Don’t look now, Timberwolves fans, but the defense is improving

The Timberwolves defensive numbers were at the bottom of the NBA after the first couple weeks of the season, but a couple of strong showings have already begun to reverse the narrative.

As recently as one week ago, the Minnesota Timberwolves had the worst defense in the league. Despite having one of the NBA’s most potent offenses, the defense was so bad that the Wolves’ point differential was in the bottom three in the Western Conference.

The defense was brutal to start the season, to be sure. But it was also knocked down a bit further by a couple of games without Jimmy Butler, who, for all intents and purposes, is their defensive quarterback. Playing Oklahoma City twice and the Spurs once doesn’t help, either, but giving up 252 combined points to the Pistons and Pacers over the course of 24 hours should never happen, with or without Butler.

We’ve covered some of the issues at length here at Dunking With Wolves, including my look at Karl-Anthony Towns‘ defensive shortcomings that continue to crop up, even in his third season in the league and second under Tom Thibodeau.

As a team, however, things are beginning to turn around. As modest a victory as this may seem, the Timberwolves have already improved their standing in defensive rating from 30th in the league to 25th, according to basketball-reference.com. Playing inferior teams helps a ton, of course, but since the overtime win in Miami about a week ago, the Wolves have held New Orleans, Dallas, and Charlotte under 100 points.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the signs that the defensive improvement is real. First, a staple of Thibodeau’s top-flight defensive units in Chicago: ‘icing’ the pick-and-roll.

The end result is a made shot, but this is exactly how Thibs wants to play.

Gorgui Dieng has always been a good pick-and-roll defender, and he’s the player with the perfect skill set to be icing the opponent. Here, Malik Monk is trapped and only has one potential pass to make.

When Monk releases the pass (pause at the :02 mark), Andrew Wiggins is maybe a step-and-a-half too deep, anticipating a pass to Cody Zeller near the free throw line. But Wiggins uses his quickness and length to still recover into an acceptable guarding position after Jeremy Lamb receives the pass a solid 26 feet from the rim. Given the game situation, Lamb launches the deep 3-pointer and hits it, despite a decent contest from Wiggins.

Re-watch the play. Notice how all five defenders (yes, even Jamal Crawford!) move on a string to the appropriate positions around the floor. The forced a trap and a desperation pass, which led to an NBA player making a difficult shot in a short-clock situation — not something that Timberwolves fans are used to seeing.

In the next clip, Jeff Teague trails Kemba Walker around the screen. The start of this play isn’t exactly textbook defense; Dieng does a great job staying in front of Walker here, and Teague is lucky that Walker didn’t stop short and draw a foul. But the key here is that the Wolves contained a dangerous ball-handler and scorer in Walker, and ultimately forced a tough, cross-court pass.

Jimmy Butler sagged far enough into the paint that he took away what could have been an easy dump off pass to Zeller, who was originally Dieng’s man. Butler recovered to the perimeter fast enough to take away an open 3-pointer and force Dwayne Bacon to put the ball on the floor and drive baseline with his left hand.

The shot attempt ultimately isn’t a horrible look for Bacon, but Dieng stepping outside the paint to contest encouraged Bacon to shoot a tougher, running jumper instead of setting his feet or getting all the way to the rim.

This is more an example of solid, all around team defense, with each player being in the proper spot and hustling to get to their next rotation.

You might have noticed that each of the above clips featured Dieng’s outstanding pick-and-roll coverage, and that one Karl-Anthony Towns was nowhere to be seen. Indeed, Dieng is still the superior pick-and-roll defender — or, at least the more consistent of the two big men. But Towns has shown improvement over the past few games as well.

In the aforementioned piece that broke down Towns’ early season defense (linked once again here, for your ease of access), I wrapped up the post with a couple of positive clips from KAT’s performance against the Oklahoma City Thunder. On Sunday against the Hornets, Towns made a similar play on Walker to the one against Westbrook the week prior.

Teague gets stuck getting around the Dwight Howard screen at the top of the key, and Towns is on an island with Walker — a tough spot for any big man. Towns rides Walker to the rim, but instead of forcing the issue and aggressively trying to block a shot attempt from the Hornets point guard, he allows Walker to create space before recovering to block a weird, floating shot attempt.

Had Walker gone right up to the rim with a layup attempt, Towns likely would have attempted to block the shot with his left hand, as he did against Westbrook. But Walker’s fall-away attempt allowed Towns to recover and take off with both feet, blocking the shot with his right hand and securing the all-important rebound.

In an interesting twist, Towns has appeared to go from lackadaisical, uninterested help defender to a blocked shot hunter. In reality, the Wolves need him to be something in between, but the new-found aggressiveness and defensive confidence is big for the development of both Towns and the Wolves defense.

Don’t forget: the Timberwolves appeared to have figured things out defensively late last February into early March, prior to injuries to both Zach LaVine and Nemanja Bjelica. Then, things tanked, and the Wolves had the worst defense in the league down the stretch.

Next: Brian's Breakdown: Wolves' false action is amazing

Here’s hoping that this defensive improvement is real, and that it sticks. And if that’s indeed the case, you’re looking at a team that will make the playoffs with ease, and won’t have to worry about simply sneaking into postseason play.