Timberwolves' spiritual odyssey continues

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      Photo by Xalamay

It's been another week of fits and starts for the Timberwolves, of giant steps forward and bewildering steps back. On Wednesday, they reverted to early season form with a limp, aimless showing against the only slightly less aimless Clippers. Two days later they reversed course again, playing with competence and, even more importantly, a lighthearted enthusiasm against the Kings. Then, on Sunday, they were torn apart by the Boston Celtics, the Wolves' perpetual reminder of what, so easily it seems, might have been.  "The hardest thing for players to do in this league," said Wolves' coach Kurt Rambis after that encouraging Kings victory, "is to be consistent." The Wolves have demonstrated this maxim thoroughly and continually over the past few years. As we've seen in Randy Foye's all too sporadic flashes of understanding, in Corey Brewer's sudden, inexplicable bursts of awesome, in Rodney Carney, in Oleksiy Pecherov, in Rashad McCants, in Gerald Green (remember him? he was the best/worst), individual consistency is elusive and troubling enough. Learning the kind of shared trust and communal intelligence necessary to play professional team basketball well every single day is evidently another order of magnitude. What almost imperceptible shifts in effort, awareness and concentration mean the difference between playing amazingly well and being unbearable to watch? For a team as inexperienced as the Wolves, this can be a real stumper.

Fidelius

In a recent New York Times piece, Jonathan Abrams focuses on Rambis's attempt to import the triangle offense to the young Wolves. It's one of the better explanations of a system that can be extremely difficult to translate into layman's terms. "The triangle, created by the post, wing and corner players, revolves around seven basic principles," says Abrams:

the ball handler reading the defense; correct decisions based on the defense; penetration through a pass into the post; separation of 15 to 20 feet for all the offensive players; movement through sharp cuts; interchangeability in positions; and balance for defensive transition.

The piece also includes a nice little diagram, right here, which outlines the way that the triangle itself is formed and the offense initiated (although, frustratingly it doesn't include the next step, in which the wing and corner players cut through the lane, setting screens for the weakside players who come toward the ball. This is the action that generates so much of the offense's movement and really sets the whole comedy in motion).

As Abrams explains, the triangle is both simpler and more esoteric than your run-of-the-mill NBA set. It's esoteric in that its progressions of reads and options can seem, especially to a young, developing player, baffling and endless. But, because it's based on the fundamental principles of movement and passing that underlie even the most planned offenses--"[it's] literally a junior high offense," says Lakers assistant Jim Cleamons--it's simpler too. The rub is that it teaches players to make use of these principles instinctively, rather than by a rote reproduction of plays and sets.  So the irony is that, although the offense seems constraining and heavily structured to young players like Flynn, used to relying on their skills as freelance playmakers, when mastered the triangle has produced some of the most fluid, creative offensive basketball ever played. And although the offense can seem like a forest of jargon, it comes down to comprehending amusingly gnomic, un-macho ideas like "openness" and "receptivity".

Given all this, its easy to understand why, for the Wolves, real consistency has been hard to come by. Against Sacramento, the Wolves appeared to have made a huge leap in understanding and execution. But after the first 24 minutes of play against the Celtics attacking defense, the team was again in ruins. The triangle, with its ability to react to the defense and fluidly move the ball from strongside to weakside, would seem to be a perfect answer to the Celtics' intense ball pressure. But that pressure left the Wolves too ragged to execute even the most basic actions of their offense (the Wolves are in good company here--the Celtics do this to everybody); and the Celtics were able to turn an impressive amount of Wolves' possessions into open-court baskets of their own.

Defense Against the Dark Arts

Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to the real core of the Wolves' story. Although swarms of words have been written--many of them, I realize, by me--about the triangle, it's not even the most defining feature of their offense. Above all, the Wolves want to be an up-tempo team, a team that generates its best opportunities in transition. When they score in the open floor, everything gets easier; they put the defense on its heals, they create rhythm and pace and they flow into their halfcourt offense with confidence.  And the hard truth is that if you want to run, you have to play defense. The fact that the Wolves play at  the league's third fastest pace and yet boast the league's 29th most efficient offense is a function, not just of their spotty offensive decision-making, but of their defense's inability to make the other team miss.

Against the Clippers, the Wolves defensive effort was, in Rambis's words, "abysmal". Against Boston, Rajon Rondo's ability to threaten the interior of the Wolves defense off the dribble left Ray Allen and Paul Pierce constantly open to shoot threes. Not surprisingly, then, without the ability to turn their opponent's turnovers and missed shots into opportunities to run, the Wolves also labored to execute their half-court offense. And against Sacramento, when the Wolves were able to pressure the Kings guards, get into passing lanes and rotate to open shooters, they were also able to score easy baskets and move naturally into their offense. Here, Kevin Love's somewhat chastening ferocity on the defensive glass, combined with his ability to throw a seriously beautiful outlet pass--against the Kings, his off-balance, frozen rope of a 40-foot chest pass to Corey Brewer was a real jaw-dropper--comes into full view. Here, Brewer's full-speed mania, Jonny Flynn's explosiveness and Ramon Sessions's ball skills find their truest expression. The open court morphs into the half court. Defense flows into offense. Let's get receptive.