Minnesota Timberwolves: Player grades vs. Celtics, Rockets, and Hornets

The Minnesota Timberwolves are 2-3 over their past five games and are currently on a two game losing streak. After recently falling short to the Golden State Warriors 108-116, the Wolves now have a losing record of 13-14.

I’ll be starting a new segment here at Dunking with Wolves where I grade three players on the Minnesota Timberwolves‘ roster over a 3 game span, hoping to keep everyone updated in the moment.

However, in this singular post, I’ll be player grading the first three games of the past five games in this post. Essentially, after the Wolves play the Sacramento Kings tonight, I’ll complete the player grades for the Blazers, Warriors, and then the Kings game later this week.

Today I’ll be working on the player grades in the games played against the Boston Celtics, Portland Trail Blazers, and Charlotte Hornets.

As for how I’ll be grading players, most teams grade their players in more macro ways. Like for example, grading players through the first quarter of the season. I believe that grading players with micro spans of games (say, 3 games) will give fans a better look at how the team is currently performing.

At times, player grading can be misleading and won’t really show how well a player is doing in the present or how he’ll be performing in the near future – this segment should help with those issues.

During this span of three games between the dates of December 1st and December 5th, there were quite a few ups and downs.

Moreover, it’s appropriate to note that I may slightly sugarcoat some of these grades because of the insanely talented opponents the Wolves’ have had to face off against through the beginning of December.

A quick summary for the past three games to get your memory flowing:

• The Timberwolves lost to the Boston Celtics 109-118. This was a game where we saw All-Star Gordon Hayward bounce back (no pun intended) from his horrific start to the season. As well as a game where we saw Derrick Rose fight to overcome the surprising performance of Hayward.
• The Timberwolves won against the Houston Rockets 103-91. In this game we saw a shadow of Chris Paul go 1-7 from the field, allowing the starting lineup of the Wolves to take over and all get into scoring double digits.
• The Timberwolves won against the Charlotte Hornets 121-104. While Kemba Walker was and is playing like a league MVP, he was no match for Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins totaling 61 points in this sporadic bout.

To begin the player grades for the past five games, we’ll start with the first one in Boston against the Celtics on December 1st.

Side note: I will have 3 player grades for each of the past three games.