Minnesota Timberwolves: A worrisome decline in 3-point shooting

After riding a rapid increase in 3-point shooting as an important part of their recent hot stretch of play, the Minnesota Timberwolves have settled for too many mid-range attempts in recent games.

It wasn’t that long ago that many were lauding the Minnesota Timberwolves‘ sudden uptick in 3-point attempts.

Heading into the Wolves’ victory over the San Antonio Spurs on Nov. 28, the Wolves had improved to No. 19 in the league in 3-point attempts per game with an average of 29.8. In the five games since, they’ve gone just 3-2 and have sunk to No. 23 in the league as their average has slid to 28.9 per contest.

It’s a math problem that is far too easy to solve, of course. Three-point attempts are virtually always better than 2-pointers, and with the additions of Robert Covington and Dario Saric after a 4-9 start, the Wolves figured to keep increasing their 3-point attempts.

And while this was indeed the case for a little while, the last handful of games have found the opposite to be true.

In Saturday night’s loss to Portland, the Wolves shot just 16 3-point attempts, easily coming in underneath their previous low total of 19 attempts in the season-opening loss against San Antonio. In fact, there have been only six teams that have shot 16 3-pointers or fewer in a game all season long. That’s over 802 team games, or 0.07 percent of the time.

Two games prior, the Wolves somehow beat a Houston Rockets team that was walking all over them in the first half and came back from a 17-point deficit despite attempting only 22 threes on the night, their fourth-lowest total all season.

Sandwiched in between the Houston and Portland games was a win over Charlotte that saw Minnesota attempt 24 3-pointers — their sixth-lowest attempts in a game out of 26 games played thus far.

If you’re scoring at home, that means that three of the Wolves’ bottom six games in terms of 3-point attempts are the last three games they’ve played. Not exactly a positive trend.

It’s also important to note that over the last three games, the Wolves have taken 19, 22, and 21 2-point shots outside the paint, respectively. Let’s lay this out a bit more clearly:

In the last three games, the Wolves have shot 26-of-62 on non-paint 2-point attempts, or 41.9 percent.

In the last three games, the Wolves have shot 30-of-62 on 3-point attempts, or 48.4 percent.

This math isn’t hard. The Wolves have attempted the exact same number of 2-pointers from outside the paint as they have 3-point shots, and they’ve shot the ball better from beyond the arc than on non-paint twos!

Put more simply, the Wolves have scored 90 points on 62 3-point attempts over the last three games, or 1.45 points per attempt. They’ve scored 52 points on 62 non-paint 2-point attempts over the last three games, or 1.19 points per attempt.

This is a trend that must stop, and stop as soon as possible. Granted, Covington did not play in Saturday’s loss to the Blazers that saw the team attempt only 16 threes, and his absence clearly had something to do with it. But six of the 16 3-point attempts came in the fourth quarter, with two of them coming out of necessity with the Wolves trailing in the final minute.

That means that the Wolves played 36 game minutes and attempted 10 threes. In the year 2018.

This is admittedly somewhat an exercise in picking nits, as the team’s 9-4 record since jettisoning Jimmy Butler is still stellar. But given the team’s recent history of not shooting 3-pointers (remember, they were dead-last in the league last year), this is a fair discussion to be having.

Here’s hoping that this is a blip on the radar and that the 3-point attempts tick upwards once again. After all, the team is fifth in the league in 3-point shooting percentage, so they’d be well-served to keep launching.

Otherwise, they’re simply leaving points on the floor and shifting potential wins into the loss column.