It feels like it was just yesterday the Minnesota Timberwolves could smell their first NBA Finals berth.
Off the heels of beating the defending champion Denver Nuggets in an exhilarating seven-game series, a defensive-minded Timberwolves team clawed their way to their first Western Conference Finals run in 20 years. Anthony Edwards was getting Michael Jordan comparisons. Karl-Anthony Towns was brushing off any notion he couldn’t perform on the big stage. Questions about the Rudy Gobert trade seemed like a distant memory.
What a difference eight months can make. After winning 56 games last season, the 19-17 Timberwolves sit just two games above .500 nearly halfway through the year. Towns is off in New York, enjoying one of the best seasons of his career as a Knick. And what once looked like a championship-contending roster is middling in the Western Conference, suffering from a severe case of identity crisis.
Let’s dig into what’s been ailing them.
Mike Conley’s Decline
When the Timberwolves initially traded Towns for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo, they were making a few bets. One of those bets was relying on the now 37-year-old Mike Conley to keep the ship steady as a table-setter offensively.
Unfortunately, Father Time remains undefeated. Conley is averaging eight points per game, shooting 35% from the field and dishing out just over four assists a night. His burst and mobility aren’t what they were even a year ago, which has severely hurt the Timberwolves’ offense.
It’s hampered how engaged Gobert can be on that end for them without his pick-and-roll partner being involved as much offensively. Edwards isn’t there yet as a playmaker (especially as a lob passer), and despite Gobert’s offensive limitations, they’ve left a lot of food on the table because Conley was excellent at getting the Wolves their most efficient looks: rim attempts.
The Wolves are 22nd in rim frequency this season after finishing 11th in 2023-24. Conley led the team in at-rim assists last year with nearly 200, and many of those (91) were to Gobert.
Hoping to spark a change, head coach Chris Finch tweaked his starting lineup recently, moving DiVincenzo in and bringing Conley off the bench, with the idea Conley could help orchestrate the offense for their second unit and DiVincenzo could provide some much-needed spacing for the starters. It’s a natural shift in the right direction and only puts more of an onus on Edwards to sharpen his instrument as a playmaker for this team. But that won’t come without its growing pains, especially on this version of the Timberwolves.
A Lack Of Spacing And Its Impact On Anthony Edwards
Edwards’s 3-point volume this season has been a highly debated topic. Is it out of necessity? Pure experimentation? Or the next evolution of his game?
In all likelihood, it’s a combination of it all, but it can’t be ignored he’s shouldering a large portion of the shooting load on this team. Edwards is taking 25 percent of the Wolves’ nightly threes (10 per game), about the same percentage as Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors. And while he’s hitting them at a career-best clip of 43 percent, it’s hard not to recognize Minnesota’s reliance on it as a source of offense.
Especially in the context of the Timberwolves’ starting lineup. Gobert is a known non-shooter, Jaden McDaniels is knocking down 33 percent of his threes on a lowly four attempts a night and Randle is knocking down just over 35% of his looks on five attempts per game. An outside shot for any of those players is a clear win for the defense (except Randle, who can catch fire at times).
Not only has this thoroughly suffocated the driving lanes Edwards’ athleticism and explosiveness would ideally take advantage of, but it’s also made his job as the team’s lead playmaker much more difficult. Edwards has been vocal about his struggles initiating offense for the Timberwolves this season, having to switch from his score-first mentality to a more altruistic approach.
Pretty much the entirety of Anthony Edwards’s postgame media was him talking about his frustration with the way teams are putting two on him, taking away his opportunities to be a scorer and forcing him to get off the ball.
“It’s not how I want to play, of course. I’m only 23, I… pic.twitter.com/7bJdFS6zeU
— Dane Moore (@DaneMooreNBA) January 3, 2025
Edwards’s assist-to-usage rate ratio is 0.64, ranking in the 9th percentile for his position. His woeful 1.29 assist-to-turnover ratio is near the bottom of the league for high-usage players (Randle is there, too). That said, he is improving. He’s up to nearly 1.1 points per 100 possessions as a pick-and-roll ball-handler (including passes), which ranks in the 76th percentile for his position. That number drops when the defense commits, or he’s trapped, but both numbers have improved since last season.
But put simply, he looks better when he operates in space.
Very happily on Dad duties so no video this morning but in regards to Ant’s comments on the spacing I’d wager the 3rd quarter is where his frustrations bubbled over.
Notice how many bodies are in front of him or in the gaps/at the rim and who they’re helping off. pic.twitter.com/XeTRvAMIOT
— Jake Paynting (@HowlsAndGrowls_) December 20, 2024
Six of the Wolves’ 10 best three-man lineups include either DiVincenzo or Naz Reid. When those two are joined by Edwards, Randle and Nickeil Alexander Walker, Minnesota touts a plus-17 net rating and robust 124 offensive rating (this is its second-most common lineup). The Wolves prioritizing spacing around their enigmatic star means good things happen.
It just hasn’t been a seamless process, and it’s been made more difficult by an on-court context that typically does not enhance his primary advantage creation tool: driving the basketball.
But perhaps with this latest starting lineup change, they will begin trending in the right direction.
The Julius Randle Dilemma
All of the above issues have been pinned on Randle somewhat unfairly.
Don’t get me wrong, despite being a former All-NBA forward and All-Star, Randle has flaws. The ball sticks when he touches it. Like Edwards, he too struggles to manipulate defenses and make complex reads as a passer. His streaky outside shooting makes him an inconsistent source of 3-point volume for a team (and a starting lineup) in need of the boost.
However, all of these flaws are exacerbated by roster issues outside of Randle.
Conley isn’t the same player he was last season. DiVincenzo has begun shooting the ball better, but he, too, started the year in a deep, profound funk. McDaniels has not progressed offensively and has been unable to consistently develop his outside shot, making the spacing for Randle to operate in his patent high-post isolations much more sparse.
The Wolves have found more success when Reid and Gobert are paired together (plus-four net rating in over 400 minutes this season) than the Randle-Gobert combination (a big fat zero in 400 minutes). Why? Well, Reid is a much more willing outside shooter, and he’s not relied upon as much to facilitate or create his own shot as Randle.
Randle, for his part, is still averaging 19 points, seven rebounds and 4.4 assists on 60 percent true shooting with his lowest usage rate since his time with the Los Angeles Lakers.
This might sound like I’m shooting too much bail for an All-NBA player. But the Wolves knew who they were trading for. Eleven years into his NBA career, Randle is who he is. Expecting any sort of radical change is foolish. But the lack of spacing and ball-handling next to him isn’t doing him any favors, much like it isn’t for Edwards.
That said, the actual area where Randle has hampered the Wolves is defensively. They give up nearly 7 points per 100 possessions more on defense when he’s on the court – the worst mark of any player on the team getting consistent rotation minutes.
Reid and Gobert fare so much better together because the Timberwolves are leaps and bounds better defensively when those two share the floor (105 defensive rating). Swap Randle in for Reid alongside Gobert and the defensive rating plummets to 112. He constantly falls asleep off the ball, makes poor decisions in his rotations and isn’t a good enough rim protector to viably play center.
Oh no Julius Randle.
There are times when falling asleep on defense is tenable, being solely responsible for covering Steph Curry off-ball is…not one of those times.pic.twitter.com/2tG04z8z7x
— Hot Hand Theory (@HotHandTheory) December 7, 2024
What Comes Next For Minnesota?
There’s no real solution to most of the Timberwolves’ issues, hence their identity crisis.
This team is trying to be something it’s not. Or at least, when it made the Towns trade, Minnesota banked on becoming something it likely can’t be anymore.
The Wolves likely didn’t foresee Conley regressing, DiVincenzo slumping and McDaniels’ offensive development stalling. And now they’re stuck trying to operate from a position of weakness in an ever-competitive Western Conference.
Still, all hope isn’t lost. It never is when you have a superstar with the abilities of Edwards. It’s just about finding the right combination of players around him to enhance his best qualities and mitigate his shortcomings.
Maybe, that’s not this season. Maybe, it’s not this group of players.
Or, maybe, all that’s required is more time. Two seasons ago, after acquiring Gobert, the Wolves went through a similar feel-out process before genuinely breaking out last season as contenders.
But nothing will change — until it does. Perhaps, replacing Conley with DiVincenzo ignites this team and establishes the proper lineup balance it needs around Edwards, Randle and Gobert. This certainly isn’t the start to 2024-25 or encore to 2023-24 Minnesota envisioned, but there’s ample time left to rocket up the jumbled, jam-packed Western Conference.
For now, we just have to wait and see.
