The first player in the 2017-18 Minnesota Timberwolves player review is a polarizing one. How did former NBA MVP Derrick Rose fare in his short stint in a Wolves uniform?
When the decision was made to roll through each player on the Timberwolves roster from least minutes played to the most, well … that meant that we’re suddenly starting with perhaps the most polarizing figure on the entire roster.
Derrick Rose, of course, was the 2011 NBA Most Valuable Player. He tore his ACL the following year and has been nowhere near the same player since.
Rose spent 2016-17 with the New York Knicks, and while he averaged 18 points and 4.4 assists per game, was awful defensively and posted career-lows in assist rate while continuing his downward trend in getting to the free throw line, which was one of his impressive attributes during his time in Chicago.
He started the 2017-18 campaign in Cleveland and played poorly, but things continued to get worse. After leaving the team more than once and apparently contemplating retirement, Rose was eventually traded to Utah in a much large deadline deal. With both Ricky Rubio and Dante Exum in the fold in Salt Lake City, the Jazz waived Rose following the trade.
Of course, none of this even mentions the serious off-court issues that have plagued Rose in recent years, including allegations that have absolutely altered the outlook of NBA fans — and now, Timberwolves fans — when it comes to Derrick Rose.
In terms of the on-court production, we only have nine regular season and five postseason games to look at.
In the regular season, we saw a couple of really ugly performances. In his Wolves debut, Rose somehow managed to log a team-worst plus/minus of minus-17 in just six minutes of court time in a game that the Wolves ultimately won by six.
There were bad turnovers, contested mid-range jumpers, and blocked layups — lots of blocked layups.
There were some bright spots, namely the 14-point, three-assist performance against Houston on March 18. The next time out, however, Rose sprained his ankle and would miss six consecutive games.
In the second-to-last regular season game, a must-win over the Memphis Grizzlies, Rose scored 13 points on 5-of-10 shooting and dished out three assists.
Rose often played off the ball alongside Tyus Jones, although he did have the opportunity to handle the ball quite a bit. In the playoffs, however, Tom Thibodeau rolled out the small-ball, three-guard lineup frequently to try and combat the Houston Rockets’ 3-point attack.
Rose was solid in the playoffs, finishing second on the team in points scored in the Game 1 loss and scoring 16 or more points three times out of the five games. He shot a shocking 7-of-10 from beyond the arc and 50.9 percent from the field, largely getting to the rim at will and showing real burst in the open floor.
I’ll be the first to admit that I did not want Rose on the Timberwolves, and for a variety of reasons. (Here’s our podcast from last summer when we discussed the topic prior to Rose signing with the Cavaliers.) But that doesn’t change that he was largely effective in the 2018 playoffs, and buoyed a bench unit that saw Jamal Crawford struggle and Nemanja Bjelica play severely reduced minutes.
Of course, it also doesn’t change the fact that Rose has, for the most part, not even approached bench-player levels of play in the regular season since his initial return with the Bulls.
Use any metric you’d like: win shares, PER, essentially any version of plus/minus or adjusted plus/minus. They all tell the same story: Rose simply hasn’t been a good player, and his lack of explosiveness (and continued lack of an outside shot) has simply exacerbated things on both ends of the floor.
In 2016-17 with the Knicks, ESPN’s Real Plus-Minus ranked Rose 51st out of 80 point guards overall, and 71st in Defensive Real Plus-Minus. Again, stats and metrics should not stand alone, but any metric that places Chris Paul, Stephen Curry, Russell Westbrook, Kyle Lowry, and James Harden in the top-five is probably fairly accurate.
It’s difficult to see exactly what Rose’s role on a 2018-19 Wolves team would be. Crawford has a player option and might very well leave in search of more playing time in what will be his age-39 season. That will open up some minutes, but Tom Thibodeau himself admitted in his post-season presser that the Wolves need to find more 3-point shooting, and Rose’s 29.6 percent career mark from beyond the arc won’t help that at all.
The likes of Marcus Georges-Hunt and Anthony Brown could certainly get looks as part of the bench rotation, and there’s always free agency, the draft, and trades to consider.
It certainly feels … inevitable that Rose will end up with Thibs once again, it’s just hard to tell exactly why. The way that Rose played in the playoffs surely isn’t sustainable, and it’s hard to see his style meshing with the Wolves existing roster. Between Jimmy Butler, Andrew Wiggins, and Karl-Anthony Towns, the idea of adding a high-usage, inefficient Rose to the mix is tough to stomach.
Next: Timberwolves Offseason: Pending free agents
At any rate, the five-game playoff appearance was a lot of fun, and undoubtedly not something that many Wolves fans were expecting. It’ll be intriguing to see what happens with Rose this offseason, and how his playoff stint may have impacted his market value come summer.