Minnesota is on the brink.
After reaching the Western Conference Finals last season, the Timberwolves find themselves quickly at the precipice again.
Much of this was by their own design; before the season began they disrupted everything they had built by trading Karl-Anthony Towns for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo.
The reasons for the move have been argued elsewhere.
What’s evident is that Minnesota isn’t as good as last year. They’ve taken a step back from true contender to just another team in the West.
On the one hand, it’s easy to look at the downgrade and just point to Randle. Randle’s not the shooter KAT is, he’s worse defensively if nothing else just by virtue of his size, and he isn’t half the rebounder.
The Wolves’ ability to overwhelm teams with a double-big lineup of Towns and Gobert is gone as Randle isn’t a floor spacer and isn’t a true big. He’s a wrecking ball power forward who is best with the ball in his hands.
There's been talk of his disappearance in clutch minutes and his reaction, and it's clear the frustration is getting to both him and the Wolves as the losses pile up.
It’s easy to scapegoat him.
But take a look at this. This chart shows the performance of the Wolves when Anthony Edwards, their best offensive player, Rudy Gobert, their best defensive player, and Randle are either on or off the court together.
Randle is in all of the combinations that have a positive net rating. He’s out of all the combinations that have lost their minutes.
So what’s going on?
The Timberwolves have a balance problem
The answer has to do with how Randle fits not with Ant and Gobert but with the rest of the Wolves’ lineups, and one name in particular keeps popping up: Jaden McDaniels.
McDaniels was a standout last season. He was one of the best perimeter defenders in the league, agile and lithe, able to sneak around screens and disrupt ballhandlers while also leading them to Gobert’s swatting limbs.
McDaniels has never been a great shooter, and he wasn’t last season. He shot 33.7 percent last season and 32.7 this season from 3-point range. He hasn’t gotten remarkably worse. But the supporting offense has shifted.
Essentially, the Wolves traded their floor spacer for another creator. Last season, McDaniels didn’t need to space the floor. This season he does. And he can’t.
Minnesota’s halfcourt offense is a stunning 5.3 points worse per 100 possessions with McDaniels on the floor. Compare that with plus-1.6 for Randle.
Defensively, though, the impact is missing as well. With Randle on the floor, the halfcourt defense is dead even, (0.0) points per 100 possessions worse). But with McDaniels? Their defensive wing stopper? The halfcourt defense is 3.1 points worse somehow.
The easy answer would be that without KAT’s spacing, the combinations no longer work and that you have to balance the addition of Randle with spacing somewhere else on the floor. The numbers kind of suggest that.
But if you watch them play, there’s really not much of an indicator that teams are helping more off of McDaniels. They helped off him last year. The numbers for his wide-open catch-and-shoot attempts are pretty much the same year over year.
What’s evident is that this team is stuck between stations. Moving Towns for Randle was a downgrade of talent, but it adds some skills while removing others, even if the overall net impact was bad.
Randle provides another creator, which should help Anthony Edwards. Instead, the spacing gets compact like you see here.
Using Randle in pick-and-roll is a great way to use his creation and passing along with his scoring threat, but Gobert has to hang in dunker, and there’s just no spacing here for Edwards, Randle, or Gobert.
The éléphant in the room
(By the way, the French word for elephant is éléphant. No, they didn’t invent it, it comes from the Latin word for ivory. The more you know!)
Anthony Edwards has 179 assists this season.
Twenty-eight of them have been to Rudy Gobert. That’s fewer than passes to Julius Randle, Naz Reid, and even McDaniels. (McDaniels is shooting 30.2 percent on 3-point attempts off Edwards passes. Donte DiVincenzo is at 30.6 percent).
There are a lot of plays where Gobert’s open and you can see Edwards look it off. This was the same problem that arose late in Gobert’s Jazz tenure, where players simply didn’t trust him even on open looks.
Gobert’s scoring is down to 10 points from 14 last season. That’s a huge dropoff for a starter. Mike Conley helped balance that last season; Conley’s just going to make the right play no matter what.
This again points to the complicated problems with the Wolves.
Edwards and Randle are fine with one another, but neither has space with Gobert and McDaniels on the floor. Edwards and Gobert are at least successful with each other on the floor, but they need great spacing to make it work.
The pieces are fine. The parts are fine. The whole is not.
Maybe the answer is just “play better.” If McDaniels finishes better on cuts, if DiVincenzo progresses back to his usual great shooting, if the coaching staff can figure out adequate solutions.
But. if not, it might be time for the Wolves to reconfigure this team into something that makes sense again. The question is whether that means Randle needs to go, McDaniels needs moved… or both.
Stats courtesy of CleaningTheGlass.com, NBA.com, and DunksAndThrees.com.