Dude, Are the Wolves a Contender?

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“Drinking a few white Russians and some other stuff will go a long ways, David”

Free agency has always been a huge disappointment for the Wolves in recent years. The free agent signings of Ryan Holllins, Anthony Tolliver, Ramon Sessions, Sasha Pavlovic, Darko Milicic, Luke Ridnour, and J.J. Barea have left fans with empty and depressed feelings by the end of July every summer. The common criticism is that no one wants to play basketball in Minnesota. It is a small market (actually ranks 14th among 30 NBA teams) and it is cold during the winter. However, things are a little different now that the team has two cornerstone stars in Love and Rubio and another very solid player in Nikola Pekovic.

Owner Glen Taylor is often criticized for not willing to spend money on players, but when Kevin Garnett was in his prime during the early part of the last decade, Taylor was more than willing to spend money on a winner. He spent whatever money he could while maneuvering around Garnett’s bloated 6 yr./$126 million dollar contract.Now the problem was they didn’t always go after the best players when they spend that money, similar to the current regime under GM David Kahn.

On top of this Kevin Love recently sat down with Yahoo! Sports’ Marc Spears and spoke about his desire to make the playoffs and that we wants the team to start making moves in order to become a contender. This really put pressure on Kahn to drastically improve the team, knowing that if the team fails to make the playoffs he may be out of work by July 2013.

With a new coaching staff, headed by Rick Adelman along with his son R.J. working closely with Kahn in the front office, it seems that this off-season has followed a different theme than other Kahn off-seasons have in the past. This has to make Wolves fans breathe a sign of relief as they now know that one of the winningest coaches of all-time is getting his input heard and it is being reflected in the moves made this off-season.

Let’s take a look at some of the players that have been acquired this offseason.

Brandon Roy

After taking a year off, Roy says that it is the best he has felt since he had surgery during the 2010-11 season. He has even gone as far as to say that he feels like he can start again, instead of coming off the bench like he did post-injury.

Roy recently participated in a Pro-Am game that was put on by friend and NBA player Jamal Crawford. Here is the video of Roy playing against a combination of NBA and college players as well as a few stragglers from the local Y. Like in most pick up style games, players don’t push themselves too much, exerting very little energy at times. It is hard to gauge exactly where Roy is physically based off just a handful of offensive possession. I put little stock into this type of thing, but it is still nice to see him able to step foot on a basketball court again and get up and down. To read more about Roy and recap of the Seattle Pro-Am he took part in, read Basketball Prospectus’ Kevin Pelton who was on hand to take it all in.

One thing from the video that Roy can still do is penetrate and get into the lane, something the Wolves couldn’t do much of when they had 6’2″ Luke Ridnour playing undersized shooting guard alongside the inept ball-handling of Martell Webster and Wes Johnson at the other wings.

Greg Stiemsma

Probably one of the best moves this offseason in my estimation was the signing of Greg Stiemsma. He will effectively take the place Darko Milicic as the team’s shot blocking big. The terms of his contract have not been announced yet, but is believed to be in $2-3 million range per year. Which means he will get paid half as much as Darko, but most likely put forth twice as much effort on nightly basis. I love this signing.

Below is a chart of big men (power forward and centers) from last season who had a BLK% of >5% and averaged more than a block and 10 minutes per game. Even though Stiemsma only played 776 minutes a game last season, a pretty small sample size, he was really good defensively. He posted one of the best BLK% among bigs and had the best defensive rating among any player in the entire league last season with an outstanding 90 defensive rating.

Per Game Advanced
Player Age Tm MP BLK BLK% ▾ eFG% DRtg
Serge Ibaka 22 OKC 27.2 3.7 9.8 .536 98
Larry Sanders 23 MIL 12.4 1.5 8.9 .457 97
Greg Stiemsma 26 BOS 13.9 1.5 8.5 .545 90
Chris Andersen 33 DEN 15.2 1.4 7.4 .546 99
JaVale McGee 24 TOT 25.2 2.2 6.6 .556 101
Brandan Wright 24 DAL 16.1 1.3 6.4 .618 100
DeAndre Jordan 23 LAC 27.2 2.0 6.2 .632 102
Ekpe Udoh 24 TOT 21.1 1.7 6.0 .431 105
Bismack Biyombo 19 CHA 23.1 1.8 5.9 .464 107
Jermaine O’Neal 33 BOS 22.8 1.7 5.8 .433 96
Samuel Dalembert 30 HOU 22.2 1.7 5.7 .506 100
Roy Hibbert 25 IND 29.8 2.0 5.2 .497 101
Joel Anthony 29 MIA 21.1 1.3 5.1 .559 100
Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 7/25/2012.

Stiemsma actually finished right ahead of fellow free agent and defensive specialist Omer Asik in defensive rating. Asik posted a 92 rating and was someone who made some sense for the Wolves to target in free agency, but once it was made obvious that the Rockets were going to offer Asik a wheelbarrow full of cash (3 yrs/$25 million) to come play for them I knew that dream was probably dead. For fun here is a career comparison of Stiemsma and Asik. Either the Wolves got Stiemsma on the cheap or the Rockets really overpaid for Asik. You make the call.

For a player who barely played in college (10 mpg, 1.0 bpg), Stiemsma has really come out nowhere. For what it is worth he even dominated the NBA’s developmental league with his shot blocking, posting a NDBL career average of 3.6 bpg in 28.3 mpg along with 9.3 BLK% and 88 def. rating. He was good in the D-League, he was good in Boston, so will he be good in Minnesota?

Anyone is an upgrade over Darko Milicic.

Alexey Shved

This guy is good at basketball?

One of the better young European prospects, Alexey Shved went undrafted in the 2010 draft as a 21-year-old. Now 23, the 6’6″ Russian guard is coming off a successful season with CSKA Moscow where he averaged 10.6 ppg in 21.6 minutes of Euroleague action. He had an excellent shooting line of 48.7/49.3/83.3 (FG%/3P%/FT%) and a 56.5 eFG%. Using some of John Hollinger’s Euroleague conversion rates, if Shved were to play the same amount  of minutes as he did in Europe last season his stat line would look something like this:

21.6 mpg — 8 pts/3.1 reb/3.9 ast/0.5 stl/1.3 TOs/43.4 3p%/83.3 FT%/49.7 eFG%

Now…

24.6 mpg — 7.7 pts/2.9 reb/1.4 ast/0.6 stl/1.1 TOs/34.1 3P%/69.8 FT%/47.0 eFG%

This is the career stat line of one Wes Johnson. Sad, right? Well, the Wolves just shipped out Wes Johnson who was due to make $4.3 million next season and replaced him with a player who could contribute similar numbers while shooting at higher clips and at roughly 70% the cost.

On paper Shved appears to be more efficient than Johnson, much like the signing of Roy this is yet another roll of the dice, but with a relatively small contract there is not a ton of risk involved here. Shved also can handle the ball, something Wes Johnson is still trying to figure out how to do.

Chase Budinger

To read about the acquisition of Budinger by clicking here.

Dante Cunningham

The trade of Wayne Ellington for power forward Dante Cunningham didn’t get a ton of headline play, but it is a nice roster balancing move. Essentially, Cunningham is the rich man’s Anthony Tolliver if you can even possibly conjure up that in your mind. Cunningham carries with him a career 105 def. rating, which would have ranked fourth on last year’s roster. He is scrappy defender who does the little things and can hit the occasionally mid-range jumper on offense.

The class act that was Wayne Ellington will be missed, but with the addition of Roy and Shved along with the return of Ridnour, Barea, and Rubio there just doesn’t seem to be playable minutes for Ellington next year. Best of luck to Wayne… hopefully he can make it Wayne in Memphis!

Andrei Kirilenko

Well, this the big move. Fans were waiting for it. Yesterday the Wolves signed SF Andrei Kirilenko to a 2 yr/$20 million dollar contract with a player option in the second year. Initial thoughts: It addresses a position of need, brings another veteran locker room presence to the team, he played the same Euroleague and national team as Shved, he has playoff experience, and he does a lot of things similar to Andre Iguodala, who many Wolves fans lust after — I am guilty of this as anyone.

At 31 years of age Kirilenko has very similar stats to Iguodala. Check out their career comparison.

Here is a SynergySports situational breakdown between Kirilenko and Iguodala over the last three seasons. The graph on the left shows how productive each player has been in that situation over the last three years. The graph on the right shows the percentage breakdown of how often each player has ended a play in each situation.

Kirilenko’s defensive has declined in recent years, but he coming off a great year in the Euroleague where he put up 14.1 ppg/7.5 rpg/2.4 apg/1.5 spg/1.9 bpg with a shooting line of 53.3/41.7/75.8 and an effective field goal percentage of 61%. He also brought home the Euroleague MYP as well as the league’s Best Defender Award.

In his ten-year NBA career, Kirilenko has posted a PER (Player Efficiency Rating) lower than 16 just once (2006-07) and has an average PER of 17.2 in his last three season in the league. I am not the biggest fan of PER, but to put that into a little perspective, the Wolves haven’t had a wing player post a PER higher than 16 in one season since Wally Szczerbiak did in 2005-06 with an 18.1 PER. Kirilenko should help a ton.

Courtesy of 82games.com is the simple ratings of the Wolves wing players last season:

Ellington -2.6
Webster -2.7
Beasley -2.7
Johnson -7.0

Anything above 0 is considered good, to make that more of a fact the Wolves had just three players with positive simple ratings last season: Love (+9.1), Pekovic (+5.9), and Rubio (+2.1).

Now here are Kirilenko’s simple ratings from each of his last three seasons in the NBA.

2008-09 Kirilenko +8.4
2009-10 Kirilenko +6.0
2010-11 Kirlenko +5.2

He obviously seems to be trending down, but he still in positive territory and one can assume he’ll be there next season too. Yet another reason why he will help the Wolves a ton.

This why when people make images like this:

They really aren’t too far off base.

Now let’s take a look at that contract. Many believe that Kirilenko got paid too much. Former teammate Matt Harpring even chimed in on Twitter about his thought on the Kirilenko contract.

Let’s see if Matt is right:

Here we have Kirilenko’s career win production and a forecast of several different scenarios with games played and wins produced per 48. Expected salary value is calculated by the number of wins produced multiplied by $1.47 million dollars.

Worse case is that Kirilenko plays in 65 games at 30 mpg and has his worst WP/48 of his career of .180 (career low is .184 in 2008-09 — only season not above .200). He would still produce 7.3 wins and his expected salary value is just slightly more than what the Wolves will be paying him next season, so even if he misses 15-20 games next season and has his worse year yet, he’ll still be worth it.

Best case you be if Kirilenko played in almost every game and played at his career WP/48 level of .257 while playing 30 mpg. He would produce roughly 13 wins and be worth close to $20 million dollar a year.

A lot of things would have to go against Kirilenko next season for him not to live up to his contract.

Bottom line is Kirilenko is much-needed help on the perimeter and is paid appropriately.

For more on the statistical prowess of the man affectionately known as AK47 read this great breakdown via canishoopus.

Musings

A lot have jokes have been made on Twitter in recent weeks about the Wolves off-season and their quest to try and construct the whitest team in NBA history. He was drawn to Minnesota by Kevin Love and Ricky Rubio, turned Pekovic into a monster. Stiemsma, Budinger, Kirilenko, and Shved, the draft choice of Robbie Hummel, maybe Rick just prefers the “white” man. So, I went back and look at every “white” (American and international) player since 2000 to play for Rick Adelman, looking at WP/48 and WS/48 numbers. Using either metric the average “white” player since 2000 under Adelman has a .131 WP/48 and .122 WS/122 — both above average numbers. Looking at the list you seen that some of the best players Adelman has coached in the past decade have been “white” except for Chris Webber and Tracy McGrady. That’s 23 “white” since 2000 and only seven have produced sub .100 WP/48 averages in that span, one being Darko who is essentially a reprobate anyways.

Maybe there is a method to Rick’s madness and his love for the “white” man.

Below is a comprehensive chart showing the Wolves roster from last season and then followed by a projection of next year’s team with the current off-season signings taken into account. There are a couple of things to notice here:

  • The average WP/48 of the Wolves outgoing players this year was .023, which is close to a non-rosterable player (WP/48<0). Starter-level players are considered those with a WP/48>.100.
  • The average WP/48 of the incoming free agents is a much higher .118, which on average is a starter-level player.
  • The Wolves highest outgoing win producer was Webster with 2.3 wins. He also is the only outgoing player to produce more than one win.
  • Even with the contract extension in play next season, Kevin Love will still be worth more than what he is getting paid.
  •  Based on the projections the Wolves are estimated to win roughly 55 games next season.
  • Had last season been a normal 82 game season the Wolves would improve on last season’s win total by about 23 wins. That is a bleep ton.

Here is the tentative salary outlook for the Wolves current roster.

If you made it to the end of this, congratulations. Read this article on the Wolves off-season and why Kahn might just win executive of the year.

This Bud’s for Rick

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Heading into Thursday’s draft is was becoming more and more obvious that the Wolves were going to the deal the 18th pick. They had very little activity with most of the draft prospects projected to go in that part of the draft and coach Rick Adelman had stated at the end of the season that he was tired of the work ethic of many of the younger players on the team. One of his desires in the offseason was to bring in some veteran talent via a trade or free agency that didn’t need to be coddled along as they adjust to the NBA style of play. He seemed to be sick of the careless attitudes of Michael Beasley, Anthony Randolph, and Darko Milicic to name of few. Coincidentally, all those players could be gone by next season. The team didn’t waste any time jumping into the offseason Tuesday by making its first move in trading the 18th pick in 2012 draft for swingman Chase Bundinger and Israeli forward Lior Eliyahu.

This move seemed to have many people scratching their head at first. Fans had wanted the Wolves to take a high upside prospect in Thursday’s draft, maybe even get lucky enough for a player like Austin Rivers or Terrence Ross to fall to them by. At pick 18, it is never a guarantee that you will get even a serviceable player at that slot, let alone a starter or even a star. Historically in draft, the 18th selection on average has produced a bust over half the time. And if the player isn’t a bust, it is more likely that he is just a role player than a starter or star.People need to realize that for every Marc Jackson, Joe Dumars, David West, Ty Lawson, and JaVale McGee — all players taken at 18th in the past — there are even more Oleksiy Pecherov’s, John Wallace’s, Marco Bellineli’s, Jason Collins’, and Chris Anstey’s. Collectively the 18th pick has a career average of 18 mpg and 7 ppg with .075 WP48. So for those thinking that this 18th pick was going to change the team’s fortune, they were putting hope in the wrong place. Also, people hardly trusted David Kahn with selections in past lotteries, I can’t imagine them trusting him with a pick when all the consensus guys are taken and it becomes harder to identify talent.

One thing that should make Wolves fan happy though, is that this trade has Rick Adelman’s signature all over it. Budinger was drafted by Adelman back in the 2009 draft and played two season under Adelman before he left at the end of the 2011 season. Adelman has been around a longtime, he knows what he is doing, he knows who fits into his offense. So if you want to get mad at anyone, just know the person who should be mad isn’t David Kahn, it is Rick Adelman, and personally I don’t think he deserves to be criticized for anything right now.

Budinger is as cheap as cheap can get, next season he is owed just $924,293. Based on how Budinger has played throughout his young career, he is worth a lot more than a million dollars. Last season Budinger produced over three wins. To put that in perspective, The Wolves had just three players produce over three wins last year — Kevin Love, Nikola Pekovic, and Ricky Rubio. I know that it is not saying much, but Budinger is an instant upgrade over what the team was trotting out at small forward last season.

Chasing the Numbers

On the surface, Chase Budinger looks like a clown. Digging deeper though, it becomes evident the kid has got some game…compared to the rest of the wings on the Wolves roster.

(Click to enlarge)

Looking at the chart above, two things are very clear. The Wolves wings were terrible and Budinger suddenly becomes the best one on roster, hands down. Budinger was the only player to produce a WP48 over .100 as well as a solid net PER (player’s PER – opponents PER). He only played 22 minutes a game last season — the same number as Wes Johnson — one would have to think that he sees a bump in his minutes next season.

Budinger can also shoot the basketball pretty well. The following table shows the shooting numbers for swingmen last season on jump shots taken 15 feet and beyond (200 FGA min.).

Rk Player Tm G FG FGA FG% 3P 3PA 3P% eFG% ▾
1 Steve Novak NYK 53 160 332 .482 133 282 .472 .682
2 Stephen Curry GSW 25 114 217 .525 55 121 .455 .652
3 Brandon Rush GSW 63 136 298 .456 99 219 .452 .622
5 Danny Green SAS 65 123 284 .433 102 234 .436 .613
6 Kyle Korver CHI 65 160 375 .427 118 271 .435 .584
7 Ray Allen BOS 46 144 340 .424 106 234 .453 .579
8 Gary Neal SAS 55 119 283 .420 83 198 .419 .567
10 Mario Chalmers MIA 63 128 318 .403 101 260 .388 .561
11 James Harden OKC 62 136 346 .393 114 292 .390 .558
14 Richard Jefferson TOT 63 161 397 .406 113 269 .420 .548
15 J.J. Redick ORL 65 183 439 .417 112 268 .418 .544
16 Chase Budinger HOU 55 111 286 .388 88 219 .402 .542
17 Mike Dunleavy MIL 55 136 328 .415 83 208 .399 .541
18 Ben Gordon DET 52 169 374 .452 63 147 .429 .536
19 Willie Green ATL 52 90 215 .419 50 113 .442 .535
20 Jannero Pargo ATL 48 90 219 .411 53 138 .384 .532
21 Kevin Durant OKC 66 269 634 .424 133 344 .387 .529
22 Anthony Parker CLE 50 108 252 .429 50 138 .362 .528
23 Roger Mason WAS 48 92 230 .400 59 154 .383 .528
24 Wesley Matthews POR 66 171 447 .383 129 337 .383 .527
25 Jared Dudley PHO 65 163 385 .423 80 209 .383 .527
Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 6/26/2012.

Heading into the offseason, the Wolves needed spot-up shooters, well that is what they got with Budinger. In terms of possession usage, Budinger took almost the same amount spot-up possessions as Wes Johnson did. He also took almost one seventh of the Rocket’s spot-up shots last season. The only difference between Budinger and Johnson, is that Budinger’s shots went in a lot more often. He produced a solid 1.07 point per possession (PPP) ranking in the top-60 of all NBA players. Budinger would have had the highest spot-up three-point percentage on the Wolves last season, posting a very good 42.8% on spot-up threes. If you think that was a fluke, the dude is a 39.6% (200-505) spot-up three-point shooter for his career (Click here for more of Budinger’s career Synergy stats). Budinger was almost as effective as the Wolves best wing player last season, point guard Luke Ridnour. He shoots a lot of wide open shots, he makes a lot of those wide open shots, playing with Ricky Rubio will get him more wide open shot. I think he will be just fine going forward.

(Click to enlarge)

In terms of defense, Budinger is an average defender, who doesn’t really the quickness to guard NBA shooting guards, but he does decent enough to stay on the floor against small forwards. He doesn’t do much in terms of taking charges, blocking shots, or getting steals.

By the way, Budinger is younger than by about 10 months Wes Johnson. That has got to make feel Wes good about himself. The number four pick just two years ago could be replaced by a younger more efficient version of the player he was supposed to be like. Sorry Wes your days as a Wolf may be numbered.

Don’t be surprised if Kahn deals him on trade night, just like Jonny Flynn was last year.

Offseason Primer: Not So Spot-on Wing Production

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Heading into the draft and free agency, the Wolves really have only three starters that they can pencil into next year’s starting lineup. Ricky Rubio, fingers-crossed when healthy will be the team’s starting point guard. Kevin Love arguably one of the most underrated players in the league will remain in his spot as the power forward. The emergence of Nikola Pekovic last season gave the Wolves a center with a body temperature above at least 32 degrees fahrenheit. Other than that the team still has holes on the perimeter. It should not come as a shock that the Wolves should be searching for a scoring wing this offseason who can produce a nightly basis.

Sadly, as the chart below indicates, the Wolves had the worst net PER ratings (team’s PER at position minus opponent’s PER at position) at both shooting guard and small forward in the entire league. It is pretty tough to be the worst in the league at one position let alone two, that is unless you are the Charlotte Bobcats.

Yet the team still won almost 40% of their games without get hardly any production from their wing spots. Most of those swingman minutes went to Martell Webster, Michael Beasley, Anthony Tolliver, Wayne Ellington, Wes Johnson, Luke Ridnour, and Derrick Williams. As mentioned in the previous post, three of those sevens players may not be on the team next year. One has to anticipate some sort of personnel turnover at these two positions in the near future and it shouldn’t be hard to upgrade those spots, considering how bad they were.

The total measure in the chart is just a summation of the net ratings across every position. Those two spots (shooting guard and small forward) for Minnesota combined for a -8.9 rating, which is downright embarrassing. The total net rating and win percentage coincidentally last season were highly correlated with a .94 correlation and a R² of .89. So it is fair to say the higher your net total rating is the better chance you have of winning games. Taking this into account, had the Wolves gotten at least a negative one net rating at each of those positions, they would have hovered around a zero net team rating. Which would have had them a lot closer to the playoffs.

The quickest way to improve the Wolves rating and win total, is simply improving at the wing positions. Considering how bad they were last year, there is really no direction to go but up. So, the main priority this offseason should be finding affordable able bodies who can produce better than last year’s crusty crop of players. You are probably thinking to yourself, well thanks for all these numbers, but we already knew how bad the team’s perimeter players were and what the team needs this offseason. Sometimes though it is just interesting to see just how bad they were in comparison to the rest of the league.

Let’s now look at those aforementioned seven players who took up a majority of the minutes this year at shooting guard and small forward.

(Click to enlarge image)

Shooting guard last season, consisted of the trio of point guard Luke Ridnour, Martell Webster, and Wayne Ellington. Ridnour arguably played out of position for most the season last year, but was probably the Wolves best option at shooting guard. Ridnour had the best offensive rating and almost best defensive rating of the three players, he also had the best net PER rating too. His net shooting percentage was the worst, probably because he was being guarded by taller and bigger shooting guards, instead of smaller point guards. The sad reality is the Wolves best shooting guard was a point guard. Let that sink in for a minute. The Wolves best shooting guard wasn’t even a true shooting guard. Although this may have fulfilled David Kahn’s two point guard fantasy (minus the Johnny Flynn part), it would have helped if the Wolves could have started a prototypical two-guard all season long..

Looking at the small forwards, Derrick Williams was the only player to produce a positive net PER rating, although he had the worst net rating at -5.6 than any other Wolves small forward, that includes Wes Johnson’s -4.7. Surprisingly Michael Beasley held opponents to just a 44% effective field goal percentage and had the best net rating with a positive 2.9. Martell Webster usually brought a nice shooting punch from the wing, but he had the two worst defensive ratings among both groups, which proves the perception that Webster is just not that good on defense, getting his doors blown off on consistent basis.  Ironically the chart above is really inconsistent throughout much like the play of the small forwards all season long. Nobody really sticks out as a solid starter at small forward. This should scare the front office.

When looking at some data via Synergy Sports, the Wolves offense consisted primarily of pick and roll (20.5% of possessions) and spot up (catch and shoot) shot opportunities (18.5%). The Wolves did fine in pick and roll situations ranking 7th in the league averaging 0.88 points per possession (PPP). Spot up chances, however the Wolves ranked just 23rd in the league at 0.91 PPP. Minnesota shot just 35.7% in spot up situations, shooting 33.8% on spot up threes. The seven wings players listed above took almost exactly two-thirds (66.5%) of those spot up chances, their results are listed below.

(Click to enlarge image)

On PPP basis Ridnour, Ellington, Beasley, and Webster were above the team average of 0.91 PPP. Ridnour and Ellington were the two best in spot up situations, producing PPP numbers over one and ranking in the top-100 of all players in those situations.

On the flip side, Anthony Tolliver was downright atrocious, producing an awful 0.64 PPP, ranking 321st in the entire league. When considering that there were 352 players last season who played at least 400 minutes, Tolliver (882 minutes) was one of the worst spot up shooters in the league. In all fairness he had quite a poor shooting season compared to his career marks, but still he had one job to do, based on the fact that almost 44% of possessions were used on spot up jump shots, yet he could hardly ever execute.

Wes Johnson also took a good amount of spot up jump shots last season — the most among this entire group. Johnson jacked up 175 spot up shots only hitting on 34% of them, producing a very subpar 0.86 PPP. He ranked outside the top-200, which is not good. For the sake of comparison, Johnson produced a 0.95 PPP (185th) his rookie season in these same situations, shooting 37.6% from the field and 35.3% from deep. So his rookie season was not that much better than his sophomore season and closer resembled the average season of  Martell Webster this year. Things aren’t looking good for Wes Johnson at this moment.

Derrick Williams also chucked his fair share too when given catch and shoot opportunities. He took the second most spot up shots among the group, 129 shots. He shot a paltry 29.5% on these shots, ranking himself almost outside the top-250 in the league. If Williams ever dreams of playing the small forward in the future, he is going to have to become a better shooter off the catch.

The good news is that the two better catch and shoot options on the team, Ridnour and Ellington, in all likelihood will be back next season. Bad news though is that two of the worst catch and shoot players on the team, Johnson and Williams, are under contract for next season (Tolliver could also be resigned at a discounted price). They could always get traded this summer, but if they remain on the team they will need to improve this skill if they want to help the team win games. Worse news is that Johnson produced average numbers in his rookie season, so it is unlikely that he all of sudden start hitting his catch and shoot jumpers next season at an outstanding clip unless he really starts dedicating himself to the game, which he does not seem too interested in doing right now. Slightly better news is that Williams, who is just 21 years old and wasn’t able to participate in a summer league or much of training camp last season due to the lockout, may just need some time and maturity to improve in these situations as well as other facets of his game. Only time will tell with him on whether he will ever adopt a small forward role.

No surprises here, the Timberwolves need wings players bad. There will be plenty of options in the offseason to try to fix the problem. Free agency, the draft, and even trades could bring in some new wing talent. Now that the obvious problem has been diagnosed, the next step is finding solutions for the problem. This is always the hardest part, and based on how the Wolves past wing players have performed in recent years, this is a department the team has not always excelled at.