On the Timberwolves’ offensive issues

The Timberwolves’ defense has been okay this season, but the offense has been a stagnant, unproductive mess.

Last season, the Wolves were dead last in defensive rating, giving up 112.2 points per 100 possessions. The offense wasn’t much better, ending up 25th at 102.9 points per 100 possessions.

Through 13 games in 2015-16, the Timberwolves are sitting at 17th in defensive rating and 21st offensively. But the offense has been tough to watch, and while it’s obvious that the bench has defensive issues, the offensive problems run throughout the entirety of lineups that Sam Mitchell has been putting on the floor.

The Timberwolves are starting two players with usage rates in the single digits in Kevin Garnett (9.4 percent) and Tayshaun Prince (7.5 percent). That means that more than 80 percent of the Timberwolves possessions are used by the other three players when both Garnett and Prince are on the court.

It’s a big issue, as opposing teams are practically being invited to ignore the aging duo offense and load up on Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins. Add in Ricky Rubio‘s ongoing scoring issues, and the Wolves are essentially playing two-and-a-half-on-five on the offensive end of the floor.

Of course, the defensive abilities of this particular unit has kept them above water, as the Rubio-Wiggins-Prince-Garnett-Towns group is a +17 in 98 minutes played together with a net rating of 12 points per 100 possessions according to NBA.com/stats. That breaks down to to an offensive rating of 95.3 and an extremely impressive defensive rating of 83.3 per 100 possessions.

The obvious issue on offense is playing Garnett and Prince together, but why has a bench with offensive-minded players like Zach LaVine, Kevin Martin, and Shabazz Muhammad scuffled so much?

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Surprisingly, the bench grouping of LaVine-Martin-Muhammad-Nemanja Bjelica–Gorgui Dieng has a better offensive rating (99.1) than the starting unit, although their defensive rating is (unsurprisingly) much worse at 95.1.

But the bench should be better than that offensively. Martin is the best three-point shooter on the team with a career mark of 38.4 percent, LaVine is shooting 40.9 percent from beyond the arc on the year, and Muhammad has been a generally efficient scorer over the past calendar year.

The biggest issue is the lack of ball movement. The Timberwolves’ bench unit is 26th out of the 30 teams in number of passes while on the court, which only underscores the obvious isolation-centric issues that the bench has had.

Next time you watch the Wolves, pay attention to the ‘your turn, my turn’ offense that the bench unit runs. There was stretch in Friday night’s loss to the Pistons where LaVine, Muhammad, and Martin each took a possession and shot the ball early in the shot clock without passing a single time.

All three are extremely talented scorers in their own unique ways, but they need to learn to get each other shots in the best possible position to score. Add in Bjelica, who only has a usage rate of 12.2 percent despite shooting three-pointers at a 35.6 percent clip, and the bench unit is almost as skewed towards three scorers as the starters are.

It speaks to the imbalance of the Timberwolves offense as a whole and the inefficient nature of their operation on that end of the floor. Unsurprisingly, the Wolves attempt the fewest three-pointers of any team in the league — just 18.7 percent of their shot attempts are beyond the arc.

And perhaps even more damning is the rate of jumpers taken from beyond 16 feet but inside the arc — a league-leading and mind-boggling 25.7 percent of the Timberwolves’ shot attempts as a team come from this area of the floor.

That’s right, the Wolves shoot the least threes and the most long-mid-range jumpers in the league, and their bench is the fifth-least-passing bench unit in the NBA. Not exactly a recipe for scoring.

Next: The Timberwolves Front Court Conundrum

The obvious caveat here is that the season is 13 games old, but given the personnel, team history and past trends, and apparent mindset of Mitchell, it’s tough to see much changing.