Over the past month, I've been playing around with whatifsports.com in an effort to simulate a Timberwolves season with various potential rosters. Now that the wolves roster seems to be pretty solidified for this up coming season I though I would begin my official simulation. Before I do this I want to get some agreement with CH on what we want to see. Taking into account the following observations I have made regarding Rick Adleman's coaching and minute distribution I have come up with a couple possible rotations to use for my simulation.

With this simulation, I plan to record the stats and record of the 2012-13 Timberwolve's roster as they play against the Timberwolves 2011-12 NBA competition. This puts them up against legitimate NBA competition and the 66 game season is a large enough number for a projection, but significantly less tedious than a 82 game season.

If you are not familiar with whatifsports.com it simulates games based on the stats of individual players in specific seasons giving anyone the opportunity to match up, say Jordan's Bulls against this last seasons Heat team, or to replace Lebron with Jordan and see if the 2011 Miami Heat would be better.

The Daily Norseman did something similar to this back in anticipation of Brett Favre's first season with the vikings, to attempt to illustrate how the combination of Favre and Adrian Peterson would actually benefit both players. Kind of got the idea for this from that.

The roster I've created uses individual stats from recent years. All returning wolves play will be based upon last years play. Andre Kirilenko will be played by 2010-11 Kirilenko. Chase Budinger will be played 2010-11 Budinger as that season he played in Rick Adelman's system. Alexey Shved will be played by the rookie Manu Ginobili, who seem in someways to be relatively similar players. I then took some optimistic license in using 2009-10 Brandon Roy, as he now claims to feel much better than he did in the 2010-11 season, but do not expect his 21.5 PPG to repeat itself because he will be budgeted considerably less minutes. And there we hit the point where I ask for help. I cannot decide how I want to ration out the minutes for this roster, so I have come up with two options for 2012-13 rotations that I would like you to choose from ... but first, I want to share something regarding the great Rick Adleman.

{If you get too bored with this go ahead and scroll down past the jump and put your two cents in on the poll}

Adleman has never voluntarily played with a rotation of players that was more than 8 or 9 players. Last year we saw an anomaly in what wolves got minutes because of injuries and the condensed season. Looking back at three of Adelman's best seasons as a coach, the 1991-92 Trail Blazers, the 2001-02 Kings, and the 2007-08 Rockets we can see a similar distribution of minutes. We also se a similar cast of characters. I'm not saying these characters are identical in name, skill or style but their roles are very clearly defined. Basketballreference.com provides the tables regarding minute distribution and player production.

The 1991-92 Trail Blazers:

This team finished the regular season with a 58-24 record and lost to Michael Jordan and the bulls in the NBA finals.

Totals

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This shows that seven players (from Terry Porter to Danny Ainge) played nearly all 82 games and more that 1500 minutes, while three others (Alaa Abdelnaby to Mark Bryant) played a number of minutes that puts them in, clearly evident second category.

The 2001-02 Sacramento Kings

This team finished the regular season with a 61-21 record and lost to Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'neil and the Lakers in the Western Conference finals.

Totals

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This teams shows a cut and dry 8 man rotation in which those 8 players all played over 1500 minutes, and with the exception of Chris Weber's 54 games, this group played in nearly every game that season.

The 2007-08 Houston Rockets

This team finished the regular season with a 55-27 record and lost to the Utah Jazz in the First round of the playoffs

Totals

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Even though this was a team that had issues with injury (Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming) the base of an around eight man rotation is certainly there.

What does this tell us? Nothing we didn't really know, right?

That's kind of true, This isn't rocket science after all, it's just me showing my evidence for my assumptions. From these teams and tables we also can assume/assign players roles.

The eight man rotation appears to be what Aldelman generally goes for. This is most perfectly evident in the 2001-02 Sacramento Kings. From this I combine the assumptions made by the people at EA Sports when creating the NBA2K series, of what defines minutes break down of the Star, Starter, Sixth Man and Role player roles.

In my experimenting with NBA2k11, NBA stars expect at least 36 mins/game, NBA Starters at least 30 mpg, 6th men at least 22 mpg and role players at least 10 mpg.

A thing that is interesting to note, is that it Adelman assigns significant playing time to a certain kind of player: the Terry Porter, Doug Christie, Shane Battier type player. Of course in all of these seasons the teams star(s) played limited minutes (Drexler missed games, so did Stojakovic & Webber, so did McGrady and Yao), but still I think my slightly intentional data manipulation proves a point. The "role starter" is something that Adelman has valued.

So rotations look something like this:

*= star player **= important bench player ***= workmanlike-defensive-minded-unselfish-ball-handler

What sticks out to me is how stacked the Wolves appear. Roster Spots 5-12 (outside Rubio, Love, Kirilenko and Pekovic) are fighting for playing time. Not many teams are this deep to the twelfth man, am I right?

It could be that I just don't know how good Mateen Cleaves and Ennis Whatley were, but with my 22 year old eye, Cunningham and Willaims are pretty good #'s 11 & 12.

What is Rick Adleman going do with this depth? Does he stick with a 8 man rotation? It's tough for me to think he would do anything different. However, the depth of this Wolves team gives him some ridiculous versatility, in match ups and different line ups.

I give you Two Options to collectively choose from:

Option 1: The "Eight" Man Rotation

Before Rubio (first quarter of simulated season):

PGs: mins SGs: mins SFs: mins PF: mins C: mins

Ridnour: 24 Roy: 26 Kirilenko: 26 Love: 34 Pekovic: 34

Barea: 16 Shved: 8 Budinger: 18 Kirielenko: 6 Love: 6

Shved: 8 Budinger: 8 Roy: 2 Williams: 3 Stiemsma: 8

Barea: 4 Shved: 2 Cunningham: 3

Cunningham/

Williams

Totals: Love (40mins), Pekovic (34mins), Kirilenko (32mins), Roy (26mins), Budinger (26mins), Ridnour (24mins), Barea (20mins), Shved (18mins), Stiemsma (8mins), Williams (3mins), Cunningham (3mins)

With Rubio

PGs: mins SGs: mins SFs: mins PF: mins C: mins

Rubio: 28 Roy: 26 Kirilenko: 26 Love: 34 Pekovic: 34

Ridnour: 16 Shved: 12 Budinger: 18 Kirielenko: 6 Love: 6

Shved: 4 Budinger: 8 Roy: 2 Williams: Stiemsma: 8

Barea Barea: Shved: 2 Cunningham:

Cunningham/

Williams

Option 2: The Deep Bench Rotation

Before Rubio (first quarter of simulated season):

PGs: mins SGs: mins SFs: mins PF: mins C: mins

Ridnour: 24 Roy: 26 Kirilenko: 26 Love: 34 Pekovic: 28

Barea: 16 Shved: 8 Budinger: 16 Kirielenko: 4 Stiemsma: 16

Shved: 8 Budinger: 8 Cunningham: 6 Williams: 8 Love: 4

Barea: 4 Shved: 2 Cunningham: 2

With Rubio

PGs: mins SGs: mins SFs: mins PF: mins C: mins

Rubio: 28 Roy: 26 Kirilenko: 26 Love: 34 Pekovic: 28

Ridnour: 16 Shved: 8 Budinger: 16 Kirielenko: 6 Stiemsma: 16

Shved: 4 Budinger: 8 Cunningham: 6 Williams: 8 Love: 4

Barea Barea: Shved: 2 Cunningham: 4

This rotation essentially just balances the minutes a little bit more, specifically putting Greg Stiemsma on the Court more.

Please help me choose which option to use on the poll below:

Side conversation topics:

In my experiments, I do not see much room for the likes of one of the Ridnour/ Barea back up PG duo, or of Derrick Willams in this rotation. While these players would not make a trade that would be loaded with Value for the Timberwolves, would you think it may be in the Timberwolves best interest to move on back up PG and Willaims for a future pick?

What line up are you most excited for this season? Rubio/Bud/AK47/Love/Pek? That's just one awesome option!