Tom Thibodeau and the Timberwolves are zigging while others zag

Tom Thibodeau has virtually remade the Timberwolves roster over the past two weeks, and it looks nothing like the makeup of today’s contenders in the NBA. Will his strategy work?

The Golden State Warriors are, put simply, the gold standard of today’s NBA. That much is clear, and everyone else in the Western Conference is simply trying to load up to eke into the second-tier of playoff teams.

The Spurs will continue to be a threat. The Houston Rockets added Chris Paul. The Thunder added Paul George and Patrick Patterson. That’s your top-four in the West, completing the second-tier of contenders.

Outside of the chameleon-like Spurs, who continue to adapt and win at whatever style of play Gregg Popovich deploys, the common theme among the Warriors, Rockets, and Thunder is outstanding guard play and, in the case of the former two squads, a reliance on perimeter shooting. (Oklahoma City was actually 18th in the NBA in three-point attempts last year and dead last in three-point percentage, but the volume of threes was important in opening space for Russell Westbrook to bowl his way into the lane with regularity.)

The open floor, outside-in style of play is now the norm, and rare is the team with the label of tough, gritty, or any other adjectives that invoke images of a street brawl. Even the grit-n-grind Grizzlies were 14th in the league in three-point attempts under new coach David Fizdale last season, and with the departure of Zach Randolph to Sacramento, the heart and soul of those tough teams from just a few years ago is now gone.

Enter Tom Thibodeau, who over the course of five seasons in Chicago proved not only a willingness to have his team’s play his own rugged style, but also an ability to win while using it — to the tune of a .647 winning percentage.

The idea of being bigger, stronger, and tougher than opponents isn’t new, of course, and that’s exactly where the irony lies. Virtually every other (successful) team’s style of play is new. Thibodeau is banking on zigging while his opponents zag. And over the course of the regular season, it just might work.

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This Timberwolves team, as it stands on July 6th, possesses what is almost certainly the best one-through-five starting lineup that the franchise has ever rolled out. Here’s an excerpt from what I wrote over the weekend, in the wake of the Taj Gibson signing on Sunday morning.

"Heading into the off-season, this team needed three things: outside shooting, defensive help, and this abstract thing called toughness. One and a half of those things have been addressed, simply by adding Gibson. No, Teague’s addition does little other than cause the Wolves previously bad three-point shooting to tick a half-notch closer to league-average, but it shores it up just a bit. (And no, the $5 million additional per year and the downgrade defensively from Rubio to Teague wouldn’t have been worth it for me if I were in Thibodeau’s position, but it’s certainly defensible.)Perimeter defense and shooting are still needs. But there isn’t a bad shooter in that starting five — no, Gibson cannot stretch the floor, but he’s very good at the rim and in the paint. The other four players all shot above league-average from beyond the arc last season. Add in a shooter or two of the bench (if Tyus Jones is the backup point guard, he can shoot the three as well) and the Wolves won’t be last in the league anymore in that category."

The team is undoubtedly tougher as well as much-improved defensively with the additions of Jimmy Butler and Gibson. Jeff Teague isn’t a particularly good defender but has a reputation of not backing down and does add an edge to the point guard spot.

This toughness will wear down opponents over the course of 48 minutes, and certainly over the course of an 82-game season. Of course, it will wear down Thibodeau’s own players as well, as his reputation for running his best players into the ground is cemented and not likely to change any time soon. But that won’t be an issue in November, December, and January.

Barring a significant rash of injuries, Wolves will almost certainly make the playoffs next spring, even in the tougher-than-ever Western Conference. But when they enter the playoffs, will their own roster be too worn down to inflict that effect on their opponents?

Thibodeau’s playoff record is an uninspiring 23-28 — a winning percentage of just .451. But his teams advanced at least to the second round in three of his five seasons, running into a LeBron James-led buzzsaw all three times, including in the conference finals back in 2010-11.

It’s tough to say whether Thibodeau’s style “works” in the playoffs or not, but let’s be clear: the 2017-18 version of the Timberwolves will still launch three-pointers. It won’t be a Sam Mitchell or Flip Saunders-designed offense in which the three-balls were few and far between. (Yes, Minnesota was last in the NBA in three-point attempts under Thibodeau in 2016-17, but that will undoubtedly change.)

Thibs’ Bulls teams were routinely in the middle-of-the-pack in the NBA when it came to three-point attempts and percentage. In 2010-11, the Bulls were 17th in attempts and 13th in percentage. In 2011-12, they were 18th and fourth. Over a two-year blip, the Bulls were 29th and 21st in 2012-13 and 28th and 24th in 2013-14. But in 2014-15, they were back to 16th and 10th as Chicago advanced to the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs prior to Thibodeau’s firing.

While personnel matters when it comes to three-point rate, the Wolves absolutely have the personnel to be middle-of-the-pack in percentage. As The Ringer’s Jonathan Tjarks noted, the Wolves’ top six rotation players include five guys who were league-average or better when it came to three-point percentage in 2016-17, with Taj Gibson as the only exception.

Of course, it is imperative that the volume of outside shots increases. Much of this depends on how the rest of the bench is filled out, but if a couple of top-tier shooters are added, Thibodeau would have multiple attractive lineup options at his finger tips.

As it stands today, however, the Wolves will surely experiment with some gigantic lineups. Think about it: Teague, Andrew Wiggins, Butler, Gorgui Dieng or Nemanja Bjelica, and Karl-Anthony Towns is already a huge group. If Wiggins sits, Thibs could slide Butler to the two-spot and put Bjelica at the three. Depending on how the rest of the roster looks by the time we get to fall, that’s a real possibility.

Surely, a Teague-Wiggins/Butler-Bjelica-Dieng-Towns lineup would struggle mightily on defense, but it could be deadly effective in short spurts. And while it’s largely inefficient from a points-per-possession perspective, overpowering other teams in the post is something that this team will be able to do at will.

Will it effectively ‘zig’ against the likes of Golden State as the Warriors play their small-ball lineups? Probably not.

But nobody is out-zagging the Warriors, either. Instead, Thibodeau is going to zig and give it his best shot.

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Stay tuned to DWW as the Wolves enter Summer League play and attempt to fill out the rest of their rotation and their roster as we get closer to fall.