5 reasons why Minnesota Timberwolves boasts NBA Top 5 backcourt

A recent story by Hoops Habit written by Peter O’Keefe projected the Top-5 NBA backcourts for the 2022-23 NBA season, without even an honorable mention for the Minnesota Timberwolves. Well, why not? While I won’t be foolish enough to claim that the Minnesota Timberwolves backcourt of PG D’Angelo Russell and SG Anthony Edwards had earned such an auspicious honor for the 2021-22 season, they are ideally positioned to be recognized now.

And they should be.

Another NBA analyst, Matt Barnes, has his version of the Top-5 NBA backcourts projected for the 2022-23 season. But the question that forms in my mind is, what about the Minnesota Timberwolves’ backcourt?

FiveThirtyEight.com has created projections for PG D’Angelo Russell and for SG Anthony Edwards, and they are pretty impressive. So where is the love?

It seems that in the NBA, it’s as much about teamwork, chemistry, and overall performance that makes the backcourt hum. Some do, and some never do.

Timberwolves backcourt underrated

The Minnesota Timberwolves are getting plenty of headlines over the offseason efforts to build a formidable frontcourt for the team, and for the foreseeable future. But under the radar, the team has some pretty positive things going on in the backcourt as well.

Backcourts have long held the fascination of NBA fans, and the magic of a solid backcourt can be enough to sell tickets, win games, and fill the bleachers with cheering fans. Recent examples of backcourts that were the heart of the team are the Portland Trail Blazers pair of PG Damian Lillard and former Trail Blazers SG CJ McCollum. The Washington Wizards duo of SG Bradley Beal and former Wizards PG John Wall.

In both cases, one guard would run a scoring average of 19.0 points per game while the other would clock in well over 22.0 points per game. An elite backcourt combination is such that it never relinquishes the constant scoring pressure upon the opponent, forcing the other team to rush their rotations to return their best to the basketball court.  Best of all, the best backcourts are such that the players are both complementary, but also overlapping enough to allow optimal rotation with no steep drop in production.

So how do the Minnesota Timberwolves backcourt of D’Angelo Russell and Anthony Edwards stack up against historically great backcourts? Let’s take a look: