Recent history tells us that it is impossible to win in the modern NBA without shooting three-pointers at a rate similar to the rest of the league, and the Timberwolves are falling woefully short of this extremely attainable threshold.
The evidence is overwhelming, really, and the fact that Sam Mitchell and his staff are willfully ignoring such an obvious truth might lead one to increasingly believe that there is some sort of juvenile vendetta being played out against the media and fans who won’t drop the subject, no matter how relevant it remains.
Let’s look at the facts — something that Mitchell and Co. seem unwilling to consider.
Examining historical three-point shooting is difficult, of course, chiefly due to the rapid incline in three-point rate across the league in recent seasons. The exponential increase in long-range shooting has only accelerated Minnesota’s lag behind reality, and it’s become even more painfully obvious through the first 35 games, one shy of the halfway mark, of the current campaign.
Pulling team three-point totals from an arbitrary starting point of the 2010-11 season (using 4-1/2 seasons of data, including the 2015-16 season currently in progress), a damning pattern emerges.
Since the start of the 2010-11 season, there have been 150 possible ‘team seasons’ — 30 teams, multiplied by five NBA calendar years. Using Basketball-Reference.com’s fantastic Team Season Finder, we can see that as it stands today, only 16 teams have managed to hold a record above the .400-mark while shooting less than 16 three-point shots per game. (The Wolves are currently attempting 15.3 threes per contest following the pathetic five-shot effort in Philadelphia on Monday night.)
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The criteria isn’t intimidating; we aren’t talking about playoff teams, but merely teams that managed to win 40 percent of their games — over the course of an 82-game season that’s a 33-49 squad. That’s 10.67 percent of NBA teams in the past four-plus seasons that have won at a pace of a 33-win team while shooting virtually the same number of three-pointers that Mitchell’s current squad is attempting.
Adjust the criteria ever so slightly by dropping the threes attempted per game to 15 and the list shrinks to ten teams, four of whom are the grit-and-grind Memphis Grizzlies — a clear anomaly in playing style in the modern NBA; the exception to the rule, if you will. Two more of those teams are the Boston Celtics of 2010-11 and 2011-12, led by Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen. Again, a very different, albeit successful, style of play. (A clear contrast to the currently 12-23 Timberwolves, in other words.)
Lastly, let’s pull all of the teams from 2012 through January 4th of this season that have attempted less than 16 three-pointers per game.
Note that the Wolves are the only team in such a category this season, and joined Memphis as the only team to “qualify” last season, too. It’s ugly, folks.
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This is a quick and dirty look at not only how archaic the Timberwolves’ offensive system is, but how exceedingly unlikely they are to win games at a reasonably acceptable rate in their current state of shot distribution.
Of course, simply shooting threes does not create a winning team, but virtually all winning teams attempt a high rate of three-pointers.
And that, Sam Mitchell, is why you should join the rest of us in the year 2016.