So far, Minnesota Timberwolves Twin Towers are making progress

The Minnesota Timberwolves knew that there would be an adjustment period to synchronize their NBA roster, particularly since the team is conducting a bit of an experiment to determine whether two All-Star bigs can still win an NBA Championship in the modern era.

While the jury is still out on that question, we have the opportunity to visit just how effective the pairing of Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert and power forward Karl-Anthony Towns is performing so far this season.

On paper, the front court for the Minnesota Timberwolves is pretty intimidating. They start their rotation with 7-foot-1 258-pound Rudy Gobert lining up next to 6-foot-11 248-pound power forward Karl-Anthony Towns and 6-foot-9 185-pound small forward Jaden McDaniels. But what of rotations?

The Timberwolves have their rotations structured in such a way that the team seldom has both Gobert and Towns off the court at the same time. That ensures that the Timberwolves have a big presence the entire game and that has been the standard for the Minnesota Timberwolves through six games of the 2022-23 NBA season.

So how has the Gober-KAT combination performed so far? Let’s take a look:

• Name                           Games   PPG  RPG   APG   BPG  SPG   PF   TO
  Rudy Gobert                 6           15.0  15.2    1.2    1.7     0.7    2.3  1.7
  Karl-Anthony Towns  6           20.5     7.5    5.5    0.2     0.7   3.3   3.3
  Totals                              6          35.5  22.7    6.7    1.9     1.4   5.6   5.0

The numbers so far this season may not be screaming NBA Championship just yet, but this is the early going. The Timberwolves opened the season with almost no preseason work with the starting lineup. Complicating matters even more, Gobert began the season fighting off a minor knee injury, while KAT has been trying to recover his playing weight from an offseason injury that dropped his weight significantly.

The progress may be slow in coming, but the progress is steadily positive. And it’s showing on the basketball court, as the team has a 4-2 record, which is better than last season’s 3-3 start. And before you challenge the quality of the competition so far, the Timberwolves have beaten teams with a combined record of 19-17. So they’ve been beating good NBA teams so far.

Will they get better? I think so, yes. The Timberwolves are not playing anywhere close to their best basketball yet, and may not reach their apex until the Christmas Holidays. But the team is winning with what they’ve got already.

And stay tuned, as the best is yet to come.