Timberwolves’ playoff hopes: Is it time to start worrying?

The Minnesota Timberwolves have started the season 3-3, but with all three wins coming by just three points or less and two 20-plus-point blowout losses to likely non-playoff teams, is it time to worry about the playoff dream?

The Minnesota Timberwolves are an interesting NBA team, and they have been from the very start.

Minneapolis was the original home of the Lakers before their relocation to Los Angeles, and their tenure in Minnesota brought a number of championships north. After almost 30 years without an NBA team, the Minnesota Timberwolves made their franchise debut in the 1989 season.

Since then, they’ve won no championships, no conference titles, and just one division title, coming way back in 2004. Since that divisional banner was hung at Target Center, the Timberwolves have not returned to the playoffs and have only twice finished a regular season with a Western Conference standing above 12th.

The Timberwolves’ 13-year playoff drought is the longest active in the NBA, and the second-longest of all time.

This year was supposed to be the year that everything changed. Sure, we said that last year when Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins and Zach LaVine all showed the potential to be a Big Three for the ages, and the addition of Tom Thibodeau seemed to point towards a stronger team. But this year is different. Gone are the days of the young ‘Big Three’, and the days of the new Big Three have arrived.

The addition of Jimmy Butler provided the defense, scoring, determination and All-Star talent the Timberwolves needed in their starting lineup.

Taj Gibson joined as a member of the class-of-Thibodeau-past, an offensive and defensive talent that could help the young Wolves adjust to Tom Thibodeau’s coaching style, while creating opportunities on the floor that Gorgui Dieng hadn’t managed as a starter.

Jeff Teague added scoring to a point guard position that had for so long belonged to Ricky Rubio. Perhaps a change was necessary in the floor leadership in order to get the Timberwolves into the top eight of the Western Conference.

Jamal Crawford joined the second unit, adding the necessary strength to improve last years league-worst bench.

The season started as expected. An eight-point loss on the road to the always-competitive Spurs proved to show signs that the Timberwolves were going to be good this year. After all, last year’s NBA-champion Warriors blew their first game of last season to the Spurs by 29 points at home.

The Timberwolves backed up a decent first outing with an even better first home game, winning by three over the Utah Jazz. Ricky Rubio’s first game back in Minnesota to face the team that traded him for a draft pick was always going to be a fun game, and the Utah Jazz are considered by some to be one of the most surprisingly over-performing teams early in the season, with a 3-3 record despite losing Gordon Hayward in free agency.

The next game proved we should set the bar high for the Timberwolves season. A two-point win over the newly-strengthened Oklahoma City Thunder that came down to the buzzer — literally. The game was in OKC, too, and the Timberwolves managed to take the lead into every change of quarter, including a nine-point lead entering the fourth.

And then, this happened:

Everything seemed to be going well for the Timberwolves — at least until Jimmy Butler was out for two games with an upper respiratory infection.

First up was the Indiana Pacers, a team that the Wolves were expected to walk over. Trailing by 13 points at the end of the first quarter wasn’t the start many were expecting, and despite coming back to finish the first half at 61-61, the Timberwolves went on to lose the game by a massive deficit of 23 points.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the Timberwolves then had to fly to Detroit for the second leg of their back-to-back, where after taking the lead for the first quarter, the Wolves trailed by 16 at the half. The Timberwolves couldn’t muster a comeback, and the game ended with a 21-point margin that sink the Wolves to a below-.500 record.

It wasn’t hard to see that Jimmy Butler’s leadership was missed on the court. Even though yours truly pointed out his struggles defensively in the fourth quarter in the win over Oklahoma City, Butler is the glue that holds together any defensive ability the Timberwolves have. Butler is usually matched against the opposition’s best scorer, and without him, as shown, the Timberwolves don’t even come close to being competitive.

The Timberwolves’ latest game came back at home at Target Center in a rematch with Oklahoma City. Jimmy Butler was back, and the Wolves took another close win, 119-116.

It was no surprise that a big difference maker was the still-recovering Jimmy Butler, who scored a season-high 25 points, and made a lot of big plays late in the fourth quarter.

Karl-Anthony Towns, who added his own season-high 33 points, was also a big difference-maker for the Wolves.

It’s clear that the Minnesota Timberwolves have a real issue on defense. Tom Thibodeau, known for his defensive focus as a coach, seems to be struggling to get through to his younger players just how important it is to exert effort on both ends of the court.

If we thought last season was bad, when the Timberwolves finished tied at the 26th-worst defensive rating in the league, then this season has been catastrophic.

As it stands, the Timberwolves rank dead-last in the NBA in defensive rating — and no, I’m not just talking about this season. Right now, the 2017-18 Timberwolves have the worst defensive rating of all-time, by over two points.

Yes, the Timberwolves offense has been incredible, considering that they have a .500 record with the worst defensive record of all-time; no other team in the bottom-six had a .500 record, and only one was above .250, but the defense needs to improve.

Obviously, the centerpiece is Jimmy Butler, and in games he’s played the Wolves are 3-1 with a cumulative differential of zero. Without Butler, the Wolves have gone 0-2 with a -44 differential.

Without improved defense, the Timberwolves will fall apart before seasons end, and that playoff drought would stretch another year longer. Timberwolves fans believe in their team this season, however, with attendance improved from 29th the previous two years to currently 11th, thus far.

Despite a fairly-mixed schedule in terms of difficulty to start the season, the Wolves seem to be blowing games they should win, and that could come back to bite them in the long run.

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The Timberwolves upcoming games boast a few that they should win, with games against Miami, New Orleans, Dallas and Charlotte upcomng before the Timberwolves have their first matchup against the Warriors.

This is where the Timberwolves might start to get regretful. Come the end of season, when the playoff positions are closing up quickly and the Timberwolves might need a few more wins to secure a place, looking back on 20-plus-point losses to Indiana and Detroit will seem a lot more winnable than games against the Warriors, Spurs, Clippers, Rockets, Boston and Cleveland will be — all teams the Wolves are yet to face.

Should the drought finally be broken and the Wolves make the playoffs, what do they expect? Teams only lift their game in the postseason, and if a 20+ loss to Indiana and Detroit becomes excusable, what margin are the Warriors going to trump them by?

The Timberwolves need to assert strength, and soon. Falling behind and constantly chasing a seventh or eighth seed among a number of other playoff-hungry teams is going to be a lot harder than starting the season off strong and staying within the top-five or six positions throughout the season.

The reigning champion Golden State Warriors had a three-game losing streak (including one in Minnesota) in March, which was their longest of the season. Yet despite their determination from the start of the season, and only losing back-to-back games one other time earlier in the season, the Warriors still remained at the top of the standings.

This is something the Timberwolves need to aspire to emulate.

One stretch in March will see the Wolves take on the Celtics, then the Warriors, followed by the Wizards, Spurs, Rockets and Clippers. Those are likely to all be playoff teams, and if the Timberwolves manage to win just one or two of those games, they should be happy. An 0-6 record in that stretch wouldn’t be surprising, and the Timberwolves need to ensure they have the record to make that acceptable. If they’re just clinging onto a seventh or eighth seed before this stretch, they’re likely to end up around 10th the end of it. Although games against the Knicks and 76ers follow, they aren’t certainties either and the Wolves will surely be disheartened if an 0-6 stretch is the case.

Chasing a playoff seed after that March stretch would be all that much more difficult, considering just 10 games will remain for the Wolves in the regular season, including against the Nuggets and Jazz, who may be competing for the same playoff spot for which the Timberwolves are gunning.

The Timberwolves need to start winning games while their schedule allows it. Playoff teams aren’t going to be easy for the Timberwolves to overcome, and the schedule only gets harder from here.

To avoid blowing leads, or allowing leads to get bigger, the Wolves’ second unit needs to improve, too. Despite a slight increase since last year, and currently sitting at 23rd in the league in points per game, the Timberwolves bench is only averaging 27.8 points. There are eight teams currently averaging over ten points more from their bench, and the Timberwolves are yet to face up against any of them.

Although the bench has come up with some big plays, such as Jamal Crawford putting the Wolves up over the Jazz late in the fourth quarter, there is still a lot missing.

One of my favorite Wolves players, and currently the leader of the second unit, Tyus Jones was expected to flourish as the backup point guard of the Timberwolves this season.

Jones is currently playing just 0.2-minutes less than a career-high in game time, yet is averaging career lows in points, steals, assists and field goal percentage, shooting just 25 percent from the field, including 0-for-5 from 3-point range. His one turnover per game is also a career-high. However, it’s worth noting that Basketball Reference lists Jones with a positive ‘game score’ (measure of productivity) for every game except the two against Oklahoma.

Still, it’s tough to expect a lot from the Wolves second unit when the supposed leader seems to be struggling. It’s evident that Jones doesn’t want to be shooting the ball. On a number of occasions, we’ve seen the ball passed to Jones, who has managed to lose his defender and has time to shoot on the perimeter, who has just as quickly pass the ball along to another player (usually Wiggins) on the perimeter who is being closely guarded.

Jones’ reluctance to shoot, as well as his low field goal percentage, have been surprising to me after he closed out last season with a career-high 17-point effort, shooting 67 percent from the field.

The rest of the bench has their own problems, too, but change needs to start at the top. As the leader of the second unit, Jones needs to take advantage of his minutes and contribute more on the court to lead the way for the Timberwolves bench.

With a number of new additions to the team in the offseason, some time to adjust was always going to be necessary on the court. More games such as the gutsy wins against Oklahoma City are going to be needed for the Wolves to cement their playoff position, and that stretch of six games in March may end up being crucial to that. If the Wolves can steal some wins in that stretch, that puts them in a position to finish the season strong and hopefully prepare for their first playoff series in thirteen years.

As it stands, the Timberwolves currently place seventh in the Western Conference with a 3-3 record. It’s tempting to wonder what might of been without Jimmy Butler’s sickness (a 5-1 record would have them equal second), and hopefully it won’t come back to bite them in April, falling one or two games shy of a playoff berth.

The Timberwolves have slowly been building a team that can finally bring playoff basketball back to Minnesota after 13 years, and this season should be the year that it is finally delivered. All of the pieces of the puzzle seem to fit, and if they can’t get there this year, we really have to wonder where the problems lie.

Next: Could Adding a 3-Point Shooter Fix Wolves' Woes?

With a 3-3 record, the Minnesota Timberwolves have had a decent start to the season. Currently sitting in the top-eight of the Western Conference, the Timberwolves are sitting where they need to be come seasons end. The only question is, do they have what it takes to get there?