Making sense of the Timberwolves’ hot start: Is it for real?

Let’s get this out of the way now: nobody predicted that the Timberwolves would start the 2015-16 campaign with a 4-2 record.

Add in the fact that the 4-2 record includes road wins at altitude in Denver and at likely top-four Eastern Conference playoff seeds Chicago and Atlanta and that mark looks even more improbable.

The Wolves are suddenly in a weird spot. National attention is coming hard and fast, and it could get difficult to parse the real from the fake, the breakthrough from the blip, and the outlier from the new normal.

A home win on a back-to-back on Tuesday against Charlotte would put the Timberwolves at 5-2 heading into a showdown with the currently 8-0 defending champion Golden State Warriors — not to mention the Wolves’ first national television appearance in TNT in quite awhile.

In some order, here is what we do know for certain about the Wolves hot start:

• Karl-Anthony Towns is, at absolute worst, an above-average center who has a real shot at averaging a double-double with two-plus blocks per game as a 19 year-old rookie. He’s a defensive beast and has found ways to score without being prominently featured in the Timberwolves offense thus far. (This says nothing about his monstrous ceiling. He’s, at worst, an above-average center this year.)

• Ricky Rubio has, at least marginally, improved his jump shot. He’s shooting with more regularity and confidence and making shots at a better pace than he was a year ago, pre-injury. His scoring in the paint is still an issue, but the aggressiveness on offense combined with stellar defense equals a top-flight point guard.

• Zach LaVine, while still not a point guard, is beginning to figure some things out. Also, he looks great as a shooting guard alongside Rubio.

• Nemaja Bjelica is a solid, NBA-caliber player. He could start some games that Kevin Garnett sits out — maybe as early as Tuesday against Charlotte. He’s a very good shooter, a solid playmaker and rebounder, and has even held his own on defense.

• Andrew Wiggins is improving but also likely still an uneven performer. We will never quite get a pulse on just how much his back spasms effected his poor performances in home losses to Portland and Miami last week, but his huge jump in production indeed coincided with the disappearance of his name on the injury report.

The above items are certain, except for the muddled point about Wiggins. And just as we would be foolish to assume that 33 points on 15 of 22 shooting with five rebounds and four assists is some kind of new baseline or even reasonable expectation for the reigning Rookie of the Year, it would be equally as foolish to dismiss the performance as a blip on the radar.

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Wiggins was aggressive going to the rim throughout the win over the Hawks including down the stretch, despite only attempting four free throws on the night. And while he took a number of mid-range jumpers, most were not contested to the point that it would have been considered poor shot selection.

Beyond the 68.2 field goal percentage on the evening, perhaps the most impressive statistic is the four assists, and how he achieved a couple of those — quick decisions and snap passes show how much the game could be slowing down for a player that occasionally fell victim to tunnel vision in isolation sets throughout his rookie season.

At any rate, a pair of impressive road wins have quieted the crowd (myself included, to some extent) when it comes to Sam Mitchell‘s rotation decisions. He was able to get the Timberwolves a hard-fought win down the stretch on Monday while keeping Rubio’s minutes to a light 27 on the front-end of a back-to-back, and was willing to go to little-used veteran Andre Miller at point guard late in the third quarter to help stem the tide of a furious rally from the Hawks.

My only gripe (outside of heavy Tayshaun Prince minutes, but that’s a topic for another piece) is that Rubio and LaVine should be given more of an opportunity to share the floor together, and even if it’s a couple of four-to-five minute spurts during the game, that should be enough to get a glimpse of what that future (sans Kevin Martin) could look like. Rubio-LaVine-Wiggins-Bjelica-Towns is a legitimate lineup, it seems.

Next: Timberwolves Win Roller Coaster Affair Over Hawks

Enjoy Tuesday’s tilt against the Charlotte Hornets, and don’t forget that this is the first back-to-back of the season for the Wolves and they traveled late on Monday while the Hornets have been in Minneapolis since Sunday. That could be a significant factor.