Minnesota Timberwolves: What’s the ceiling of the Russell and Towns duo?
By Andrew Ites
Defense
It’s no secret that both D’Angelo Russell and Karl-Anthony Towns are near the bottom of the league in most statistical categories on defense.
Russell ranks third-to-last among shooting guards in defensive real plus-minus this year with only J.J. Redick and Bradley Beal below him on the list. However, D’Angelo was much better in that statistic last year with Brooklyn ranking 51st out of 98 shooting guards as he led the Nets to the playoffs.
I would consider throwing out this year’s defensive numbers for Russell because he was often surrounded by G League talent, and his motivation on that end of the floor had to be pretty low considering that team was going nowhere without Steph and Klay.
D’Lo has pretty good size and length to defend his position, but he’s not the most fleet-of-foot on that end of the floor so he does get blown by fairly often.
Normally you’d like to pair a player with Russell’s defensive deficiencies with a dominant big man who can clean up his mistakes, but Karl-Anthony Towns hasn’t been that type of player since entering the league.
Related Story. Analyzing new players from Covington trade. light
This year, KAT ranks dead-last among centers in defensive real plus-minus. However, motivation could’ve been an issue for him as well this year as he was clearly frustrated with the team before the move to get Russell.
In the past two years Towns has ranked 41st out of 60 centers in defensive RPM in 2018-19 and 43rd out of 54 in 2017-18, so he’s probably more of a bottom-third defender than the worst one in the NBA.
He gets a decent amount of blocks with 1.5 per game over his first five seasons, but that desire for a savage swat sometimes takes him out of position on defense and gives up an easy look at the basket.
KAT’s defensive rebounding numbers are tremendous, but that hasn’t translated to the more advanced defensive statistics.
Like Russell, Towns obviously has the size and length to be a plus-defender from the center position, but his footwork often fails him when he’s out on the perimeter and he doesn’t have the thickness to bang down low with some of the best post scorers.
KAT and D’Lo are both still young and can improve tremendously on that end of the floor. Hopefully the influence of assistant coach David Vanterpool, who is one of the best defensive minds in the NBA, can help them become at least league-average on that end of the floor to compliment their offensive firepower.