Minnesota Timberwolves: What will the three-guard lineup look like?

Late last season, the Minnesota Timberwolves began using a three-guard lineup with some regularity. What might that look like this in 2018-19?

The Minnesota Timberwolves signed Derrick Rose late last season to add to their depth and bench scoring. That also meant that they would experiment with a three-guard lineup, which included some combination of Jeff Teague, Tyus Jones, Jamal Crawford, and Rose.

Overall, there were mixed emotions about this lineup from fans. This season, however, the Wolves will be without Crawford after he declined his player option. It didn’t come as a surprise, necessarily; he was upset with his role throughout the season.

The three-guard lineup was awful at times and exciting at others. The thing that really made the lineup an issue was that Crawford generally ended up guarding the opposing team’s small forward. At 6-foot-5 and 185 pounds, he was undersized to matchup against any small forward.

Crawford was already was one of the worst defenders in the league and putting him at a major disadvantage in guarding much bigger players was a bad idea by Tom Thibodeau. During the regular season, a lineup that consisted of Jones-Rose-Crawford-Nemanja Bjelica-Karl-Anthony Towns produced an offensive rating of 131.6 and a defensive rating of 153.6, albeit in just 14 minutes.

You’ll see at the link above that there was another lineup ran during the regular season with the same players but with Jimmy Butler and not Bjelica. This lineup fared a lot better; as it turns out, Butler is a better defender than Bjelly.

This season it would be likely that we could see a lot of the same thing but with Josh Okogie or James Nunnally as the small forward. They could even go big and throw in a mix of Keita Bates-Diop and Anthony Tolliver.

That lineup would be a lot better because any of those options are better suited at small forward. Okogie is 6-foot-4 but has a huge wingspan, more muscle on his frame, and a reputation as a tough defender.

Minnesota could give that lineup a whirl as their new three-guard lineup. If that doesn’t work, it could be assumed that one of the point guards would be taken out, and the odd man out would likely be Jones.

We saw that to an extent in the playoffs last season against the Houston Rockets. He struggled a bit and Thibs quickly went back to his own ways of only playing players that he knew from his Chicago days. In the playoffs Jones only played 54 minutes and his minutes were very inconsistent, ranging from seven to 29 minutes. (He did not play in Game 4, reportedly due to injury, although he was back on the court in Game 5.)

Rose showed up and suggested that he could still be effective at the NBA level if given consistent minutes. At times during the five playoff games, he looked like the best player on the court in a Wolves jersey.

If all else fails, Jones would likely be the one who sees a minutes decrease. Regardless, it will be fascinating to watch and see if Thibodeau experiments once again with a three-guard lineup and what, exactly those lineup combinations might look like.