Will This Be the Timberwolves' Year?

The Timberwolves are one of the best teams in the NBA this year. But will they continue being good throughout the rest of the regular season and the playoffs? We will be analyzing that question and trying to see if they can stay good through the playoffs.

The Wolves are the best defensive team in the league. They average (on Feb 10) 107.1 opponent points per game. The next best in the league is 109.3 opponent points per game. If you don’t understand, the lower the better. Rudy Gobert has gone back to DPOY-level defense, as he is the favorite for DPOY this season. He is a rebound monster and is averaging 2.0 blocks per game, 8th in the league. The stats don’t even show his true value. Karl-Anthony Towns has always been a liability on defense, but this year, he has been average or better. You see plays from him every game and you are shocked by how much he has improved on defense. There has only been one player on the Wolves’ defense that has regressed: Jaden McDaniels. He hasn’t been bad at all. He has been good. But he hasn’t been as good as last year. The Wolves made a trade for Monte Morris, too.

On the offensive side of the ball, the Wolves have been okay. Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns have been great on offense, but there haven’t been many other highs. Towns had a 62-point gem in a loss to the Charlotte Hornets in the best singular offensive performance of the season for the Wolves. On most nights, there is one offensive standout and everyone else is OK. They have a sub-par offense, always between 15-20. Luckily, Edwards is a proven offense playoff performer, so that will help once they get to the playoffs.

Let’s talk about how this team plays in the playoffs. Anthony Edwards is incredible in the playoffs. He is 7th all-time in playoff points per game, at 28.1. He has only played 11 playoff games, though. Unfortunately, it is the opposite for Karl-Anthony Towns. He has averaged 23.0 points per game in the regular season in his career but has averaged 18.6 playoff points per game in his playoff career. Rudy Gobert has also been sub-par for his standards in the playoffs, having a plus-minus of -111, which is pretty bad for only playing 54 games and his record being 22-32. Mike Conley played on the same team as Rudy Gobert for a couple of seasons, but in his career, he has been better in the playoffs than in the regular season. But besides Conley and Gobert, the whole team has practically no playoff experience.

Overall, the Wolves probably aren’t real contenders to win the championship. They are very inexperienced and not talented enough to compete with the other best teams in the league. But they could get to the second round, or potentially even the conference championship. They are a good team, but not good enough to win a championship.