Wolves Season in Review: Chase Budinger

This is Part Eleven of the Wolves Season in Review player capsules. We’ll be looking at every player that finished the season on the Wolves roster, excluding ten-day contract signees. We’re starting with the players that played the fewest minutes and working our way up the roster to those that logged the most playing time. Today’s featured player is Chase Budinger.

After signing a three-year contract with a player option for the 2015-16 season, Chase Budinger played in just 64 out of a possible 164 games in his first two seasons with the Timberwolves.

It started with a devastating knee injury in the sixth game of his Wolves career, in the game following a big win over the Indiana Pacers in which he made the game-winning shot at the buzzer. Minnesota was 4-1 heading into the game in Chicago, and Budinger’s injury troubles began and coincided with the Wolves’ prodigious slide — after a win against Dallas next time out, the Wolves lost five games in a row, ultimately finishing with a disappointing 31-51 record in a year marred by Kevin Love‘s knuckle push-ups and re-injury of his hand during the season.

After a solid first three years in the NBA with the Houston Rockets, Budinger has had an all-around miserable time in Minnesota over the three seasons that followed. He after missing the aforementioned 100 games in his first two years with the Wolves, he was finally healthy for the 2014-15 season but buried on the depth chart.

Budinger didn’t start to see consistent minutes until the rest of his teammates continued to drop like flies throughout the winter months. He didn’t play well, either, until his minutes increased drastically in the month of March.

Starting with March 9 through the end of the year, Budinger averaged 30.2 minutes per game over 20 contests, starting one, and shot 39.7% from beyond the arc and 49.7% from the field. He regained the confidence that was long gone over the first few months of the season, and even started putting the ball on the floor and getting to the rim, something he never would have tried back in November.

If Budinger had showed signs of a bounce-back season earlier, he no doubt would have been moved at the trade deadline. As it was, however, teams wouldn’t take the risk that Budinger would opt into a $5 million payday, and understandably so. This is a former athletic sharpshooter who drained 36.3% of his shots over three seasons with Houston including a 40.2% mark in 2011-12 that had seen his athleticism sapped due to knee injuries and only shot 33.8% from three-point range in his first two seasons with Minnesota.

But Budinger finished with a 36.4% mark this year and showed enough signs of life that he may not opt-in for next season. A few months ago it seemed like a slam dunk that he’d take the money, as no team would give a now 27 year-old sometimes long-range shooter more than $5 million, but after a spry-looking March, something in the $3-4 million range doesn’t seem too crazy. And if your Budinger, wouldn’t you consider a pay cut to get off of the rebuilding Wolves and into the back-end of a playoff-worthy rotation?

There have been whispers that Budinger is indeed planning to leave, although it’s still hard for many (yours truly included) to see him walking away from $5 million. Why not take the payday, play well, and hope to be traded to a contender at the 2016 trade deadline?

At any rate, the Wolves could use a competent swingman in their rotation in 2015-16, and if Budinger plays like he did in March, he’ll be good for 20-25 minutes per game of solid production. If he leaves, it’s doubtful that the Wolves will be able to find a capable player to replace his minutes, and there’s a lot to be said for replacement level production, especially on the Wolves’ roster.

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