Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker working around Timberwolves guard Mike Conley in the third quarter at Target Center last Sunday.
Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker working around Timberwolves guard Mike Conley in the third quarter at Target Center last Sunday. Credit: Bruce Kluckhohn-USA TODAY Sports

The Minnesota Timberwolves finished the 2023-24 season with the fourth-best record in the NBA, just a game behind the top two teams in a brutally competitive Western Conference. It earned them the third seed, and home court advantage in their first-round playoff series against the sixth-seeded Phoenix Suns.

Yet on the brink of Saturday’s opening game, the Suns are slight favorites to win the series. Unfortunately there are logical reasons why the Wolves are being disrespected.

The Suns are laden with star power. Kevin Durant is a 14-time All Star whose teams have won 22 of the 32 playoff series in which he has participated. He has won two NBA Championships and was named the Most Valuable Player in the Finals both of those seasons. Devin Booker is a four-time All Star whose teams have won five of eight playoff series. Bradley Beal is a three-time All Stars whose teams have been in eight playoff series, winning three.

Beal has averaged 23.5 points in 45 playoff games. Booker has averaged 28 points in 43 playoff games. Durant has averaged 29.4 points in 166 playoff games.

Grayson Allen has become an ideal complement to this troika of stars. A hard-nosed player constantly moving without the ball, he led the NBA is three-point shooting percentage on a high volume, making 205 of 445 shots (46.1%) from behind the arc, working himself open as opponents concentrate on the Suns’ more notorious scorers.

The Suns took a while to get acclimated. Durant played only eight games for Phoenix last season after coming over in a trade in February of 2023. Beal and Allen were added to Durant and Booker (who has been with the Suns his entire nine-year career) only this season, and Beal has been limited to 53 games this season due to various injuries. But they have been healthier and more cohesive down the stretch, improving their defense and posting the same record, 17-10, but with a better net rating (points scored minus points allowed per possession) than the Wolves since the All Star break.

Last but hardly least, the Suns have beaten the Wolves handily in each of their three meetings this season, to the point where Minnesota has never cut Phoenix’s lead below 10 points in the second half of any game.

All that said, I believe the Wolves will ultimately prevail in a very tough series that will last six or seven games. But for that to occur, the Wolves will need to remedy some chronic problems and lean into some signature strengths. Let’s get into it.

Be ready to play from the opening tip

Coming into this season, an often-stated priority for Head Coach Chris Finch and the team was improved maturity. In the two specific areas cited – taking inferior opponents for granted and being distracted by calls from the officials – there has been notable growth. The Wolves record against the five worst teams in the NBA leapt from 6-10 last season to 12-2 this year. And while they still finished 10th among the 30 teams in the number of technical fouls, they cut the amount by more than a third from last season’s league-leading total.

But a stubborn sign of immaturity that needs to be squelched is that the Wolves take their sweet time engaging the game rather than been mentally prepared to play quality hoops at the opening tip.

They have their worst offensive and defensive ratings in the first quarter, creating a net rating of plus 3.1, compared to plus 5.2, plus 13.1 and plus 4.8, respectively, in the second, third and fourth quarters. But in the past ten games, the issue has grown from a nuisance to a catastrophe.

The Wolves have been outscored by 63 points in their ten most recent first quarters – only the purposefully tanking Utah Jazz were worse. Minnesota’s vaunted, NBA-best defense, which yielded just 108.4 points per 100 possessions during the 82-game season, coughed up 125.9 points per 100 possessions in those 10 opening periods, while their offense scored just 100.4 points.

The more you whittle it down from there, the worse it gets. Over their past eight games – their slate for the month of April – the Wolves are scoring 97 points per 100 possessions in the first quarter and giving up 127.3. In the past five games, the offense improves to 107.2 points scored, while the defense craters to a whopping 143.5 points allowed per 100 possessions.

When I asked Finch the main cause for the woefully slow starts, he answered with a word: “Turnovers.” The Wolves first-quarter turnover rate ranked 28th among the 30 teams over the past ten games, dropped to dead last if you measure the last eight games, then nudged up to next-to-last over the past five games.

These turnovers are a double-edged sword – a sign of sloppy, inattentive performance on offense that in turn generates opponents’ points in transition, robbing the Wolves of their most formidable asset, half-court defense, which is the heart and soul of their identity.

The Wolves have gotten progressively worse in the first quarter of their three games with the Suns, falling behind by 6, 12 and 22 points. It has led to insurmountable leads by halftime. The nadir of this was last weekend’s final game of the regular season, where they committed an inexcusable 11 turnovers in the first period, leading to 17 of the Suns’ 44 points.

In a high-stakes game that determined playoff seedings, it was their worst 12 minutes of the season. In this subsequent week of preparation, it is not a hope but an expectation that this team is paying as much attention to mental preparation and readiness as they are to play designs and coverages. Otherwise they will lose the series.

Move the ball, move without the ball, hunt for open three-pointers

Along with being disengaged at the onset, another way the Wolves have made the game easier for the Suns and created a disparity between the two teams that is deceptively large, is by stubbornly trying to overcome what Phoenix’s defense is  committed to stopping, which is unfettered playmaking by Anthony Edwards.

The strategy hasn’t been subtle. Phoenix is putting two men on the ball when Ant has it and then hedging their other players into the gaps when Ant tries to dribble through the double-teams.

In what has been an otherwise marvelous season, an ongoing mantra for the Wolves’ self-sabotage has been their top two scorers, Ant and Karl-Anthony Towns, attempting to plow through a bevy of defenders specifically designed to stop them. But it isn’t all their fault – the other players on the court have a tendency to gawk instead of skedaddle. The best way to deter clusters of defenders is to seek open spaces and send the ball there, putting up open shots if the cluster doesn’t react or forcing them to continue their pursuit if they do respond.

This is Offense 101 and by not committing to its principles with quick decisions and crisp passes to reward the movement-and-reaction, the Wolves are allowing the Suns to define the spaces in which they operate.

Expanding those spaces should include ball movement meant to hit cutters when they get ignored and feeding open teammates for three-pointers in the corners and on the weak-side slots. Again, this is low-hanging fruit that the Wolves rarely deign to pick. The team ranks 23rd in the NBA in the frequency of three-point attempts and 3rd in the NBA for the accuracy of three-pointers made.

Defending the three-point arc is a distant third priority for the Suns, who are concerned with stopping Ant and ensuring that Rudy Gobert doesn’t feast at the rim, due to their smaller and slighter contingent of forwards able to help center Yusuf Nurkic.

In last weekend’s fiasco, Ant took just seven shots, only two of them from behind the arc (he made zero). He had four assists and five turnovers. This is the time to remind everybody that Ant has significantly raised the awareness and execution of his game in his previous two postseason stints. The Suns are blissfully unfamiliar with him suddenly ambling into two or three straight pull-up three-pointers, or the odd superhuman feat that electrifies the arena and his teammates.

But it helps if “Super Ant” is a bonus rather than a necessity, which is why others also must elevate. Last weekend KAT took only eight shots, four of them behind the arc (he made one). He had two assists and five turnovers, most of them offensive fouls going toward the hoop. Naz Reid took eight shots, five of them threes (he made two). He had one assist and four turnovers.

The paucity of shot attempts is because of the plentiful turnovers – you can’t shoot if you give the ball away. Moving without the ball and making crisp passes reduces turnovers and increases the amount of good looks the offense will generate by spreading the cluster. Phoenix is not an especially good defensive team (they finished 13th in points allowed per possession this season). The Wolves should stop making them look like they are.

Trust the defensive breadth and versatility of your roster to meet the mismatch challenges and provide enough resistance when Phoenix is on offense

This is the tough part.

In one sense, it is a basic math problem: Phoenix has four mobile, deadeye wing shooters and the Wolves play with two big men. This series will test whether the conventional wisdom that “Gobert can be played off the floor in the playoffs” is specious Rudy hate or a begrudging reality. Those who disdain KAT’s ongoing presence on the team will also get confirmation or comeuppance.

The emergence of Allen has raised the ante on the Suns’ firepower. The longer this quartet gets to play together – with Jusuf Nurkic the sole, lumbering big – the greater their synergy. Beal and Booker have never won a ring, and the two Durant bagged have supposedly been tainted by him hitching a ride on the Warriors dynasty. Suffice to say they will sacrifice shots and touches for the greater good of group dynamics.

But I’m not whistling in the dark when I contend that the Wolves’ NBA-best defense is being sold short by the odds-makers. The main reason it has risen to this level is Gobert’s newfound flexibility, his capability as well as his willingness to meet pick-and-rolls and his coverage assignment further away from the basket when necessary. Whether that requires the “low man” filling in for him at the rim or him getting back in time is something the Wolves have frequently honed according to the opponent and prevailing scheme. And Finch has had a week to sweat the details.

Provided KAT’s repaired knee affords him full mobility – a big “if,” given that surgery on his torn meniscus was a mere month ago – he is able capable of performing above expectations within an actively roaming defensive scheme. The “high wall” system the Wolves deployed with Jarred Vanderbilt and Patrick Beverley two years ago was an eye-opener in that regard.

Not for nothing, but the Wolves roster also contains the deepest collection of quality on-ball defenders in the league. One option – the status quo choice – would be for Finch to put KAT on Durant, and sort out how to defend Booker, Beal and Allen with Jaden McDaniels, Ant and Mike Conley (which is, in that order, the way I’d go).

KAT on Durant is obviously not ideal, but neither is it the automatic horror show many are surmising. Durant has increasingly relied on his midrange as he ages and that has always been KAT’s most comfortable turf to defend. He won’t “stop” Durant, but the gap between him and anyone else taking the assignment is the most palatable option when he’s on the court.

If the math doesn’t work and the defense blows a gasket, well, this is the playoffs and Finch shouldn’t hesitate to change the dynamic. Subbing Nickeil Alexander-Walker in for KAT would bump McDaniels over to Durant, NAW on Booker, and Ant and Conley staying on Beal and Allen, respectively. Chasing Allen is going to wear out Conley, but Monte Morris might be the best person on the roster to counter Allen’s constant movement. Meanwhile, Finch could also put Kyle Anderson or (less preferably) Naz on Durant.

The conventional wisdom is that rotations get shortened and isolation-plays become more frequent in the playoffs. But this feels like a series where the Wolves should rebut that theory. It bears emphasis that the Suns have torched the Wolves half-court defense far more with high pick-and-rolls than isolation plays, and part of this week’s drilling down at practice should be how and when switches happen, contests are bullish and trapping gambles are deployed or not. Whatever the plan, everyone should know it. And follow it. Because the shooting on the Suns leaves precious little margin for error.

The superior depth of the Wolves is another reason not to shorten the rotations. The brand of ball Finch prefers to coach relies on defensive pressure and offensive flow. President of Basketball Operations Tim Connelly has assembled a roster that nourishes both philosophies.

It is time for the Minnesota Timberwolves to grow up.

That means KAT and that means Ant, but also McDaniels and Naz, and Gobert, who must hold his composure when the whistle doesn’t blow his way. Minnesota must reduce its turnovers, implement its suffocating defensive identity and stay focused – beginning with game one in the afternoon, when a certain star has traditionally had difficulty clearing the cobwebs from his consciousness.

It has been a joy seeing how far this ball club has come. Now we will see how far it can go.

Britt Robson

Britt Robson has covered the Timberwolves since 1990 for City Pages, The Rake, SportsIllustrated.com and The Athletic. He also has written about all forms and styles of music for over 30 years.