3 members of the Minnesota Timberwolves most impacted by basketball hiatus

No. 2 – Ryan Saunders

The Minnesota Timberwolves’ rookie head coach had a turbulent first full season at the helm.

Saunders has been criticized this season for several things, but most notably caught flack for his refusal to trot out two-big lineups, repeatedly brutal third quarters, and a pair of double-digit losing streaks.

While the former may not have been entirely his fault (since it was likely a mandate from the front office), the third-quarter woes and losing streaks can squarely be placed on Saunders’ shoulders.

The Wolves held the second-worst average third quarter scoring margin (-2.7) and turned in an average home third quarter scoring margin of -4.5, good for worst in the NBA by nearly a full point, per TeamRankings.

That type of performance, especially at home, whether you are tanking or not, is unacceptable for a team whose fans are as success-starved as the Wolves’ loyal contingent is.

As a rookie head coach, no matter what players you can have on the floor, you have to be better at making adjustments during halftime and making sure your guys come out with a renewed fire in the second half.

The lack of making necessary adjustments, whether it be rotational changes or strategic changes, and your team consistently not responding to the changes you want to make, is a recipe to be out of a job. What can help save Saunders’ reputation among Wolves fans, and supplant a poor year coaching,  however, is the 2020-21 Wolves playing with a renewed passion and chemistry every single night they step out onto the floor.

But, unfortunately for Ryan, he has lost a crucial period for experimenting with and finding two, three, and five-man lineup combinations that can bring this fire all the time.

The chance to find combinations that work for short bursts and/or long stretches of play, even without franchise cornerstone Karl-Anthony Towns, cannot be understated.

We could sit here and find statistical profiles of players that could theoretically be plugged into the Wolves lineup and find success, but getting a head-start to see it happen live on the court with unlimited margin for error over the course of 18 games is a completely different situation.

If the last 18 games of the season were to go on, Saunders would have had the opportunity to expunge some of the doubts about his tendency to trot out lineups that are doomed from the moment they break the huddle, too.

Lineup statistics reveal troubling stats about his lineup combinations, as well.

Per NBA.com, Saunders deployed 65 different five-man lineups this season, which ranked 18th-most among 30 NBA teams. For context, playoff teams used an average of 64.8 lineup combinations, while non-playoff teams used an average of 68.9 combos.

The Wolves ranked 10th out of 14 non-playoff teams, which is a problem. In a season that was supposed to be all about experimentation and finding what works, Saunders and the Wolves coaching staff failed to experiment liberally, and it is coming back to bite them during this period without basketball.

To make matters worse, 35 of the 65 lineups posted Net Ratings worse than -5.0, and 28 of them had NRTGs south of -10. While some could take this to mean that Saunders should not experiment, the interpretation that Saunders put lineups out there that, on paper, would likely fail makes more sense to me.

When you have as many moving pieces as the Wolves had this year, experimentation is paramount.

While Saunders did not inspire a lot of confidence in me with his lineup experimentation (both in number of lineups and lineup performance) before the deadline, his post-deadline tinkering was fun to watch and something I was eager to see unfold down the stretch of the season.

We will likely see shortened offseason programs for teams this fall, so here’s to hoping that a player relationship-driven coach like Ryan can lean on that and get the most out of his guys when play picks back up.