(The original text was published on November 30, and the author is Kevin Pelton of ESPN. The content of the article does not represent the translator’s point of view)
The Timberwolf who lost Downs, how should the road ahead go? Although Tangs’ injury is not the worst rupture of the Achilles tendon and will not lead to season reimbursement, according to the report of ESPN reporter Woj, Tangs’ calf muscle strain is expected to be absent for 4-6 weeks. The Forest Wolf has just finished a wave of three consecutive defeats recently. The record has reached 11 wins and 11 losses. Now Downs will be absent for some time due to injury. At the beginning, when Timberwolves used four first-round signatures and two starting players to trade from jazz to Gobel and Tang Si to form the all-star front-court twin towers, they probably didn’t expect to fall into this situation today.
The combination of downs and Gobel has not yet achieved the desired effect of Timberwolves management. Now only Gobel’s only big all-star man can play, which makes people even more disappointed. If Timberwolves want to chase the top six seats in the West in the absence of downs, they must find a way to win around Gobel. Moreover, it can also help Timberwolves become stronger after they return to downs. So what should Timberwolves do to unlock Gobel?
Why only Gobel’s lineup struggled so hard?
There are three different combinations of downs and Gobel (one comes off or is present at the same time). So far, the Timberwolves are the least efficient when Gobel comes off. According to the NBA’s statistical analysis of high-end data for line up combination, the Timberwolves will lose 7.1 points per hundred rounds in 204 minutes when Gobel is present.
To some extent, this is caused by poor external projection ability. The three-point performance of the whole team of Timberwolves was not good. The 33 percent hit rate ranked 27th in the league. When there was only Gobel, an All-Star big man, the three-point hit rate of Timberwolves dropped to 28 percent. Although it is said that the fate of Downs has affected the shooting performance of the Timberwolves, the current shooting rate is definitely beyond words and they have the ability to do better. According to the quantitative shooting analysis of Second Spectrum website, referring to the players’ shooting points and types, as well as the distance of defenders and the shooting ability of shooters, the three-point shooting rate of Timberwolves’s current lineup should reach 34.5%, although it is still lower than the average level of the alliance.
The more shooters Timberwolves coach Finch arranges around Gobel, the better the effect will be. After all, this can be the best way for jazz to win the league last season. Maybe this will be one of the reasons why Prince became the starting power forward after Downs missed. Prince’s Timberwolves have the most accurate three points this season, with 5.5 Three Points shot every 36 minutes, with a hit rate of 39%. Previously, when Gobel missed two games because of triggering the NBA health and security agreement, Carl Anderson played the first power forward partner Downs, with a three-point hit rate of 41%, but only 1.9 points were shot every 36 minutes, there is no outside threat.
The better the space on the Timberwolves field is, the better the effectiveness of Gobel’s blocking and dismantling tactics will be. According to the tracking data of Second Spectrum website, when downs went off, Gobel covered the players 56.4 times every 100 rounds, ranking fourth among all players with high playing time. However, the average score of Gobel was only 0.81 points per break, which was much lower than the average score of 1.04 points in Jazz last season, whether the player got the chance to shoot or went straight to the basket.
When Gobel and Prince play a small team, they will have higher requirements for Gobel’s defense, especially in the aspect of rebounding. When Downs and Gobel were present at the same time, Timberwolves had been above the league average in terms of defensive rebounds, which could protect 76% of the defensive rebounds. However, when Gobel was paired with other power forwards, this figure dropped to 72.5 percent, and partner Prince was only 71 percent in 33 minutes, which was the lowest proportion in the league. These figures are shocking. You should know that the Jazz’s defensive rebound rate last season was 78%, ranking fourth in the league, while Gobel’s personal defensive rebound rate was even ahead of the whole league.
Lost the chance of downs and Gobel running together.
In the next 4-6 weeks, Timberwolves will be able to explore more about the running-in with Gobel, hoping that when downs and Gobel get together again, the team will have a strong performance. Whether this season or in the next few years, Timberwolves must make the team of Gobel and Downs play more efficiently if they want to achieve the team’s goal. At present, in more than 400 minutes when downs and Gobel played together, Timberwolves lost a total of 6 points, including a positive and negative value of-17 during the three consecutive defeats. Before the losing streak, it was a five-game winning streak. It seemed that the Timberwolves were still groping for the way forward.
Timberwolves hope that when two big all-star men are present, the team will feel better when shooting. When Downs and Gobel were present at the same time, the three-point hit rate of Timberwolves was only 30%, while the three-point hit rate of opponents was 37%. When Downs was present and Gobel came off, Timberwolves hit 37 percent in three points. However, pure shooting promotion cannot make downs and Gobel instantly become a combination with great dominance. For this reason, the Timberwolves will have to find a better solution to deal with the dangerous space-type big man in the opponent’s lineup (polzingis crushed the inside line of the Timberwolves in the match where the Wizards defeated the Timberwolves, he scored 47 points from a new career) and avoided serious mistakes. According to the lineup statistics of the Glass website Cleaning, the two big all-star guys of Forest Wolf only exceeded the alliance’s 6% combination in terms of control errors (18%), forcing opponents to make mistakes (13%) there are only more than 11% combinations.
Because Timberwolves won’t have much time to let downs and Gobel fight together before Christmas, I hope Gobel can play more comfortably during this period, which is also conducive to Gobel’s state after the return of downs. We will wait and see if the Timberwolves can find a way to maintain the current 50% winning rate.
Original text: Kevin Pelton
Compile: Li Taibai
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