Even after giving up 133 points to the Phoenix Suns on Wednesday, the Minnesota Timberwolves boast the league’s best defense. Opponents score only 105.7 points per 100 possessions on the Wolves, nearly eight points better than league average. Coupled with a league average offense, The Wolves have the third best net rating and an 8-3 record. This was the vision when Tim Connelly traded everything shy of Prince’s Estate for Rudy Gobert.
Let’s get the obligatory variance caveat out of the way: Opponents have been extraordinarily bricky nearly everywhere. Minnesota ranks top five, or top ten at worst, on opponent shooting from nearly every part of the floor per Cleaning the Glass. In particular, teams have been unusually cold on open shots against the Wolves per NBA Advanced Stats. There will be regression on that front.
Nevertheless, some of this is by design. While the Timberwolves give up a league average number of threes, they run opponents out of the corners. Only two other teams give up a fewer proportion of opponent shots at the rim, per Cleaning the Glass. Minnesota is taking away the most lucrative parts of the floor. The Timberwolves are also long across the board; it is hard to shoot over, or pass through, a maze of arms. On that front, Minnesota is top ten in forcing turnovers.
Minnesota has cleaned up some of the basics, starting with the most obvious one: rebounding. After ranking bottom five in defensive rebounding rate in each of the past two seasons, the Timberwolves have crawled up to league average this year. Some of that stems from a team-wide commitment to boxing out. Although Jaden McDaniels gets credited with the rebound in the clip below, both Mike Conley Jr. and Gobert put robust box outs in.
Even Karl-Anthony Towns, someone whose individual rebounding numbers haven’t always translated to better team rebounding, is getting in on the boxing out action.
Not surprisingly, the story of the Wolves’ defense starts with Gobert. Between his Jazz teams having a string of underwhelming playoff exits and the Timberwolves’ extravagant outlay in trading for him, Gobert’s place in the #discourse is a curious one. Much like with Joe Johnson post-Hawks contract, Gobert is vastly underrated by many fans. Rudy Gobert is really freaking good! Part of the problem is that so much of Gobert’s value exists in the negative space of what does not happen; drives deterred, teammates closing out hard on shooters with the knowledge that he can clean up on the back end, opponents picking up their dribbles with nowhere to go. Gobert gets no credit in the box score for the turnover below, but he blots Jamal Murray out:
Or how about this next one: it looks like Jayson Tatum has a runway to the rim…until he doesn’t.
(Sidebar: Peek Anthony Edwards, number 5, zoning up behind Gobert and then closing out on Jaylen Brown’s shot. For all the justifiable talk around his offense, Ant is putting it together on the other side of the ball as well.)
Time after time, Gobert has opponents turning the ball over, or passing out of opportunities that might be layups in most other contexts.
This story isn’t new. Opponents have always scored less efficiently with Gobert on the floor vs. off, in large part because he takes away the most valuable real estate: shots at the rim (the below from CTG.)
Gobert has also given Minnesota some buffer when it comes to pick and roll defense. In a league where the pick and roll is fundamental to half court offense, Minnesota has typically struggled with how to deploy Karl-Anthony Towns as the roll man defender. KAT remains an iffy defender, prone to meandering off his man, or falling a step behind plays even as everyone else can see them unfolding. I mean:
What even is that?
Coach Chris Finch usually has KAT coming up to the level of the screen, before recovering back onto his man late.
Should the screener roll free, Gobert lies in wait.
Minnesota will live with Dario Saric taking that mid-ranger, even though he cans it on this occasion.
In general, the difference in how opponents approach the Wolves when Gobert is on vs. off the floor is noticeable. The Wolves have often deployed Gobert in a Robert Williams-style weak side roamer to leverage his deterrence threat. That threat is most noticeable when it is absent. Here, with Naz Reid on in place of Gobert and after KAT meanders out of position, Saric drives past KAT and all the way to the rim:
Curiously, over 250 possessions, lineups with Towns on the floor and Gobert off are smoking opponents by 13.5 points per 100 possessions and boast a 103 defensive rating. That is almost certainly a statistical anomaly stemming from teams shooting 26% from three against those lineups. The eye test does not suggest that the KAT-Naz Reid pairing can cover up KAT’s defensive flaws quite as effectively.
Gobert copped an unfair share of criticism when his Utah teams’ defense did not hold up in the playoffs. A key difference between those teams and the current Minnesota one: point of attack defense. In Jaden McDaniels and even Anthony Edwards, the Wolves have the tools to hassle opponents out on the perimeter as well. The Wolves trot McDaniels out on the best players and he has been more than up to the challenge. Watch him chase Steph Curry over a screen and deter a pull up attempt here:
The Timberwolves had McDaniels on Kevin Durant and Anthony Edwards on Devin Booker in their game against the Suns. The difference in screen navigation was noticeable as Booker repeatedly sliced the Wolves apart out of high pick and rolls.
Speaking of which: the Suns victory, and their use of picks set high up the floor, provides a template of sorts for how teams can rain points on the Wolves. I don’t want to read too much into that one game; Minnesota was on the second night of an emotionally draining back-to-back (see: chokehold heard around the world) and Phoenix couldn’t miss from beyond the arc. Still, with Rudy Gobert always sitting back in a deep drop, a high pick and roll attack may hold a lot of promise. Phoenix was on it from the get go; they got Grayson Allen an open three out of a Spain pick and roll on the game’s first play.
Maybe Mike Conley sticks with Allen there and let’s Booker take his chance running at Gobert downhill? I’ll be curious to see how Minnesota defends those kinds of actions going forward. Golden State had it’s most successful stint against the Wolves in the first game (not the one where Klay threw a tantrum and Draymond went MMA on Gobert) when they kept dialing up Steph-Draymond pick and rolls.
(Sidebar: The only reason McDaniels doesn’t get a rearview contest in there is because Draymond sticks an elbow into his neck. That could easily have been called an offensive foul, with the basket waved off.)
McDaniels managed to put in a solid recovery on half those plays.
Notice the difference in where the screens are set in the Warriors game versus the Suns one. Maybe teams take their lead from the Suns and start setting screens much higher up the floor to fully exploit Gobert’s deep drop? Or they run enough off ball action to first get a different defender onto the ball handler? Of course, that brings other headaches to offenses; that off ball stuff burns time off the clock and potentially brings the action closer to the arc. Those are the kinds of tradeoffs that defenders like McDaniels force you into making.
The core personnel are going to change in Minnesota next season as some tricky contract decisions come due. Nevertheless, the blueprint for a top defense is in place as long as that core includes Gobert and McDaniels.