Timberwolves achieve mind-blowing defensive benchmark for first time in 19 years

There have been plenty of questions surrounding this Minnesota Timberwolves team through the first six weeks of the season. The team's execution at both ends of the floor has definitely been lacking at times, and the Wolves' struggles have been made extremely public. Despite this, there was always a belief that they could figure things out and right the ship before it was too late.

We still have a lot of games to be played, but Minnesota is already starting to figure things out in a way that should concern the rest of the Western Conference. On the defensive end in particular is where the Timberwolves have started to resemble the juggernaut that dominated the rest of the league a season ago. Their last two games against the two Los Angeles-based teams are concrete evidence of this.

Hosting the Los Angeles Lakers at Target Center on Monday night, Minnesota routed JJ Redick's squad and took home a 109-80 victory. They proceeded to follow up that performance with a shockingly similar 108-80 win against the LA Clippers in Inglewood on Wednesday.

Incredibly, these two wins secured an achievement that the Wolves had not accomplished in 19 years. In holding consecutive opponents to 80 points or less, it marked the first time Minnesota had pulled off this particular feat since 2005.

Back-to-back opponents held to 80 or below for first time since 2005

As of this writing and following these two impressive performances, the Timberwolves can claim the top defense in the NBA over the course of the last two weeks. While that is a small sample size and they will have to prove they can do it over longer stretches, this is still a massive encouragement considering what we were seeing from this squad before.

If we want to look at the big picture, we should probably consider that the Clippers were on the second night of a back-to-back on Wednesday, and playing without their leading scorer this season in Norman Powell. But give credit to Chris Finch for preparing his guys to take advantage of their opponent's weakness, and the players for going out there and executing the game plan.

Looking down the box score, this was a thoroughly dominating win for the Wolves. Minnesota outdid LA from start to finish, shooting a higher percentage from the floor (48% vs 34%), out-rebounding them (57 to 51), out-assisting them (31 to 13), and turning the ball over less (21 vs 14).

Getting in this kind of groove defensively, even against an under-manned team, should serve to boost the Wolves' confidence going forward. The guys that were part of last season's defensive juggernaut squad knows what they have to do to repeat that success, and we are beginning to see the rubber meet the road.