Timberwolves rediscover rhythm, but search continues for winning blueprint

For 10 fourth-quarter minutes on the final day of November on Sunday night at Target Center, the Minnesota Timberwolves rediscovered the adrenaline rush of playing beautiful basketball. 

Gone was the stagnance of stand-and-dribble, of spot-up-and-wait, of the half-hearted defensive rotation and the moseying engagement with transition hoops. Gone were the instances of players’ faulty ignition defaulting into performative energy, into pretend, ineffectual bursts of effort. 

Instead, a crisp, cavorting teamwork blossomed, a gallivanting group oiled by joy and infused with the fiber of sweat equity. Offensive and defensive possessions were whipped together in the same swirl, a communal momentum that carried the clout of centrifugal force. Down by four to start the final quarter, the Wolves put a Spurs squad that had won five of their past six games into a blender, churning the margin to 36-16 before coach Chris Finch emptied the bench with a minute and 40 seconds left to play. 

Finch had signaled his desire to disrupt the status quo by opting for a small-ball lineup with five minutes to play in the third quarter and the Wolves down 77-70. Going to the bench was a lot of length — Rudy Gobert, Julius Randle and Jaden McDaniels — replaced by the smaller, springier trio of Mike Conley, Jaylen Clark and Terrence Shannon Jr., alongside Naz Reid and Anthony Edwards. Not surprisingly, Ant poured in points with more room to drive the lane and space to splash treys off feeds from long-range threats Naz and Conley. But the 19 points Minnesota scored through the rest of the quarter were nearly matched by the 16 San Antonio derived against a still-porous Wolves defense. 

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Finch returned with some beef and gristle in the form of McDaniels, Randle and Donte Divincenzo, but rested Ant and kept Gobert on the pine in favor of keeping Conley and Naz in the game for the fourth period.

“I thought we just needed a bunch of people out there who were going to stand up drives, kind of put the shoulder down,” Finch said in his postgame presser, later adding, “We have always said we are going to play the lineups that work and 90% of the time Rudy is driving a lot of great defense and a lot of good things. But tonight at one point they had 50-something points in the paint by the third quarter, so we had to change up something. They were too comfortable getting to the midrange jumper, too comfortable getting to the rim and we just had to be able to slow them down somehow.” 

The answer was a modified 2-1-2 zone defense spearheaded by McDaniels as the movable middle cog. He was especially effective hounding jitterbug point guard De’Aaron Fox, who had burned the Wolves for 21 points through three quarters, from the top of the arc down to the rim, making the zone occasionally look like a “box-and-one” scheme to stop Fox. It prompts the rare occasion where I’ll invoke Kevin Garnett as his visual comp. 

“I thought Jaden did a phenomenal job in the middle of the zone, taking all the guys who were coming downhill and directing traffic,” Finch raved. “We rebounded really well out of it, we flew around, contested well. They weren’t able to manipulate the matchups as they wanted. And then offensively we found great a rhythm.”

It was a rhythm goosed by Naz and DDV. Both are spree-seekers, players wired to tilt the pace forward and countenance chaos for the chance to lock into a giddier gear, an exalted tier where hedonistic instincts beget wise decisions.  

As Finch noted, everyone “flew around.” Conley eschewed the fountain for a firehose of youth, flinging himself just outside the circle under the rim to deter 250-pound center Luke Kornet, bum-rushing the corners on to close out on three-point attempts, and resurrecting the old Finch catechism of moving the ball, moving without the ball and making quick decisions on offense. 

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Randle was a choreographer of dervishes, drawing a crowd of defenders and then zipping it to teammates newly arrived in the corners, handoff-screening a drive to the cup, threading bounce passes and executing turnabout kick-outs. He stacked a whopping seven dimes in the fourth quarter alone, resulting in four treys and a trio of layups. Four went to DDV, two to McDaniels, one to Naz. Toss in his own bucket and he had a hand in 20 of the team’s 36 points in the period. 

Naz donned his folk hero cape, seemingly at his best in constant motion. Tough rebounds in traffic immediately become outlet passes even as his sprint up the court complicates an opponent’s transition defense and puts them in a bind since he’s an equal threat on a pull-up trey or a feed in rhythm for the flush. His two steals in the quarter were a poke-check off his man’s dribble and a lane-filling interception that morphed into an outlet pass and then his offensive rebound after the receiver of his outlet clanked a trey. 

And DiVincenzo, the “Big Ragu”? He had one of those merciless bouts that epitomize grime, digging a little deeper than everyone else, so he is well positioned to rub his opponent’s face in what he’s done. 

Midway through the fourth quarter, Ant replaced Conley and on his first possession hat-tipped the spirit of what he’d been watching by driving into two defenders and whipping a pass to DiVincenzo in the weakside corner, who caught it and twisted into a jumping overhand pass to Naz at the top of the arc, who drove straight up the lane toward three defenders and fed McDaniels cutting along the baseline for a slam dunk. 

It was the second night in a row that the Wolves came from behind in the second half to defeat a team with a winning record. At the onset of this abbreviated two-game homestand, they carried a three-game losing streak that featured crunchtime collapses of various ostentation and had yet to vanquish a foe who’d won more games than they’d lost this season. 

Back-to-back wins a tonic

The back-to-back wins over the Celtics and Spurs were a tonic, no question. But probably not a remedy for the uncertainty that persists about the character and reliable calling cards of this ballclub. 

The roster contains undeniable strengths on both sides of the ball, but synergizing them into a sustainable whole feels dauntingly complicated. What does it say that, considering the caliber of the competition, the Wolves just executed their most complete two-way quarter of the season without their tentpole defensive stalwart, Gobert, on the court for that final 12 minutes and the 5 minutes prior to that in the third period? 

On offense, Finch’s frequent invocation of Ant as the team’s “lead guard” would indicate that they are trying to adapt Ant’s monster skill set into the role of a heliocentric playmaker, the current rage around the league and a time-honored mold minted by Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. Abruptly deciding to go with DDV over Conley in the starting lineup furthers that strategy, as DiVincenzo is in the mode of John Paxton beside MJ and Derek Fisher beside Kobe in the backcourt. 

But what about Julius Randle, who Finch has painstakingly cheer-led to near-elite “point forward” status, most recently evidenced by Randle’s dozen-dimes-to-single-turnover ratio versus the Spurs? And what does that say about Rob Dillingham, the ballyhooed lottery pick whose youth and size portend inconsistency but whose accelerated development would cost this avowed championship contender precious games in the standings? 

Timberwolves’ ‘youth core’ still skaky

Dillingham is one of the three recent draft picks that Finch described in the preseason as the “youth core” expected to supply more depth in the wake of Nickeil Alexander-Walker’s injurious departure. The inspiring play of Shannon Jr. in the preseason elevated him as NAW’s heir apparent, at least as far as providing pace, scoring and supposedly rugged defense was concerned. 

But Shannon flopped in the first few weeks of real basketball this season, then injured his ankle, while the third “youth core” member, Jaylen Clark, became a needle-moving stud on defense, capable of raising the floor on units that didn’t have Gobert’s majestic defensive prowess as an abiding crutch. No matter: When Shannon was deemed good to go, he ate into the bulk of Clark’s minutes, enough to watch the caliber of his play careen from shoddy to stupendous and back again. 

Through the first ten games of this season, the Wolves went 6-4 and had the 4^th ranked offense (points scored per possession) but the 20^th ranked defense (points allowed per possession). In their second ten games, they again went 6-4 but with the 15^th ranked offense and the 3^rd ranked defense. It adds up to a top-ten team on both sides of the ball (8^th on offense, 10^th on defense) with the 8^th best net rating (points scored minus points allowed per possession) in the 30-team NBA. 

But 12-8 is a record that puts the Wolves 6^th in the Western Conference, and tied for 11^th in the NBA overall. Per basketball-reference.com, they have played the 4^th easiest schedule in the league, including an 11-game string of mostly-patsies in the first three weeks of November that I believe has hindered any meaningful measurement or honing of their development. They have suffered minimal injuries. 

In lieu of a solid, easy-to-discern blueprint for the type of success they aspire to, the Wolves have an assortment of worthwhile contingencies. Losing Kyle Anderson last season and NAW this time around sacrificed a lot of precious glue; the aging of Conley and the ongoing lopsidedness of Gobert’s unique skill set further muddles the evolutionary flow. 

The optimistic take is that properly assembling the pieces has been a hallmark of Finch’s coaching prowess throughout his tenure. He incorporated Gobert and KAT, then Randle and Gobert into genuine synergy, and now, in a different sense, must sort out exactly how Randle and Ant run the show, especially in the crucible of crunch time, and how best to maximize what can still be invaluable contributions from Conley and of course Gobert. 

Are the Wolves more, less, or equal to the sum of the parts on this roster? That’s a trick question: The sum is inextricably linked to the ways they are wielded, and the ways they respond. 

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