Wolves Press Clippings

Wolves Press Clippings

The Oklahoma City Thunder have spent the last six weeks surging to a big lead in their division. The Minnesota Timberwolves, meanwhile, have been sinking deeper into the cellar.

Given the history of this series the last seven years, both trends seems likely to continue Friday night when the Thunder try for their 12th straight home win over the Timberwolves.

Oklahoma City (28-12) went 17-4 from Dec. 6-Jan. 13 and tied San Antonio for the most wins in that span. That's allowed the Thunder to build a comfortable lead in the Northwest, while Minnesota (12-28) has spent that time plummeting into last place.

Those positions were further solidified when Oklahoma City won its eighth straight in the series Tuesday, 101-96 at Minnesota. Kevin Durant scored the final 12 points for the Thunder to finish with 30 and Russell Westbrook chipped in 22 points, 11 assists, seven rebounds and three steals. Oklahoma City has won 22 of 25 over the Timberwolves.

The Thunder followed their latest win in the series with Wednesday's 108-89 victory over Dallas to improve to 13-1 against the Western Conference at home. The club did so without one of its best players, as Westbrook was ejected after receiving two technical fouls in the first half without scoring. It was just the second scoreless game of his career, but Durant and Serge Ibaka combined for 49 points and 21 rebounds and Oklahoma City benefited from the Mavericks, who had played the night before, sitting out their starting five.

The Thunder matched a season high with 15 made 3-pointers for their 13th win in the last 15 home games. Oklahoma City topped the 100-point mark for the 10th straight game and held Dallas to 39.0 percent shooting. Opponents have made 41.6 percent from the field against the Thunder in the last seven games.

"We didn't relax on the defensive end and that shows growth in us," Durant told the team's official website. "That's not our barometer because they didn't have their whole team there, but it was good for us to stay locked in, stay on pace and stick to what we do."

All Minnesota has done lately is lose, suffering through an eight-game skid and losing 12 of 13 - part of a 4-20 stretch. The Timberwolves are tied for the league's worst road record at 1-9. Minnesota is the only team yet to win in the new year, though the Wolves have been more competitive of late with their last three defeats coming by six or fewer points.

Minnesota cut an 18-point deficit against the Thunder to two and then fell 107-104 at Houston on Wednesday.

''It's very frustrating not being able to win,'' said guard Andrew Wiggins, who's averaged 26.5 points in the last four games and scored 22 against the Thunder. ''Every game we play good, but it's something that we're not doing right or a mistake we made and we just have to fix it.''

Turnovers have been the culprit in the last three contests with the Wolves' total climbing from 17 to 18 to 21.

Wolves Press Clippings

There are many vectors and elements that go into winning a starting job in the NBA. The simplest and most straightforward is simply to be picked high enough by a team that’s bad enough. To wit: There was no way that Andrew Wiggins wasn’t starting last year or Karl-Anthony Towns wouldn’t be starting this year. In these cases there’s a strong need to prove the worth of the pick to the fanbase — fans generally aren’t going to stand for a team being terrible, getting a top 3 pick, and then stashing that pick on the bench.

The hardest road to starting is the one followed by players like Wes Matthews — who went undrafted in 2009 but worked his way into the starting lineup first in Utah and then as integral part of a very good Portland team and now has a handsome max contract from Dallas — or Draymond Green — who was picked 35th in 2013 and started a total of 15 games in his first two seasons before becoming the lynchpin on a championship Golden State team and a near-max player. These are the players with low expectations who eventually can’t be kept out of the starting lineup, often because what they provide, whether that’s defense, playmaking or grit, is so necessary that no coach can deny it.

But most players fall somewhere in between. Taken in the late lottery but not ready for primetime; outperforming their pick, but with clear limits to their ultimate ceiling; ready to go at a moment’s notice and game to provide spot starts, but just not cut out to be a full-time starter: any of these situations can describe up to 80% of an NBA roster. The decision about not just who starts but who’s in “the starting lineup” is not strictly about who plays best. There are elements of seniority, front office directives, synergies within lineups, how individual personalities mesh and a dozen other factors that go into it. So the question before us is: Has Shabazz Muhammad earned a shot at a starting spot?

Let’s consider his individual play to begin with. Through Christmas, Muhammad was shooting 47.6% (28.6% from 3-point range) and scoring 17 points per 36 minutes. In his last five games leading up to last night’s game in Houston, he’s shot 54.5% (38.5% from 3-point range) and scored 22.2 points per 36 minutes. On a team that’s sorely in need of offensive punch and 3-point shooting in particular, that’s huge. In fact, in January so far he’s been their best shooter who’s taken at least 50 shots, hitting 53% of them. His true shooting percentage in 2016 is 60.9%, the best of any player on the team to play at least 100 minutes.

Maybe even more promising is the improvement he’s shown in attacking and defending. Again, through Christmas he was averaging 2.6 personal fouls committed and 3.8 personal fouls drawn per 36 minutes. In the last five games, that’s shifted to 1.3 committed to 5 drawn per 36. Sam Mitchell has noted the overall improvement in Muhammad’s game as well, noting that they’re trying to get him more looks from the corner (where he’s been particularly good) and that they’re doing so because he’s cutting hard from there and not just shooting. Last year, I called Muhammad a goddamned cannonball, and that’s still the case. He’s just applying that force with a little more precision and sense now.

It’s easy to look at all that and then look at a starting lineup that features three more or less non-shooting threats on offense (Ricky Rubio, Tayshaun Prince and Kevin Garnett) and figure it’s time for a change.

But hold up a second. The lineup of Rubio, Wiggins, Prince, Garnett and Towns has a net rating of +19.5 (points scored per 100 possessions minus points allowed per 100 possessions) in 101 minutes over the last ten games leading up to last night’s game against the Houston Rockets, even though they’ve gone 1-9. That lineup has actually scored more efficiently (113.7 offensive rating) than the same lineup but with the more offensively active Muhammad and Nemanja Bjelica (111.9) in 20 minutes.

You might well point out that the real problem for the Wolves in this latest stretch of poor play has been fourth quarters, and you’d be right. In the 11 minutes they’ve played in fourth quarters over the last ten games, the starters with Zach LaVine in instead of Kevin Garnett are -43.5. That’s … pretty bad. That same lineup with Gorgui Dieng in in place of Prince is -33.1. Also bad. But the regular starters are +49.2 and that aforementioned lineup with Muhammad and Bjelica is a +29.3. Of course, the 8 to 11 minutes all these different lineups have played in fourth quarters over the last ten games represents a very small sample size, but it’s also an important sample, given the importance of the fourth quarter. The question — as coaches never tire of pointing out — is not who starts the game, but who finishes it.

There is, however, a psychological dimension to being named a starter, an almost tangible reward to dangle before a player to get him to push himself to get better and earn it. Mitchell has not exactly been hesitant about switching things up, having named LaVine the starting shooting guard during the preseason before changing his mind and also having tried out Kevin Martin and — last night — starting Nikola Pekovic in place of Garnett on the second night of a back-to-back. Given the way he’s talked about him this season, it seems as though Mitchell really wants Muhammad to earn that spot though, and his recent play has had Mitchell hinting that he likes what he’s seen.

It’s one thing to earn a starting spot on a team that’s building from playoff appearances to something greater, though, as Green did with the Warriors. You could well ask what the Wolves really have to lose, given how moribund they’ve often looked on the court recently. Yes, there needs to be a measure of stability to ensure the players know their roles and feel like they own them, but there’s also value in simply shaking things up.

We saw this last year when Flip Saunders started switching everything on defense for a few games. It didn’t turn the team around or anything, but throwing that wrinkle in there seemed to give the team a boost when they had hit a bit of a wall. As I’ve written before, I’m concerned that Mitchell is a little too in love with the wall to see the value in trying to find a way around it, though. But it’s also easy for fans or people like me to sit here and breezily suggest it’s time to change things up while Mitchell is in the trenches day in and day out and might feel that what he’s doing is working. It certainly seems like it is with regards to Muhammad, so why not just keep going?

Ultimately, all the arguments about lineups and efficiency or the need for scoring when and where or veterans providing stability or change as a dynamic force to shake a team out of a rut are scaffolding around an emotional sense of a team’s identity. In Oklahoma City, Scott Brooks kept Kendrick Perkins in the starting lineup well past when it made any kind of sense from a production-on-the-floor standpoint. Plenty of people felt it was a mistake that held the Thunder back, but it’s also possible the team was as good as it was (which was pretty damn good, considering how much of their ill fortune related to injury) because of that stability. At a basic level, most fans probably want their team’s best players to start and play the most minutes. Seems simple, right? But dozens of things are folded into that straightforward wish, wrapped up in development and matchups and ego and ideology. I’d like to see Shabazz Muhammad start, but I can acknowledge it’s partly because I like tinkering and tweaking and probably undervalue the hard work of development, mostly because I don’t have to do it.

The simple truth is that managing your starters or your closers or rotations in general is rarely as straightforward as putting your best players out there and then subbing them out for your second best players, even if we wish it were so.