KAT Is Hurt, But Don’t Sleep on the Wolves
Just going to do a quick post this week as we got some big news this week that significantly impacts the NBA playoff race. Shams reported that All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns has a torn left meniscus. It looks like KAT will have surgery on the knee next week and the team will re-evaluate his knee in four weeks, but he will likely miss more time than that given meniscus surgeries can take 4-8 weeks to recover (plus rehab). That’s a problem since the first round of the NBA Playoffs will start on April 20, about six weeks from now.
Obviously this is a huge bummer for the Pups and their fans who have been riding high all season. The T-Wolves currently sit second in the Western Conference after losing last night in OT to the Cavaliers, but they’re only a half-game back of the first place OKC Thunder (with whom they’ve traded back and forth for first place in recent weeks).
Towns’ injury has a lot of people concerned, and while it’s never a good thing to lose one of your best players, I actually think the Wolves are well positioned to weather the storm.
First off, Minnesota’s strong start through the first three quarters of the season has put them in a great position. It’s exceptionally unlikely that they can fall any further than fourth in the Western Conference, so they’re going to have home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs barring an epic collapse.
Although they have only a slim half-game lead over the third-place Nuggets, the Wolves have a much healthier two game lead on the fourth place Clippers and a huge 5.5 game lead on the fifth place Pelicans. Eight of the Timberwolves’ 18 remaining games are against teams with records under .500, so Minnesota should be able to at least tread water. If they can win even half of their remaining games, the Wolves would effectively lock up a top-4 seed unless the Pelicans can go on a miraculous run of 15-4 or better (and win eventual tiebreakers).
Setting the standings and future schedule aside, the Wolves have built their success this season on the defensive end of the floor. They are by far the NBA’s best defensive team this season, sporting a defensive rating for the season of 108.1—fully two points better than the second place Boston Celtics at 110.3. [For those who prefer traditional stats, things look just as good: the Wolves give up just 106.6 points per game, lowest in the NBA and about 2.7 points per game better than the second place Knicks.] That’s a meaningful improvement over last year, where the Wolves were 10th in the NBA in defensive rating, and a sea-change from where the Wolves typically resided before adding Rudy Gobert in 2022 (in the seven seasons Towns’ was in Minnesota before Gobert arrived, the Wolves finished higher than 20th in defensive rating just once).
Other metrics similarly confirm the Wolves status as an elite defensive team. Led by Rudy Gobert and strong defensive wings Jaden McDaniels and Anthony Edwards (when he wants to), the T-Wolves are holding opponents to shooting just 44.6% from the field (best in NBA) and 34.9% from three (third best). They only struggle defending the free throw line, where they give up a middle-of-the-pack 78.3% free throw percentage—just kidding, I’m only making sure you’re paying attention. On top of that, the Wolves are amongst the league’s top 5 teams in blocks per 100 possessions, top 5 in defensive rebounding rate, and top 10 in steals per 100 possessions per Basketball Reference. Except for steals, all of those numbers are significantly up from last year.
Towns, for all his talents, isn’t a huge contributor to the Timberwolves defensive explosion this year, so losing him isn’t likely to harm them much on defense. Towns has never had a reputation as a quality defensive player. That reputation may be slightly overstated, but it’s not wrong either. Although he does a solid job on the defensive glass, you’ll struggle to find other defensive metrics where Towns excels. Despite his 7-foot size, he’s 75th in the NBA in block percentage per Basketball Reference and he ranks 150th in steal percentage. According to PBP Stats, the Timberwolves give up 5.8 more points per 100 possessions on defense with Towns on the floor. [Cleaning the Glass puts a similar metric at 3.8 points worse per 100 possessions.]. Meanwhile, Dunks and Threes rates Towns’ estimated defensive plus/minus at 0.0 (slightly above average) and Basketball Reference gives up a defensive box plus/minus of 1.0 (not terrible, but not noteworthy). At the end of the day, we shouldn’t expect losing Towns to really cost Minnesota on the defensive end beyond losing front court depth.
Losing Towns is a much bigger deal offensively.
According to Cleaning the Glass, the Wolves score 7.9 more points per 100 possessions with Towns on the floor and their overall effective field goal percentage jumps by 3.8%, huge benefits that are hard to replace. Yet Minnesota has one of the best “KAT replacements” in the NBA already on its roster in Naz Reid. Reid isn’t the same level of offensive talent as KAT, but he’s a pretty close facsimile, and even with Reid filling in the Pups will still have to make some adjustments. But they can cover Towns’ absence through the regular season and potentially even for the early part of the playoffs.
Comparing Towns and Reid based on rate stats, it’s easy to see the similarities. Guess who is who?
Player A is Towns and Player B is Reid, and their numbers are awfully close.
Towns is a slightly better shooter than Reid and definitely has more of a penchant for getting to the line and knocking down free throws. He’s also a bit better as a rebounder and distributor. Otherwise, Reid puts up pretty similar numbers to Towns, and he does so while carrying a relatively high usage rate of 22.3% (especially high for a backup big man). Pushing Reid’s minutes and usage upward can help the Wolves make up for a lot of what Towns does.
Reid’s ability to play the same role as Towns on offensive is apparent watching the Wolves, too—and it showed up repeatedly in the Cavs game last night.
Perhaps most importantly, Reid runs the pick and pop to perfection, which helps Minnesota to generate a healthy 1.23 points per possession when he operates as the screener per NBA.com (they generated an outstanding 1.45 points per possession with Towns).
Reid sets a pick for TJ Warren on the wing then reverses to set an on-ball screen for Nickeil Alexander-Walker and pops out for an open three. Minnesota doesn’t have a true scorer on the floor (with due respect to Warren, who just joined the team), but using Reid as the screener forces the defense into a series of really tough decisions. They can’t easily cheat off of Warren, who is a capable scorer despite his faults and running toward a potential screen action with Rudy Gobert. And faced with the Alexander-Walker/Reid screen, Georges Niang opts to pick up the driver which leaves Reid with a wide open three. Even if Darius Garland cheats back, that’s still leaving a small guard to contest a 6’10” shooter in Reid.
Here the Wolves run a simple screen action, but they’ve pulled several help defenders outside with Ant Edwards replacing TJ Warren on the weak side. Jordan McLaughlin pushes downhill aggressively, forcing the screen defender Jarrett Allen to step up or risk getting blown by without a good help option to save him (Walker-Alexander is in the corner holding the playside help). Reid knocks down another triple.
They can also run similar concepts with Edwards, who is far and away Minnesota’s biggest offensive threat.
Ant misses Reid popping out on this play, but you can see that running on-ball pick and pops with Edwards and Reid is a hard thing for defenses to deal with. Ant drives so forcefully that all five defenders are watching him, including Damion Jones who is supposed to be guarding Reid. Jones sprints back and loses all sight of Reid who is sitting wide open, ready to shoot, without a defender in the frame.
The Wolves can even run pin-downs for Reid, like they have frequently in the past with Towns.
That is a big time play. It’s overtime against a top-3 seed in the East. Reid still has the confidence and talent to drill a huge three off a pin-down action centered around Mike Conley and Kyle Anderson (not exactly the biggest offensive threats in the world).
Reid isn’t quite the midrange that Towns is, but he can still find ways to be effective by getting deeper into the paint to take advantage of his size.
Reid’s being guarded by Isaac Okoro (a good wing defender), but he has a significant size advantage. Rather than settling for a midrange jumper, Reid drives to his strong-hand to take advantage of a half-hearted closeout and gets deep into the paint, going through Okra’s chest for the bucket. It should’ve been an and-1. That’s a big time bucket to put the Wolves up by one in the last minute of the fourth quarter.
Reid will also take advantage of slower bigs off the drive too, especially if they are closing out late to stop a three:
Jarrett Allen gets caught here closing out high on Reid (he was understandably watching for the Edwards cut to the basket). Reid sees it and immediately gets Allen moving laterally, where he’s at a disadvantage, which Reid presses by spinning back for a layup at the rim.
Reid also does a great job of getting out into transition, which isn’t something the Wolves often get from Towns. He’s got enough of a handle to push the ball himself and most importantly he’s willing to do so. According to NBA.com, Minnesota generates a strong 1.26 points per 100 possessions with Reid in transition, too (KAT doesn’t do it enough to even make NBA.com’s stat page).
I love this play. Reid recognizes Sam Merrill and Caris Lavert are the only defenders back and uses his speed and handle to run the floor. He’s got McLaughlin in the corner (who he maybe should’ve hit), but it doesn’t matter because he attacks the rim and gets fouled. It’s not sexy, but it’s the type of instant transition game that can help an offense get easy points.
Here’s another transition win of a different sort.
Reid again initiates the transition, but this time he gives the ball up to Alexander-Walker in the corner. When Alexander-Walker drives, Reid continues into the paint on a secondary break and puts Sam Merrill in the basket, drawing a foul. This is fundamental basketball, but it’s only made possible by Reid’s willingness (and skill) to initiate the fast break himself.
With Reid substituting for Towns temporarily, the Wolves can stay afloat in the regular season and perhaps even make it through the first round of the playoffs. Given Minnesota hasn’t won a playoff series since 2004, that would be a success. But at the end of the day, the Wolves probably can’t advance far into the playoffs without Karl-Anthony Towns. He’s a core piece of the puzzle for them and a ceiling-raiser. Towns is also better and more versatile than Reid offensively—in fact, he is one of the best (if not the best) big-man shooters and carries a substantial offensive load for a Wolves team that has at times struggled on that end of the floor.
The Wolves can run most of the same offense with Reid that they’ve run with Towns in the past, and they can use Reid’s better transition ability to try to get easy buckets. They also should get a defensive boost, too, as displayed by Reid’s stellar block on a Darius Garland jumper to force last night’s game into OT:
By slotting Reid into KAT’s offensive role, the Wolves can cover Towns’ absence if they find a way to fill Reid’s old role with Anderson and others. That’s a less scary task, and one that the coaching staff should be able to navigate over the next 18 games. It may even have the added benefits: letting Ant fully become the offensive engine (he’s already well on his way) and encouraging Mike Conley to look for offensive more aggressively.
All told, even with KAT’s absence, I’m bullish on the Wolves finding their way to a top-3 or -4 seed in the West and being in position to win a playoff series. They’ll need KAT back, but they can survive while he heals up.