The Minnesota Timberwolves have continued their Jekyll and Hyde season all the way up to the final week of the regular season.
Over the final month and a half of the season, the Wolves have posted a record of 9-8, in which they have had three two-game winning streaks and two two-game losing streaks. During the winning streaks, they look like the two-time Western Conference Finals team that fans have come to expect with wins over Denver, Boston, Golden State, Houston and Phoenix. In the losses, they look more like an injury-plagued team that struggles to score for long stretches, causing them to score under 110 points seven times.
The wins are attributed to resilience, whereas the losses are due to injury.
Injuries Stacking Up
What’s interesting is, through it all, the Wolves have been fairly healthy throughout the majority of the regular season. Sure, Anthony Edwards missed four games at the beginning of the season way back in October. TJ Shannon has also missed time sporadically throughout the season. Until the calendar turned to March, it seemed the Wolves’ super power this season would have been its health.
Then March hit and Edwards went down with Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome, commonly known as runners knee. Jaden McDaniels fell victim to a bone bruise and Naz Reid has been playing through everything from shoulder injuries to sprained ankles. These are just the key injuries. Other than those key players, Kyle Anderson missed a game due to knee pain while Ayo Dosunmu missed time due to a thumb and calf injury.
While injuries are happening at the worst time for the Wolves as they battle for playoff seeding, there is a silver lining. They have forced the Wolves to get back to their roots and focus on the defensive side of the ball to win games. This has finally given them an identity to carry into the playoffs.
Focusing on Defense
The defensive identity has been something the Wolves have been searching for since the early practices of the season, and Wolves head coach Chris Finch talked about his concern over the Wolves lack of defensive identity after the Wolves’ loss to the Denver Nuggets on Oct. 27.
“I mean, very concerned about it right now, to be honest with you.” Finch said “They have been extremely inconsistent defensively”
Shannon would echo Finch’s message just a day later after practice.
“We got to find our defensive identity and we all just got to play better,” Shannon said. “It’s a learning experience and it’s only going to get better”
Through the first 56 games of the season all the way up until the All-Star Break, the Wolves were putting together a fairly impressive defensive resume. Their 112.4 defensive rating ranked seventh in the league and their 34-22 record put the Wolves in the heat of playoff seeding. However, the defensive identity was still the talk of the season, especially after a loss to Chicago on Jan. 22 that caused Finch to again publicly call out the team’s lack of defensive identity. A statement that Edwards agreed with post-game.
“I think he’s right. If I play half way like myself tonight we win the game, so I don’t really blame nobody but myself,” Edwards said. “I just got to play better in the game.”
Then came the month of February, in which the Wolves’ defensive rating slipped down to 19th at 115.5. The worst month of the season by defensive rating. As the calendar turned to March the injuries mounted. And as the Wolves got more hurt, they found it increasingly hard to score. Minnesota’s offensive rating plummeted to 110.4, down considerably from their season average of 115.2. As the Wolves’ offense plummeted and got stuck in the mud, their defense would bear down and rise to an elite level of 110.1, 1.7 points better than their season average. The 110.1 rating would be good for the third-best defense in the regular season, had the Wolves had this type of defense from the beginning of the year.
Over the past ten games, the Wolves defense would go up another level as they posted a 104.3 defensive rating. A rating that trailed only Portland over that period of time for the best defense in the league and is 1.8 points better than Oklahoma City’s league-leading season mark of 106.1. The shift in focus for the Wolves has come out of necessity of injuries but hasn’t gone unnoticed as Bones Hyland explained after a 116-104 victory over the Suns on March 17 to all but clinch the six-seed.
“Coach came in and said this is one of the best defensive games that we’ve played,” Bones said. “Jaden man, I ain’t gonna lie, I don’t know how he do it man. He locks a lot of players up and he do it with no emotion. Took (Devin Booker) out the game even though he had 30-something.”
With the Wolves now turning their attention to getting healthy before the playoffs, they have learned to lean on their defense to win and grind out games, something Minnesota has done each of the past two seasons.
The ups and downs may continue as the final few games are played, but at least the Wolves have a consistent identity they can carry into the playoffs. And only time will tell if that will be enough to make another deep playoff run.