they were second in games missed due to injuries and first in minutes lost. With a new trainer, they may not lose so much production to injuries.

The biggest boost due to good health would be the availability of Ricky Rubio, who’s stealthily an advanced stats wizard despite his shooting issues. Most advanced projection systems love the Timberwolves more than subjective evaluators because of him. His playmaking is top-notch, and Minnesota has consistently played a lot better with him on the court. Due to the glut of high-caliber point guards in the league and the conference imbalance, it’s tough to get him into a conservation about the top X players, overall or by position, but he deserves some recognition for his play and if his shooting is late-blooming, he could become truly excellent.

In the other backcourt slot, Andrew Wiggins is coming off a season where he won rookie of the year pretty much because he played heavy minutes[4. Wiggins nearly led the league in minutes played (Harden was the leader), and a rookie has actually led the league in that before: Lillard.]. All snark aside, it was a fairly promising season for a teenager, and there were a few clues displayed at how he could become a great player. He’s just not there yet. As one projection system notes, his stats don’t scream “superstar.”

One issue with Andrew Wiggins and projecting future Minnesota players is that their defense was so awful that most of their players came off looking similarly awful[1. The CARMELO system from FiveThirtyEight is interesting, but it’s not fit for rigorous prediction ability and they strangely compared him to the actual Carmelo Anthony on defense, when just about every scout and expert have noted his defensive potential.]. The issue with metrics is that since most are fit to a team’s overall rating, the team rating’s will guide a player’s numbers, unless some intelligent adjustments are built-in and even then it’s still an issue. And to put it simply, Wiggins is so young that the error bar around any prediction is gigantic. We don’t know how good he’ll be, and we can’t pretend we do.

Speaking of defense, Minnesota has the dreaded duo of Kevin Martin and Zach LaVine. Both players were horrid defenders, but at least LaVine is young enough that he could improve. He’s a thin waif of a defender who can get pushed around easily, but it also means he can do things like this. As for Martin, it’s curious that he’s even still on the roster, as some contending team could use his outside shooting. The team is a weird mix and match of college-aged guys and long-tenured veterans.

Minnesota is unnaturally deep at the center position for such a poor team. How they sort through Karl-Anthony Towns, Nikola Pekovic, Gorgui Dieng, and Kevin Garnett will drive their season and their future. Playing the young guys will make them worse immediately but it’s an investment long-term. Towns might be the one effectively playing power forward a lot next to the other big men. Garnett, in particular, is too old to chase around stretch fours and Pekovic has the width of a barn and would do better at center.

The obsession with veterans is so severe Tayshaun Prince is on the roster and one source suggested he’ll be the starting small forward. A core of with him, Rubio, Wiggins, and Towns is at least an outline of a good defense, and they have a lot to improve there, as they had the league’s worst defense and were last in both shot defense and rebounding, per basketball-reference. That’s actually one good reason to be pessimistic on Gorgui Dieng’s future: their defense was miserable and they were just as bad on the boards, plus he’s already 25.

Quick statistic/graph

The lone huge positive contributor on the Timberwolves is Ricky Rubio. His plus/minus stats are stellar, and he’s often called one of the league’s best defenders at point guard, but there’s an important distinction here. Having a positive defensive plus/minus doesn’t mean you’re a lock-down defender who’s great at individual defense. Defense itself is a team-level activity and there are multiple paths to value. Rubio derives his high value from creating an enormous number of turnovers. From my own research, I found that drawing offensive fouls is a very valuable skill, as have others.

Via the table below[6. Please note that only seasons 2006 to 2015, as well as 2000 for some reason are available, and nothing in between or before.], Rubio has the unofficial record for generating the most turnovers per minute in a season, which includes offensive fouls drawn and steals. He has the fourth highest season too, and both his abbreviated 2015 season and his rookie year would have ranked high too if he hadn’t missed the minutes cutoff: he was at 3.0 turnovers per 36 minutes last season and 2.9 during his first. You may also note the interesting palette of defenders below, many under-appreciated from upright-mop Anderson Varejao to Gerald “Crash” Wallace to Eddie Jones to flopping maestro Derick Fisher.

Table: Most turnovers created by season, 2000+2006-15 (source: stats.NBA.com)

Summary

As Minnesota changes for the future, Kevin Garnett remains as the visage to some tortured past. A few months after he was drafted, Karl-Anthony Towns was born — Garnett is one of the longest-tenured players in history and he’s sharing a rebuilding project with fellow veterans Kevin Martin, Tayshaun Prince, and Andre Miller. Garnett’s had an odyssey as an NBA player, moving from phenom to superstar to disappointment to redemptive figure, and as he fades into the twilight of his career he might see the faint glimmer of hope in the Timberwolves and their future. And Flip Saunders was one of the most important people in his career, and the entire team and league will miss his presence.

PBP-Metric[1. This is the initial version of my own metric, which uses a full range of stats collected from play-by-play logs and tested extensively to avoid overfitting.]: 30.1

PT-PM: 29

Nick‘s[2. For a short description, the predictions use regression models and neural networks to apply various stats like BPM, RAPM, and Win Shares to 10,000 simulations of the season game-by-game to select the “best” result.]: 20

Nathan Walker: 27