One Fan's Look At The 2008-2009 Timberwolves, Part 4: On-Court And Off-Season

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 1, Intro And Point Guards

Part 2, Shooting Guards And Small Forwards

Part 3, Power Forwards, Centers, And Love

On-Court

So what we should expect the Wolves to look like this season?  Well, right now I expect the opening day lineup to be Foye, McCants or Miller, Gomes or Miller, Love, and Jefferson.  Personally, I think that those six (along with Telfair and Smith) comprise a very good offensives rotation.  Specifically, I think putting Foye, McCants, Miller, Gomes/Love, and Jefferson on the floor is a wonderful offensive setup.  You have one of the best low post players in the game, a high post threat (and one that can pass if you put Love out there), and three guys that went 40% or better in 3-pointers last season.  If you want defense you have Collins (once he’s back from injury), Brewer (who can defend, though not do much else), and combine them with Gomes, Jefferson, and Foye then the Wolves should have a stable defense.  Of course, you don’t have as many offensive weapons on the floor.  And offense is going to the Wolves forte this season.

Despite not knowing what Kevin Love is going to produce, right now the Wolves, as put together, would score 0.89 points per possession.  Last season the league average was 0.86.  While this may not seem like a huge difference, the affect can be massive, as seen here:

So what we can see here is that a team that puts up 0.89 points per possession should win between 38-57 games.  Okay, okay, I’ll wait for you to stop laughing.

As you can see, this has some flaws, along with predicting the Wolves will be a .500ish team, it also says that there isn’t any real correlation from the points you score to wins.  But let’s take a look at two other tables:

As you can see, there still isn’t a lot of correlation between points and wins.  So let’s add them together, and get:

This is obviously a bit better to look at than the other two charts (the T’Wolves had a 0.04 net last season).  There’s still a lot of variance between the two numbers.

So what was the purpose of this exercise?  Simple:  To note that while the Timberwolves are going to be good (possibly exceptionally good) offensively, they’re going to need to make strides on defense in order to get this done.  For my part, the best that I can think of is to slow the game down.  That way, the teams has a much better chance to get set on defense and doesn’t have to do it on the fly.

Now, why do I say the Wolves need more D, but should concentrate on offense (including in free agency, as you can see below)?  Simple:  the Wolves might be able to put together a team that is either average defensively and average offensively, or they might be able to put together a team that is incredibly good offensively and mediocre defensively.  For my part, I think the latter option is something to shoot for, as it should give them a better chance to succeed.

Free Agency

Basically the Wolves have a few options for free agency.  First things first:  the data on the Wolves’ salaries is from the indomitable Canis Hoopus, and can be found here:

http://www.canishoopus.com/pages/contract-info

So the first thing to look at is the money the Wolves have to throw around.  Without any in-season moves, the Wolves will have between -$4,617,131 (if they pick up every option) and $17,840,239.  Of course, neither of those amounts is likely.  The options for 2009 are Jason Collins, Randy Foye, Corey Brewer, Rodney Carney and Calvin Booth.  I think it’s pretty much a given that Booth and Collins are gone, and that Foye is certainly going to be back; I’m also 95% sure the option on Carney won’t be exercised.  Without Carney, Booth, and Collins, the Wolves are $7,703,763 under the cap.  Without Brewer they’re $10,619,883 under, without McCants they’re $11,348,358, and without both they’re $14,264,478.  So if we cut the Wolves down to a realistic situation, they should have $7-14 million to play with.

The next major question is what positions the Wolves need.  Based on the players who will be around after next off-season:

            1 – Randy Foye, Sebastian Telfair

            2 – (Rashad McCants)

            3 – (Corey Brewer), Mike Miller

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

            5 – Al Jefferson

Looking at this, it’s pretty obvious that any free agent is going to be a either a shooting guard or a small forward (Miller can fill either spot nicely, so it’s the Wolves choice on where to fill).  Unless Foye takes a step back, he should be a perfectly good starting point.  Jefferson is Jefferson, and unless Love is the next Adam Morrison, there’s no way the Wolves bring in a free agent replacement after 1 year (and if he is the next Adam Morrison, the Wolves will be so far back in development it makes no sense to spend free agency money).  When you get down to it, the Wolves will be looking for someone to replace Rashad McCants.  So let’s look at the players who could be available in 2009:

Early Termination Option Players

Kobe Bryant, Rip Hamilton, Hedo Turkoglu, Jamal Crawford, Kyle Korver

Player Option Player
Ricky Davis

Restricted Free Agents

Danny Granger, Marvin Williams, Josh Childress, Linas Kleiza, Jarrett Jack, Francisco Garcia, Luther Head, Jamario Moon

Unrestricted Free Agents

Shawn Marion, Ron Artest, Trevor Ariza, Anthony Parker, Marquis Daniels, Wally Szczerbiak, Grant Hill, Keith Bogans, Bobby Jackson, Desmond Mason

That’s a lot of names.  The first thing we should do is to whittle the list down by players who would be more valuable than Rashad McCants.  Going by PER the following players were superior to McCants’ 14.65 last season:

Kobe Bryant, Rip Hamilton, Hedo Turkoglu, Jamal Crawford, Danny Granger, Josh Childress, Francisco Garcia, Jamario Moon, Shawn Marion, Ron Artest, Trevor Ariza, Grant Hill

Now if we strip out those that will almost certainly be back with their teams (or not joining the Wolves):

Hedo Turkoglu, Jamal Crawford, Danny Granger, Josh Childress, Francisco Garcia, Jamario Moon, Trevor Ariza, Grant Hill

Much more manageable than the 24 we started with!  Now, let’s figure out how much of an advantage the Wolves reasonably have in this market.  There’s 5 teams projected to be under the cap (Indiana, Memphis, Miami, Oklahoma, and Portland), and two other teams (Charlotte and Minnesota) who can put themselves under the cap.  Of those 7 teams, Indiana, Memphis, Charlotte, and Miami need big men, while Portland and Oklahoma need swingers.  So now that we’ve established the battle for the Northwest, let’s look at what we can have:

ETO, PO, or Unrestricted: PER

Hedo Turkoglu: 17.81

Trevor Ariza: 16.09

Jamal Crawford: 15.99

Grant Hill: 15.79

Restricted Free Agents:

Josh Childress: 17.84

Danny Granger: 16.76

Francisco Garcia: 15.16

Jamario Moon: 15.08

As you can see from this, it’s an iffy proposition for the Wolves.  Their safest option would be to get Danny Granger, though he is certainly going to be pursued by the Trailblazers and the Thunder, though if the Pacers have any sense they’ll sock away some cash to match any offer he receives.  Thus I consider Childress to be the best bet for the Wolves next off-season.  Here’s why:  If Granger is still around he’s going to be heavily sought after (and with good reason), the next logical target is Turkoglu. The problem with Turkoglu (and the reason I prefer Childress) is that he put up his best season at 29, and he’s going to be 30 by the start of the 2009-2010.  Meanwhile, Childress and Granger are both 25 and headed in the right direction statistically.  Of course, it’s going to take a lot of money to pry Childress loose.  He’s getting $20 million for 3 years, and considering the perks they get in Europe let’s call it $24 million for the contract (along with the adoration of the Greeks).  If Childress continues to perform and improve at the level he’s show and I was the Timberwolves, I’d offer him up to $33 million over 3 years ($10M, $11M, $12M) or even $46 million over 4 years ($10M, $11M, $12M, $13M) to return.  This way the Timberwolves aren’t burdened with an untradable contract if Childress busts, and it’s fairly commiserate with what other players of his caliber receive.  And while he’s technically a restricted free agent, I doubt that Atlanta would hesitate more than 5 seconds before declining to match the Wolves’ terms.  While this is kind of creative (i.e. wishful) thinking, remember that the Wolves are going to have less money than either the Thunder ($25-$30 million) and the Trailblazers ($6-$32 million) in free agency.

Let’s take a look at the results of this hypothetical upgrade:

The first thing to note to do is compare Childress with McCants, since that would be the effective replacement on this team.  And as we can see, Childress is better at everything inside the trey line than McCants is.  It would be an across the board upgrade.  Additionally, Mike Miller should be compared to McCants as he will be replacing him at that position.  This time, the only thing McCants does better is hold onto the ball, and not even by an exceptional amount.  So if the Wolves could bring in Childress, they get an across the board increase in production from the 2 and the 3.

If Childress or Granger falls through and the Wolves don’t get Granger (which I don’t consider too likely), Trevor Ariza isn’t a bad backup plan.  He’s worse at shooting that Childress, but he’s a bit better at defending (and a better rebounder to boot).  He’s also going to come a lot cheaper, for those budget conscious Wolves fans.  As for Garcia, Hill, Crawford, and Moon, if those are the option I’d rather the Wolves exercise their option on McCants and try in the 2010 off-season to fill their 2 spot. 

Of course, this is simply a conjecture at this point.  Right now the Wolves are headed to training camp, and need to work through the season, sign Shaun Livingston, and hope they are in a position to draft Ricky Rubio next off-season.