The Art of Defensive Targeting
For a while there, the Wolves had a plan...and then Jaden Hardy got subbed out.
If one is to believe Draymond Green and the internet’s screaming hordes, Minnesota is down 0-3 in the Western Conference finals because 4 time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert can’t stay in front of Dallas’ guards. Dallas’ offensive ratings so far in the series have been 114.9, 117.2, and 128.9 points per 100 possessions. That game 3 number aside, Minnesota has held Dallas below its regular season scoring output (118.4.) The Timberwolves have not put the clamps on the Mavericks, but they haven’t been a sieve either. Not to mention that Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving have made some ridiculous shots.
Where Minnesota has come up short in this series has been on offense. Kevin Harlan called one late game possession “disjointed”. There doesn’t appear to be any single explanatory factor, but rather a combination: lingering fatigue from the Denver series in Game 1, Karl-Anthony Towns in a shooting slump, hesitant decision making in critical moments, and a Dallas defense that is very real. Despite the lopsided series score, each game has come down to the wire and with such tight margins, that’s one too many factors.
Minnesota’s best offensive stretch as a team in Sunday’s Game 3 straddled the end of the third quarter and the opening moments of the fourth.1 The Timberwolves found success by repeatedly targeting Jaden Hardy on defense. Weak defenders get hunted in the playoffs; indeed, Dallas’ playoff run owes a good bit of success to Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic surprising robustness on the defensive side of the ball. When it comes to defenders being hunted, the picture that typically comes to mind is of an offensive force hunting the defender out on a switch and cooking him one-on-one. Think Lebron James getting Steph Curry on him in those Cavaliers-Warriors matchups, or more recently, Luka pulling Gobert out to the perimeter. The Timberwolves took a different tack with Hardy, exploiting his inattention and lack of experience off the ball.
Let’s start with just under a minute to go in the third and Hardy (Mavericks number 1) marking Nickeil Alexander-Walker. Instead of following NAW’s cut out to the corner, Hardy stays in the lane and tries to draw a charge on Anthony Edwards, even though PJ Washington has dug in from the arc to cover for Edwards’ man, Derrick Jones Jr. trailing the play.
Seeing NAW unmarked in the corner as Kyle Anderson starts to reverse the ball around the arc, Dwight Powell is caught between Naz Reid and NAW, leading to a Reid three.
Some of the fault there lies with Powell, who should be sticking with Reid and relying on Jones Jr. to cover NAW behind him. The Powell/Hardy combined again to gift Minnesota a bucket on the next play. The Mavericks opt to send two men to Anthony Edwards on the ball. That decision triggers defensive rotations that, when executed poorly, open up holes. Luka rotates up from the corner onto KAT, prompting Washington to take Luka’s man, NAW, in the corner. Hardy’s first rotation, onto Washington’s man Kyle Anderson in the post, is good. Dallas ideally wants Hardy to follow his tag of Anderson out onto Reid on the perimeter, while Dwight Powell rotates onto Anderson in the post. That keeps Dallas’ center closest to the basket, both as a rim protector and a rebounder.
Instead, Powell and Hardy botch/don’t communicate the off-ball switch. Once KAT gets a step on Luka, the shorter Hardy presents little resistance to KAT.
Minnesota opened the fourth with a clever floppy set for a Conley three. Clever because Hardy ends up the patsy even though he isn’t initially on Conley. Watch the set a few times. The Mavericks have Hardy guarding NAW, the Wolves’ least threatening offensive player…so the Wolves have Reid set an off-ball screen for NAW. With Hardy falling behind the play, Josh Green calls out a switch (Green→NAW, Hardy→Reid).
Key to this play is Minnesota’s awareness that Dallas wants Daniel Gafford as a rim protector near the basket. So as Reid cuts through the lane, Gafford tags Reid and inches towards the basket, Reid runs into a back screen on Kyrie Irving for Kyrie’s man, Conley. Kyrie calls out a switch (Hardy→Conley) with one eye on both Anderson and Reid. A switch that Hardy does not execute, as Conley runs off of a KAT screen for a wide open three.
One almost feels bad for Hardy there; that’s a lot to process in two seconds. And Kyrie did him no favors by trying to hand Conley off. Contrast that with another play later in the fourth (with Hardy now on the bench), where Kyrie blew up a near-identical set by sticking with Conley as late as he could.
Kyrie’s head is on a swivel there and as soon as Conley makes his move off of Reid’s screen, Kyrie is in hot pursuit. Knowing that he is about to fall behind off of KAT’s screen, Kyrie pushes Washington out onto Conley, deterring the three. A subtle shove on KAT then helps Kyrie come away with the steal. Hardy probably wishes the veteran had shown that kind of effort earlier.
One feels less bad for Hardy on this next play. With Gafford out on the perimeter and Hardy switched onto KAT in the post, Washington tries to execute an off-ball switch (Washington→KAT, Hardy→NAW on the perimeter) that Hardy again misses. In the resultant confusion, Kyle Anderson gets off one of his patented Slo Mo push shots
Watch Washington pointing the switch out to Hardy:
It’s hard to fault Hardy too much on this next play; with Gafford tagging Reid’s roll, Hardy does the right thing initially by zoning up between NAW and Gafford’s man, Anderson. However, as NAW slides up to the top of the arc, Hardy needs to be aware of the bigger threat. NAW is one pass away and closer to the ball, while Anderson is a 24% shooter from the corners. The skip pass out to the corner also gives a scrambling defense more time to recover.
As it stood, Dallas got lucky and NAW missed the three. Hardy was subbed out shortly thereafter and Dallas held the Wolves off the rest of the way. Plus/minus numbers are noisy, but in this case, it wasn’t a coincidence that the Mavericks were a -6 in Hardy’s minutes on the floor. Some of that is on Hardy, some on Hardy’s teammates (Powell, Kyrie, etc.), some on Minnesota actually running a stretch of smart offense.
The trouble for the Wolves is that they haven’t displayed this sort of offensive verve nearly enough. It might be too late, but one adjustment might be to feature Kyle Anderson more going forward. Good things seemed to happen for Minnesota in Game 3 when Slo Mo initiated the offense. Watch the floater above, or the Quarterback keeper play below. With Minnesota’s two offensive stars still relatively inexperienced in the playoffs, the Wolves might need to call on some veteran guile.
Or as the bard said, maybe the best adjustment is to “play better”.
I say best stretch as a team because Anthony Edwards had a dominant individual stretch earlier in the third; as good as Ant has been these playoffs, I’m not sure that is sustainable over entire games.