The contrast is jarring. Against teams with losing records, Minnesota is 10-0 to open the season. Against winning teams? 0-6, the latest a mindboggling loss Friday in Phoenix.
Minnesota has one more cupcake on deck — a bout Monday in Sacramento against a Kings team the Wolves already have handled twice in this young season. And, this time, Sacramento will be without star big man Domantas Sabonis.
After that, the two only true potential laughers for the Wolves between now and Christmas are a pair of games at two-win New Orleans in early December.
That’s for the best for these Timberwolves. Yes, they’ve handled business against the League’s cellar dwellers — far more so than they have in other recent seasons. Minnesota is housing the NBA’s worst teams on a consistent basis. But little from those wins is translating to games against stiffer competition.
The ball pressure did. Minnesota was stiff enough defensively to force 28 turnovers Friday. At the same time, Phoenix took advantage of Minnesota’s propensity to overhelp and rotate poorly on that end, which allowed the Suns to generate a number of open looks. Phoenix shot 48% from the field, including 45% from distance.
That’s not a weakness that gets stressed by bad teams, which often struggle to even execute one action within a possession, let alone the two or three that can truly try a defense’s communication and effort.
On the other end, Minnesota’s ball movement — which has been excellent at times this season — dried up. The Wolves again resorted to the isolation-based attack that works great when the opponent doesn’t have defenders capable of keeping the ball in front of them, and quite poorly when they do.
The Wolves had just 18 assists on Friday, and only 39 potential assists — the lowest number across the NBA that evening.
Minnesota has mastered ball movement and quick decision making when there’s no opposing resistance, but quickly devolves into old, bad habits when the other team practices ball contain. That was evident against Portland and Phoenix, and in the second halves of each of its losses to Denver.
Those are problems that will require reps to remedy, and they can only come against teams that repeatedly test your deficiencies.
The Timberwolves should get those over the course of the next month, starting with Wednesday’s game in Oklahoma City — a must-win if Minnesota wants to reach the knockout round of the NBA Cup. Friday’s game against Phoenix will better prepare the Timberwolves for that affair.
It was clear Minnesota was a step slow in Friday’s first half. It took the Wolves 24 minutes of basketball to seemingly remember the effort and intention required to punch in the NBA’s upper-weight classes and muster it up themselves. Repeated looks at that standard should allow Minnesota more easily summon it at the outset of games.
Iron sharpens iron? Cupcakes certainly don’t.
Perhaps the Wolves will lose a few more games over the next month, but they’re also likely to emerge from it a team capable of more seriously contending in the West.
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