One Fan's Look At The 2008-2009 Timberwolves, Part 1: Intro and Point Guards

About six weeks ago I sat down and put together some stats on the Timberwolves to put out a small post.  That little post quickly snowballed and became this monstrosity.  What it is, in essence, is a statistical based (though not entirely) look at the 2008-2009 Timberwolves and what they we can expect from them.  This post looks at the Timberwolves by position, as a team, some of the ways they'll stack up against the league, and what we might even expect next off-season.  And for the record, put me down at 35 wins for the team.

This was originally intended to be one long post, but SB Nation freaked out when I tried to post it.  I'm going to split it into several parts, which can be found as follows:

Part 2, Shooting Guards And Small Fowards

Part 3, Power Forwards, Centers, And Love

Part 4, On-Court And Off-Season

Methods, Or: Stuff You Can Skip

If and when you check my data against other sources, there will almost certainly be differences that arise.  First, all of the counting data is from http://www.basketball-reference.com (an incredibly useful site, for those of you who haven’t heard of it before).  As for the percentages and ratios, I made a few tweaks to some of the traditional numbers (most notably to possessions).  It’s pretty boring minutiae so I’m going to skip it. But if you are the one other person on the planet who is both a stats and Timberwolves fan, I’ll be happy to share the info.  Oh, and in this you’ll see the phrase “410 player” (or point guard, center, etc.).  These are players that played at least 410 minutes during the season (or 5 minutes a game).  I use this as a basic cutoff because if someone plays that often, their stats shouldn’t be too far from the norm.  After all, if you take just anyone’s stats, then Jerome James and Jelani McCoy tie for the accuracy award (they were both 1-1 in 38 combined minutes this season), while James, Robert Swift, Ian Mahinmi, Shareef Abdur-Raheem, Ronald Dupree, Billy Thomas, Eddie Gill, Linton Johnson, Troy Hudson, Jeremy Richardson, Mike Wilks, Eric Piakowski, are the best free throw shooters in the game.  To put this in perspective, Randy Foye (who on the IR for most of the year) played more minutes and had more free throw attempts than all 12 of these guys combined.  As for starting positions, I took everyone who started more than 41 games, and then added in some guys (Brevin Knight, Jamaal Kinsley, etc.) who were on the cusp of getting to that 41.

For the positions of the players in the NBA, I took the position where the players had the most minutes, based on http://www.82games.com.  So if you take exception to Al Jefferson being a center, Rashard Lewis being a power forward, or Kevin Durant being a shooting guard, take it up with their respective teams.

As for the Wolves themselves, the system puts their positions like this:

1 – Randy Foye, Sebastian Telfair

2 – Rashad McCants

3 – Corey Brewer, Rodney Carney, Mike Miller

4 – Brian Cardinal, Ryan Gomes, Mark Madsen, Craig Smith

5 – Calvin Booth, Jason Collins, Al Jefferson

Also if you take the Wolves top 8 players by playing time from last season, the roster looks like this:

            1 – Randy Foye, Sebastian Telfair

            2 – Rashad McCants

            3 – Corey Brewer, Mike Miller

            4 – Ryan Gomes, Craig Smith

            5 – Al Jefferson

If you throw in Kevin Love, then you’ve got 4 bigs, two swingmen, a scorer, and two points.  Except for Miller all of them are part of the youth movement, and with the exception of Brewer they all seem to be decent bets to have careers in the NBA, even if they’re only high-performance backups.  Now, some caveats to this roster:  I expect that, due to size issues, Jason Collins (or Calvin Booth or Brian Cardinal, but hopefully Jason Collins) will get some playing time this season.  I also expect to see a bit more Ryan Gomes at the 3, and to see either Brewer transfer some of his minutes to the 2 as McCants’ backup, or to see Carney get more burn at that position.  But despite these expectations, when I talk about the top 8 players, I mean these guys.

The Timberwolves

Looking back on last year, the Wolves were a bit of mess, frankly.  They were 20th in the league in effective field goal percentage, 19th in turnover &%, and 11th in offensive rebounds.  That may not sound too bad.  After all, over half the league makes the playoffs and these numbers could put a team in contention for a playoff spot.  Not in the 2007-2008 Western Conference, obviously, but right now we’re dealing with a magical fairy League where every Wolf plays with a halo encircling his head, the obnoxious 1st Ave. Target Center sign shoots rainbows, and free throws don’t exist.  Because free throws bring us back to reality, where things get ugly in a hurry for our local canines.  The Wolves FT/FGA was .183, good for last in the league.  To give you an idea of how bad this is, let’s do some numbers.  The league average was .231.  If the Wolves had a FT/FGA of .231, they would have made 1576 free throws, or THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY MORE free throws than they did this last season.  If we add those three hundred and thirty three points to their season total, then run the numbers through the Pythagorean Win/Loss Formula we find that the Wolves would have won 33.3 games.  The Wolves W/L formula for the actual season show an expected 22.7 wins, meaning that the Wolves vomitous free throw shooting cost the team 10-11 wins.  That would put the Wolves at the same record as the Bulls, meaning they would have a 50/50 shot of ending atop the lottery.  Alternatively, they were average free throw shooting away from having to choose from Jerryd Bayless, Kousta Koufas, or D.J. Augustin.  So maybe free throws are overrated…

Thankfully, this year’s team is better.  Possibly a lot better. 

For me, the most concerning part of this is still the free throw shooting.  If the Wolves run out their top 8 guys, they’re still going to be below average in term of getting to the charity stripe.  Of course, free throws aren’t a make or break proposition.  After all, the team with the second worst FT/FGA ratio is the New Orleans Hornets. 

I believe it has to do with a team’s pace.  If a team moves at a slower pace, then free throws are less likely to matter.  The teams that had a FG/FTA of .210 or worse (roughly 90% or lower) are San Antonio, Golden State, Seattle, Toronto, Houston, New Orleans, and Minnesota.  Of those teams, San Antonio, Toronto, Houston, and New Orleans all have a pace under 91.0 (specifically, the Raptors have the fastest pace at 90.2).  As for Golden State, I think that any basketball team which requires the opponent to use a Cover 2 defensive scheme is one that can safely be viewed as a deviation from the norm.

The good news is that this team should be good (possibly very good) at scoring, and should be excellent at pulling the ball down when needed.  Of course, they still have to deal with turnovers and defense…

Point Guards

Right now the Timberwolves have two Point Guards on the roster.  And unfortunately, the T’Wolves’ haven’t done that much to write home about as a team at the point:

Below average, below average, below average, below average, below average, below average, below average, below average, below average.  Quite simply, the Wolves’ point guards were all around unremarkable last year.  Of course, the splits between Foye and Telfair are remarkable:

This should put to rest any discussion about who should get more playing time.  Randy Foye shot better on all counts and rebounded like a starting point guard, while Telfair’s shooting was poor and his rebounding was anemic.  Telfair does have an advantage in that he plays more like a standard point guard, concentrating on ball movement and protection than scoring.  And despite my harping about free throws earlier, I’m going to paraphrase (i.e. steal) a bit from Bill Simmons: I don’t know if it’s worth it to put Telfair out there to draw free throws and control the ball, because you’re simply moving from an F to a D, and Foye gives you much better offensive output than Telfair. 

Foye’s major advantage, as I mentioned, is his ability to score.  Specifically, the range he showed last season is what makes him valuable.  With his threes flying, it puts him in good stead when compared to starting point guards in the league:

 Obviously the major weakness of Foye is his lack of assists (Telfair beats the starting mark in both ast/poss and ast/tov).  However, his shooting is strong enough that I feel it covers the lack of ball movement.  I also feel his TOV% (15th of 28), is solid enough to protect against the lack of assists.  To me, the most important is his pts/poss, which ties for 4th among the starting points.  When you add that all together, I think it’s fair to make a case that Foye should be on point for the Wolves.

 Of course, Telfair has his supporters.  The problem with Telfair is that his shooting is pretty much a damned if you do, damned if you don’t proposition.

 On the face of things, Telfair’s worst problem is his three-point shooting.  It’s below average to the point that I think if he ever take a trey again he should be immediately benched (of course, I say the same for Corey Brewer, Ryan Gomes, and other player who can’t make a third of their threes).  So let’s say that Telfair always takes shots inside the line.  What does that do to his shooting numbers?

 So Telfair becomes better, but is still worse that the league average and much worse than Randy Foye.  One thing to note that is a positive for Telfair is that if he shoots only twos, his FT/FGA should be higher than this, as you’re less likely to draw a shooting foul if you’re shooting threes.

 All of this discussion about Telfair seems a bit academic, as it’s unlikely he’ll see the amount of time he did in the last season, as Foye is going to be the featured point for the Wolves.  But in the interest of hypothetical optimism, let’s do a little bit of playing around with the numbers.  Below are two tables, and featuring three different Wolves setups.  Wolves PG is how they played last season, Wolves1 PG is how they would have played if Foye had Telfair’s minutes and vice versa, and Wolves2 PG is the same minute switching, but also altering the numbers so that Telfair doesn’t shoot any threes.

 As you can see, if the Wolves are to play Foye more, and get Telfair to stop shooting threes, than the result will be a average play from the point position.

Finally, I would like to point two things.  First, the Wolves winning percentage increased from 19.1 % to 35.9% when Randy Foye returned.  If they had Randy Foye all year, the Wolves would have won 29 games.  If Foye had been gone all season, the Wolves would have won 15 games.  Second, this was an injury year for Randy Foye.  We should all expect to see him take a step forward now that he is fully healthy, along with the additional experience.

Random stat to show my obsession with the Wolves’ free throw situation:  According to the Pythagorean Wins, if the Wolves had played their entire season like they did the last 39 games (i.e. with Foye), they would have been expected to win 27 games.  If they had Foye and shot the league average in FT/FGA, they would have been expected to win 38 games.