Flip Saunders’ Coaching Scheme Watch: Entry #1

Flip Saunders is a well-regarded head coach in NBA circles, and his career record (638-526, .548 winning percentage) seems to bear that out.

At the same time, his horrific two-plus seasons in Washington (51-130, .282 winning percentage) shed light on his allegedly antiquated offensive system. The gradual but now massive and nearly all-encompassing shift in NBA offenses that focuses on the most efficient ways to score (a revolutionary thought, right?) — three-pointers, points in the paint, and free throw attempts — are not necessarily focal points of Saunders’ complicated scheme.

It’s certainly true: watch any Kevin Garnett/Saunders-era Wolves game and you’ll see the Big Ticket and Friends — Terrell Brandon, Sam Cassell, Latrell Sprewell, etc. — launching long two-pointer after mid-range jumper after long two-pointer. Aside from Garnett’s patented turnaround jumper that he drained with remarkable consistency, a large percentage of these shots were of the wide-open variety, which is exactly what Saunders has made clear is the goal over the past few weeks in advance of the 2014-15 Wolves season.

An open shot is the best shot, regardless of the point denomination assigned to the made basket.

Well…he’s not wrong. Right?…

The math isn’t hard, of course. A player has to shoot mid-range jumpers at a ridiculous rate in order for it to be a ‘better’ shot than even a semi-open three-point attempt. Add in the floor-spacing element of the three-pointer, and Saunders’ theory seems to be a bit dumbfounding.

Think back to the Timberwolves squads of the early-2000’s. The lack of three-point shooting was a consistent shortcoming of the first-round-and-done versions of Saunders’ Wolves. Sure, they had Anthony Peeler. Troy Hudson was generally a solid outside threat when healthy. Chauncey Billups was outstanding from long-range for the brief time in Minnesota. And Wally Szczerbiak was prolific as a three-point shooter, finishing with a career rate of 40.6%. Back in the day he had Terry Porter and Stephon Marbury.

But that’s it, more or less. And Saunders was the head coach in Minnesota for at least parts of 10 consecutive seasons. Saunders obviously didn’t give anyone else admission to his Three-Point Club back in the day. On this year’s team, Jerry Zgoda reports that the Wolves may have as many as six or seven players with the green light to launch threes. (Compare this to Philadelphia’s Brett Brown or Atlanta’s Mike Budenholzer, both from Gregg Popovich’s coaching tree — they’ve instructed anyone and everyone on their teams to fire at will from beyond the arc.)

It was a different age, of course. But in 2003-04, the year that the Wolves reached the Western Conference Finals, they ranked #27 out of 29 teams in three-point attempts. The Seattle SuperSonics led the league with 1,936 shots from beyond the arc, and the Wolves shot just 897 on the season — less than half the number of attempts than that of the league-leader.

Compare 2003-04 to the 2013-14 season. Memphis was #30 in three-point attempts with 1147. Houston led the league with a mind-boggling 2179. The Wolves, incidentally, were 16th in the league last year with 1757 attempts.

A different age, indeed. Of course, Kevin Love is gone, and Kevin Martin and Chase Budinger are the only players on the current roster with a proven track record of taking (and making) a high number of three-pointers.

So how will Saunders play things this year? We’ve already seen the Wolves run a number of sets designed to generate mid-range jumpers through the first six preseason games, as William Bohl of A Wolf Among Wolves points out in this fantastic breakdown of Saunders’ offensive track record. At the same time, today’s game almost requires a high volume of three-point attempts. (Unless you’re Byron Scott, of course.)

Between the absolute truth of math equations and the overwhelming common sense idea of spacing the floor as much as possible, especially with a low-post monster in Nikola Pekovic as the most efficient scorer on the roster, Saunders has to adapt, right?

But that remains to be seen. We’ll have breakdowns of Saunders’ offense and how he’s using his versatile pieces as we navigate the opening weeks of the season. Stay tuned, as we’ll continue to check out the broad view of where the Wolves are taking and making their shots from this season, and just how effective Saunders’ schemes are once the games begin to count.