What will the Timberwolves offense look like with Jimmy Butler?

The Timberwolves had one of the better offensive units in the NBA a year ago, but after adding another high-usage player in Jimmy Butler and acquiring a new starting point guard, what will it look like in 2017-18?

While the Timberwolves finished the 2016-17 campaign with a disappointing 31-51 record, they had what was arguably a top-10 offensive unit league-wide.

The top scorers from a season ago will remain focal points of the offense moving forward, as Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins are absolutely dynamic players that were largely the keys to last year’s strong offensive showing. But the Wolves have added another high-usage, high-scoring player in Jimmy Butler, which will surely change the look of the team’s offense. And don’t forget that the new starting point guard will be the more balanced Jeff Teague, who replaces the pass-first wizardry of Ricky Rubio.

The other major change to the Wolves’ offensive attack will be the loss of Zach LaVine. The ultra-athletic, 38.7 percent 3-point shooter was moved to Chicago along with backup point guard Kris Dunn in the Butler trade and immediately depleted the Wolves already thin list of true threats from beyond the arc.

Let’s start by taking a look at how rare it is to have a trio of players who are used to having the ball in their hands constantly and still score at a high rate.

Last season, there were just 18 players across the league that averaged at least 23 points per game and carried usage rates of 26.5 percent of higher. Of those 18, there were only three duos that played on the same team as another player on the list: Klay Thompson and Steph Curry in Golden State, LeBron James and Kyrie Irving in Cleveland, and Wiggins and Towns in Minnesota.

Not only is that an interesting stat in and of itself, consider that Jimmy Butler also made that list. And now, he’s joining Wiggins and Towns in Minnesota.

Dig a bit further, and there were only 10 players reaching those thresholds in 2015-16, with the Kevin Durant–Russell Westbrook duo in OKC the only pair of teammates making the list. Only seven names are on the list in 2014-15, and eight back in 2013-14. Neither of those seasons saw pairs of teammates dominating their team’s shooting and scoring.

What does this tell us? Not a ton, admittedly, except for that last year featured a huge chunk of players taking a huge chunk of the shots for their respective teams. And outside of the two teams that have made three straight Finals, the Wolves were the only squad that centered their offense around two players.

It would be natural to assume that putting Towns, Wiggins, and Butler on the same team would knock down each of their scoring marks and usage rates a bit. But history doesn’t make it easy to predict exactly what will happen, and who’s scoring production will take a hit.

Look back at the 2010-11 Miami Heat, which featured James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh. James and Wade were two of the 10 players that scored north of 23 points per game with usage rates north of 26.5 percent, but James was the only one that hit those marks in the other seasons that the Big Three were together. (Bosh scored 18.7 points per game with a usage rate of 23.5 percent in 2010-11.)

In 2016-17, the Timberwolves primarily initiated their offense through Rubio, although there were long stretches that Tom Thibodeau experimented with allowing Wiggins to bring the ball up the court and play the role of point forward. Too often, this resulted in a short-clock situation when Wiggins would find himself in a crowded pick-and-roll, either forcing a contested jumper or passing the ball to a teammate in a tough spot as the shot clock expired. But occasionally, Wiggins shined, using his athleticism, height, and wingspan to masterfully initiate the offense.

This, of course, is more or less the role that Butler played in Chicago in recent years. Butler and Wiggins are fairly similar offensive players, as both are best with the ball in their hands either in the post or knocking down mid-range shots. Both are more or less average three-point shooters and aren’t best utilized as spot-up, catch-and-shoot players.

One area that Butler has proven to be superior to Wiggins is getting to the free throw line. Throughout Butler’s career, he’s averaged 0.5 free throw attempts to every one field goal attempt. Wiggins was outstanding through his first two years in the league, but saw his free throw rate decline to just .345 last season.

Surprisingly, Wiggins shot the ball better from the restricted area than Butler, hitting on 65 percent of his attempts at the rim while Butler made 61.2 percent from within three feet. Butler shot the ball from beyond the arc more frequently than Wiggins and hit at a higher rate while shooting 2-pointers from beyond 16 feet less often.

The higher rate of free throw attempts and 3-point shots are aren’t the only thing that give Butler the edge offensively over Wiggins: the former Bull put up an assist rate of 24.8 percent last season — the sixth year out of six that Butler’s assist rate has improved. By contrast, Wiggins has seen his assist rate tick up only slightly from year one to year two, to year three, landing at just 10.6 percent last season. Point Wiggins was, overall, not a success.

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And after all of the above, we haven’t even discussed Towns. KAT averaged 25.1 points per game last season — more than Wiggins while using a lower usage rate. Towns can be used in the high-post, in the low-post or in the pick-and-roll. He’s about as versatile of a big man as there is in the league, and Thibodeau has plenty of options when it comes to deploying the 2016 Rookie of the Year.

So, how will Wiggins and Butler play off of each other? And what about the addition of Jeff Teague, a point guard with a much higher usage rate than the departed Rubio?

It seems logical that the two wings will more or less take turns initiating high pick-and-rolls, primarily with Towns but also with Gorgui Dieng and Taj Gibson. The biggest issue appears that it will be a lack of floor spacing, as there isn’t a single player on the Wolves current roster that has shot above 38 percent in an NBA season since Jamal Crawford‘s 2009-10 campaign with the Atlanta Hawks.

Check out this post from Sports On Earth, published just a couple of weeks into the 2014-15 season, Thibodeau’s last in Chicago. It takes a look at the Bulls’ offense after a 6-2 start — an offense that featured floor-stretchers in Doug McDermott and Nikola Mirotic, which was a twist on what Thibodeau was used to running out onto the court earlier in his tenure.

With a hobbled Derrick Rose, Thibs had to rely on pick-and-rolls with plenty of floor-spacers to create offense, and it largely worked. That season, Butler reached his first All-Star game, shot 37.8 percent from beyond the arc, and saw his assist rate rise and turnover rate plummet.

Now, barring significant additions late in the off-season, Thibodeau will have a stable of average 3-point shooter with which to space the floor. Outside of Gibson, every player in the projected rotation has demonstrated the capability to knock down long-range jumpers at a league average clip. It won’t exactly strike fear into the hearts of opponents, but it will give the Wolves the ability to at least have a threat from all over the floor.

The biggest question as we roll into preseason play in just over a month will be how Thibodeau chooses to utilize his squad’s somewhat redundant offensive talents. The guess here is that we’ll see Butler and Wiggins taking turns handling point forward duties with Teague acting as a secondary ball-handler and spot-up shooter with Towns as the primary pick-and-roll big.

This will surely be successful, provided that Butler and Gibson can help Thibodeau communicate to Wiggins and Towns how they can be more successful and continue to grow in their rolls. As mentioned, Wiggins struggled mightily to initiate the offense when given the chance a season ago, and he’ll need to match Butler if the Wolves are truly going to have duel threats on the wing.

Next: How does the Wolves Big Three rank in Northwest Division?

Expect the spacing to be rough early on, but the Wolves will figure out how to best utilize their grouping of average 3-point shooters. But once the front office is able to add a couple of sharpshooters, this offense could legitimately be unstoppable.

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