The 3 most impressive and surprising things about Minnesota Timberwolves so far this season
Hello and welcome into another episode of lockdown wolves today on the show a 10,000 foot view of the first well I’ll say pre- Allstar break actually 23ds of the way through the schedule Timberwolves take a a bit of a step back and see where things are right now also
Give three things that uh if you told me on opening night these are the case I’d be pleasantly surprised with where we sit right now we’ll also look at the Portland match up for tonight and peek ahead at the post All-Star break schedule it’s all up coming welcome in you are locked on
Wolves you are locked on timber wolves Wes your daily Minnesota Timberwolves podcast part of the locked on podcast Network your team every day hello and welcome to lockdown wolves podcast part of the lockdown podcast Network your team every day my name is Ben Beacon I’m the host of lockon wolves
Happy Thursday everybody uh Happy game day day happy last game of the pre-all-star break schedule game day as we’ll s on the Blazers tonight and then head into the All-Star break don’t play another game for another eight days here a lot of a lot of stuff to get to here
Today A big thank you off the top for making lockdown wolves your first listen every day of course this show is free and available everywhere including YouTube as well as all of your favorite audio platforms wherever you like to listen to podcast you can find lock.
Wolves you can also watch on the lock on Sports Minnesota app on both Roku and Amazon Fire TV and you can follow on X at lockone T wolves and also at B Beacon with two B’s Two e cken what I want to do today is this is
The second to last show of the first half of the season and tomorrow’s show looking ahead briefly is going to be a straightup All-Star break addition I want to look at um I want to look at all the odds on FanDuel for especially Allstar Saturday uh the three-point we
Talked a little bit about this in the Minnesota basketball party on Wednesday but but the Three-Point Contest odds are out I’m going to give my pick for it uh straight up and then also you know based on the odds on FanDuel like who I would
Be who I would be placing a wager on we’ll talk obviously about cat I’ll give a prediction for that um and then we’ll do the same with the dunk contest and skills obviously a participated in skills you know we’ll look at the rosters for Sunday I guess also Rising
Stars probably spent a little bit less time on those because who knows um like as always um obviously Chris fch coaching Sunday I said kind of offhand on the Minnesota basketball party Wednesday like oh maybe a will get more run this year in his second All-Star
Game but then after I said it I realized that with Finch as the coach no that’s not gonna happen the the coach you know the coach whose player is on that team in the All-Star game is not going to play them a ton of minutes so uh I take
Back what I said on that show but anyway I’ll give some kind of picks for the weekend we’ll take a look at it that’ll be mostly what we do Friday so today is kind of the reset even though there there’s still one more game but the
Reset uh 10,000 foot view if you will and actually after tonight’s game The Wolves will be 67% two-thirds of the way through their schedule so you know this this mid-season break is legitimately a two-third season break and not a half season Break um I think it’s interesting
That it’s the actual you know there’s only one like literally oneth third of the schedule left so uh we I I do want to like this is a like this is a legitimate sample size now right like we’re looking at the season to this point and we can evaluate
It and uh you know feel good that we’ve learned more than something right we’ve learned a lot there is to know about all of these teams now you start to buckle down and get to winning time at the end of the season um for teams that are jocking for you know position right
Teams that are jocking for playoff seating um and that’s something we can get into you know we certainly will get into related to like hey if the wolves are first and it looks you know so and so’s fourth and they won’t have to face them until you know
Uh whatever or actually no I guess whoever finishes fourth you would have to face sooner but anyway we’ll get to all that later um for right now I you know as part of this reset like don’t look now actually please do look now the ti rolls are number two in
Net rating in the entire NBA right now behind Boston and it’s easy to get caught up and I know now they’ve won what like four in a row it’s easy to get caught up in the ah they haven’t played as well since January 1st that haven’t
Played as well since X State the offense is still turning the ball over way too much and and yes we talk about that but right now for the season for the season the Tiber wolves are number two in net rating in the entire league behind only the Boston Celtics who have been the
Best team in the league all season of course the wolves have split a pair of overtime games against Boston and easily should I mean they should have won the game on the road but two overtime games winning at home losing on the road in their two games against the Celtics but
Boston’s number one one with a plus 10 according to cleaning the glass plus 10 net rating Minnesota has a plus 8.1 they’re now just a shade ahead of the Thunder who have fallen a game behind the Wolves overall but the wolves are point two ahead of them in point
Differential or in net rating I should say and of course they split the season series the Clippers are fourth the wolves have already beaten them twice Cleveland is fifth who we have not seen yet and of course they’ve been really hot the Knicks are sixth you go on down the list Phoenix
Philadelphia um and then New Orleans is actually ninth and Denver is 10th and um this is a separate conversation again when we get into playoff matchups Etc uh the Wolves struggle with New Orleans we’ve only played Denver once so far this year and obviously you you don’t
Want to play Denver in the playoffs but I truly believe the Wolves match up better with the nuggets and they do with the Pelicans um and yeah it’s partly because of the season results but there’s a reason why those games ended up that way right so we’ll talk more
About that later but notable that Denver is all the way down to 10th League wide in League rating and New Orleans is up to nth in in net rating so Minnesota’s number one in the entire league they’re number one in defensive rating and they have been virtually all season it’s 2.2 points
Ahead of the next best defense which is Cleveland Cleveland’s been awesome over the last six weeks or so Boston is third they’ve most of the year been in the top five same with Oklahoma City um and Houston’s still fifth by the way even though their offense has been awful and
And they’re now well below 500 as a team so the wolves are still the number one defense by far I’m not going to dig into the context today like I have on some past shows about you know like you know past seasons and what that margin looks
Like and where that team finished but again that’s something we could do later uh we’ve had a few shows next week actually before games start up again so maybe we’ll do that next week where you know we could look at number one defenses over the past decade or
Whatever where have they finished in the playoffs and what about defenses that are this much better than the League’s next best defense and you can say the same thing about effective field goal percentage the Timberwolves have a not only is their net rating 2.2 points better than the number two defense
Their uh defensive effective field goal percentage is 1.2 points better than Boston’s and 1.5 points better than Cleveland’s and 1.6 points better than OKC’s at this point we’re not going to sit here and say hey the Wolves had good fortune Good Fortune with opponent’s missing threes that’s not what this is
Anymore this is again the Wolves cultivating the ideal opponent shot profile lots of mid-range jumpers very few Corner threes for the most part defending without fouling that’s a solid recipe and opponents are still you know they’re shooting 35% from three right now like if you just take the three-point percentage number and that’s
Still the seventh best opponent three-point percentage but to have the seventh best opponent three-point percentage and the number one effective field goal percentage means they’re doing a lot of other stuff right like not fouling and have great paint defense right so yeah there’s a little bit of
Good fortune but if you avoid Corner threes you deter shots in the paint and then when people do shoot in the paint you have Rudy goar jadeen McDaniels Nas Reed cat guys that can erase shots or at least have the presence to deter and then ultimately alter and potentially
Erase shots as well more mid-range jumpers it’s it’s also the same reason why certain teams New Orleans Philadelphia Phoenix teams that like shooting mid-range shers are a challenged for Minnesota because they’re really really good at that but over the Long Haul and and that’s again a conversation we could have come playoff
Time about matchups that aren’t ideal for Minnesota we’ve only seen Phoenix once this year and it was that terrible blowout loss on the second night of a road back toback where the Wolves were never competitive and now Phoenix is you know rounding into form whatever form
That’s going to be right now it looks pretty good you know that that’s another playoff matchup we can get back to but against most teams that opponent shot profile is ideal for the Tiber wolves and it’s been successful to this point so again recapping that number two
In net rating League wide right now number one in defensive rating number one in effective field goal percentage all of those by far also the wolves are up to number 15 in offense season long this isn’t like a last two weeks thing which I do want to
Get into but season long this is cleaning the glass I should have said that off the top I’m using cleaning the glass because it filters out garbage time and a quarter possessions Minnesota’s offense is officially now number 15 in efficiency according to cleaning the glass if this team gets
Into the top 10 12 call call it even top 12 look out I I mean like if this team becomes a top 12 offense with an a number one with a bullet defense like sky is truly limit it really is and we’re starting to see we’ll talk about how it’s been for the
Last two weeks for the last six weeks more broadly um it’s taking shape so I want to get into that a little bit next uh kind of more the recent numbers where we’re trending and then I want to get into those three things that would be pleas that had you told opening
Night you know lock on wolves host that these things would be true me and hopefully everybody listening and watching the show would would feel pretty happy about it so we’ll get into all that here next uh a couple other things to close the show related to Portland upcoming schedule all that uh
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Sports stories of the day with the local Experts of lockon plus our national shows covering every League find locked on sports today now available on the free Fire TV channels app all right uh so we talked about where the Wolves sit overall for the season I don’t usually love pulled in
Like last two weeks last month data because it’s obviously very noisy it inherently by definition its recency bias um and I think the bigger picture tells the best story right and I already listed all that it’s all very favorable well um even though the wolves have had
Some of these terrible losses the Bulls loss Charlotte going back to San Antonio they’ve been really good over the past couple months they just happened remember like that that Gauntlet from December 11th to January 12th or whatever it was where the Wolves played 16 straight games against playoff
Teams against above 500 teams 12 of them on the road back-to-back mixed in there like just a really challenging schedule and they went I think nine and seven over that stretch so part of that stretch is reflected here the schedule got softer at the end of January and the
Wolves you know they ended up with some bad losses because they were close losses to bad teams so that I acknowledge that right and that’s going to make the net rating look better because it doesn’t take into account who the opponent was but over the last two weeks the wolves are number
One in the NBA net rating now they’ve obviously won a few games in a row and they’ve beaten some good teams here in Milwaukee and the Clippers they’re number one in net rating over the last two weeks according to Cle and the glass they’re number two in defense over the
Last two weeks which isn’t surprising they’re number four in offensive rating over the last two weeks in the NBA and they’re only number 18th in turnover uh rate offensively which is you know not good but if you look at the overall season to to this point in the season
The wolves are 28th in turnover rate at cleaning the glass they were they’ve been 18th over the last two weeks so trending in the right direction okay again I acknowledge some of those losses obviously they’re bad right you lose a lead late to a bad team it’s a bad loss
But I go back to something I said I think I said this on the basketball party on Wednesday the wolves are they play well against good teams e either are competitive losses you know a couple random ones notwithstanding the Phoenix game comes to mind early early
In the season um Pelicans loss I think mixed in there was kind of a blowup but for the most part they’re very competitive against good teams and often beat them they’ve got one of the League’s best I think actually the best record against playoff teams or above
500 teams or whatever uh they win on the road they have the League’s most Road wins they win at home they have a solid home record and they mostly are beating up on bad teams the occasional loss that the Wolves suffer which to frankly like I mean they’ve only lost 16 times this
Year I think occasional is the right word when you’re 38 and 16 at the All-Star break losing a close game to a bad team is not good but you could argue that it’s the best type of loss right like in a sense because if you’re getting blown out by
Good te like I obviously I guess you’d rather lose a close game to a good team you get blown up by a good team and that’s not a good sign you get blown up by a bad team that’s even more concerning on some level um this is
Allowing the Wolves to work out some of these Kinks and learn how to play with lead and some of that stuff that may or may not come up later when it’s even more important um I don’t know I I’m maybe I’m stretching this a little bit but it’s not like they’re getting blown
Out by bad teams it’s not like game three against the Atlanta Hawks where you lose a lead and you get blown out right there’s progress being made here the point is the net rating reflects that go back to January 1st six weeks the wolves are number two in the league
In net rating I believe second to just Cleveland which makes sense they’ve been crazy hot number two in defensive rating since January 1 and number 13 in offensive rating since January 1 now this is a bigger sample this is six weeks so it’s um you know nearly a third
Of the games played to this point or actually more than a third almost half of the gamees played to this point in the season since January 1st the wolves are a top half in the league offense number 13 and offensive rating so again the narrative here trending in the right
Direction yes the schedule’s been a little bit softer we’ll talk about the immediate post All-Star break schedule here in a minute uh but it’s progress to see the team and that’s by the way that’s been a theme of Chris pitch’s teams over his time in Minnesota is they
Get better as the season goes on which I think is the sign of a solid coaching staff um and that’s that’s you know the finch evaluation is a bigger conversation um and I don’t mean that in a bad way obviously he’s coaching the Western cords All-Star team and I have
Been a it shocks me how much people rip on Finch and I get that that’s the thing like you always complain about the coach because it’s easier right uh not you not Timberwolves fans specifically people in sports fans in general Chris Fitch is a really good basketball coach guys he’s
The wolves are number one in the West for a reason um and uh it also shocks me that like like for instance uh you listened to the uh John krinski was on the Ryan rillo Show on I guess it would have been yesterday Wednesday I think is
When the episode came out and rill didn’t mention Chris Fitch until the end of it wasn’t even a question it was like at the end saying that he was a fan of him nobody’s talking about Chris Fitch talk about some of these other teams and people talk about the coach immediately
Right like tyo is a great coach people love to talk about tyo um you know spoler is a great coach I still don’t think we actually as a basketball culture talk about spoler enough but like um I feel like Joe Missoula gets a lot of love like and I get it these
Teams have won in the playoffs to some extent but um I don’t know I mean obviously Michael Malone like I feel like there just isn’t enough Chris fin chatter out there but we’ll see we’ll see how that goes this Allstar break all right if you had told
Opening night Ben here are three things that will be the case with the allstar break I would be ecstatic about number one the tiol are number two in the league in three-point percentage that’s phenomenal I like I don’t there’s not a whole lot else to say about that and the
Wolves got better as the season went on last year but the last couple of years have have been a bit of a struggle early and they finished last season just 13th in the league in three-point percentage uh two years ago when they won 46 games that you know pre- ready go
Bear they were 12th of the league in three-point percentage that was the year that like cat was healthy had a great shooting year tan Prince was awful for the first three months and then like shot 50% after January 1st and the team got better and better and better and
Better in terms of shooting the ball and they finished 12th in three-point percentage again last year you know cat beat out certainly hurt that and they were 13th in three-point percentage this year on lower volume albeit which is an issue and the volume has been increasing that’s another thing that’s been getting
Much better uh the wolves are second at 3. percentage in the league 39.3% as a team you got a bunch of guys that individually are just lighting the net on fire uh you know if you had told me to kill Alexander Walker would be over 38% he was roughly 40% last year between
The Wolves and the Jazz but that was by far a career a career best so I was a bit worried that that was uh going to be an outlier but he’s in that neighborhood again this year over 38% um ant over 38% shooting a Carew high from three more on
That in a second Nas Reed 41% cat almost 44% Conley shooting 44.1% from three a career high and then you like McDaniel’s backing up his 40% season last year with 36% like you’d like that to be a little bit higher but it’s showing that last year wasn’t a complete fluke like he can
Be a nearly 40% catch and shoot guy uh from the perimeter I mean like the only guy that hasn’t shot the ball well obviously Kyle Anderson would be one um but the volume is now way down and that hurts the wolves um but he was 40% last
Year like won a game from the corners was Shake Milton a rotation guy early that shot well below a career average from three but besides that everybody else is at or above their career three-point average uh or percentage and um that’s a really really good thing for the Wolves uh the second
Thing if you told me Anthony Edwards would get better in virtually every category um I don’t want to say I’d be surprised but I think pleasantly surprised is probably the right you know mildly surprised and also very pleased with that outcome like ant last year a lot of the categories counting
Stats-wise got better right like he rebounded better he had more assists per game he had more points per game the shooting efficiency went up um except for free throw percentage was down a little bit that was partly due to more minutes last season and just kind of
Natural growth but overall his impact as a player was a bit overstated because he wasn’t consistent defensively he turned it over too much for how often the ball was in his hands the shot the decision- making you know he shot I would say even too many threes last year or the wrong
Types of Threes now this year every single efficiency category has trended in the right direction majorly for ant his overall field goal percentage is nearly a full point better his three-point percentage is a point a 1.6% better he’s improved his free throw shooting not only is he shooting more
Free throws but he’s shooting that free throws at a almost 9 % clip better than last year 75.6% last year 84% from the line this year I mean that’s an extra point and a half per game you mix in the increase in getting to the line and his percentage at the
Line that’s an extra point and a half per game by the way his points per game is up exactly 1.5 points that’s basically coming from the free throw line and he’s shooting less threes but he’s shooting them at a higher clip because the shot selection is better you
Go down to his rate base stats and basically everything is up like the assists are way up and even with a higher usage rate and a higher assist rate his turnover rate is actually down slightly he turned the ball over 13% of the time last season this year it’s
12.9% but his assist rate is up almost 6% and his usage rate is up more than two points he’s been so much more efficient the decision- making has been much better the only thing you’d really look at and say hey this needs to improve right now is he the rebounding after
Improving drastically last year it’s taken a half step back this year you need him to grab a few more boards if you want to do the whole like I’m not going to turn this into a straightup ant MJ comparison but go back and look at like age 22 Michael Jordan I think that
Was actually the the ankle year where he only played like 18 games so go his rookie year whatever Michael Jordan was always a better rebounder than ant has been early in his career like that’s one area where Jordan was just active on the glass ant’s not there yet um
Occasionally he is like occasionally it’s like he’s jumping over guys he’s grabbing nine boards in a game and and you could tell it’s just it’s kind of like his defense it’s much more consistent this year and when he locks in 100% like he’s locked in the defense
And the rebounding are two are is that it I mean if he ever locks in like 100% 100% of the time it’s gonna be real scary like then then like we the MJ comps are not insane at that point like I like honestly I mean the talent level
Is is to the point where if and also if he continues to understand the game or grow that part incrementally which again year two to year three I don’t know that it was all that much better it was a little better last year but there’s a
Bit of a jump this year to some of that decision-making um and actually related to that I’ll make my third Point here well actually let’s do this I’ll make my third Point next we’ll roll into Portland we’ll roll into the schedule do all that here to close the show the
Third Point has to do with both Anton cat and the team’s offense overall we’ll get to that here next today’s episode of lock I wolves is brought To Us by our friends at hungry root hungry root is your partner in Healthy Living it’s the easiest way to get fresh high quality ingredients and
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You all right uh last impressive thing and obviously this list could be longer but I’m going to keep it to three the integration or I should say reintegration I don’t know no integration because this is really the first you know there wasn’t a stretch last year where you know cat was truly
Part of the offense before he got hurt and then you know things never really got there’s nothing to reintegrate because things never got integrated last year the integration of Kat into the offense his connection with Rudy goar which we did see early last year and you
Know I believe cat is still number one in assist to Rudy Kat and Mike Conley have been kind of going back and forth but those are the top two in assists to Rudy and the team passing as a whole I think it’s all related and an is part of
That I already talked about his assist rate being up almost six full points um in terms of percentage but cat is also passing the ball extremely well um and you look at at cat’s assist rate it’s down a little bit this year well it’s down from last
Year mostly because of uh just uh like he only played 29 games last year and so I I think he when he got back into the offense he wasn’t in any way the focal point and now this year when he cat does get touches he’s not looky to facilitate
And create as much because when he gets those touches ants off the floor or whatever and he is the offense um in fact we’ve seen a usage rapee over where it was last year and back closer to where it was two years ago his last All-Star season um but all that to say
Cats assists are going to Rudy and he is part of this team ball movement and we talk about the ball getting sticky and the Wolves playing in isolation too much you actually if you look at the NBA.com um the tracking data and and passes per game believe it or not the
Tibl are actually seventh in the league in passes per game and obviously you’d want that to be higher but you’re talking about it off that’s languished around 20th in the league for most of the season and we talk about the ball being sticky too often they’re seventh
In the league in passes and some of the teams ahead of them aren’t I mean like the Pacers are an awesome offense the Pelicans have a good offense the Warriors are ahead of them the Cavs um there’s some bad teams ahead of them too so like
I that surprised me I did not think the Wolves would be quite that High um in their uh passing ranking and there’s obviously some other numbers around that too but that’s an encouraging stat when you look at it uh so the reintegration of or the integration of cat into the offense ant
And Cat and Mike Conley’s ability to pass to Rudy getting Rudy some touches and of course goar’s numbers still aren’t like if you just look at his straight up offensive numbers field goal percentage his usage rate some of that stuff isn’t necessarily where it was in Utah but the bellweather of course is
The Wolves defense at Rudy’s happiness level there’s been a lot said about this recently about how happy Rudy is um and uh like that shows itself in the Wolves dominant defense and also they are still getting Rudy touches like Rudy I know he played with Donovan Mitchell but he
Didn’t play with Donovan Mitchell and Carlon towns right he didn’t play with ant and cat and now Rudy he is clearly the third option but he’s getting enough touches to keep him happy and uh they’ve really kind of figured that out this year all right quickly keys to the
Portland game shifting gears abruptly here uh towards the end of the show but shifting gears to the Portland game we just saw Portland on Tuesday the two things that were concerning to me going into that game were going to be defensive rebounding and um turnovers Portland actually even though they’re a
Bad defensive team Portland turns teams over at the fourth highest rate of any defense in the league so coming into this game they’re fourth in defensive turnover rate um The Wolves did okay with that on Tuesday and thankfully got to line enough and made enough threes to kind of
Erase any issues there turnovers are a concern offensive rebounding for Portland so defensive rebounding for Minnesota was a problem the other night uh when the Wolves played the Blazers and it allowed Portland to kind of hang around especially when the Wolves played some Zone I would expect them to try
Zone again against Portland um you know depending on like Anthony Simons was hot early but nobody else really killed the Wolves uh at least early in the game um so now they also got killed on straight line drives like that was more of an issue just staying in front of guys
Usually that’s not a problem so like if this were just if this weren’t the last game before the All-Star break with the wolves on a winning streak I’d say that’s not a concern they’re not going to have too bad games like that in a row but the last game before the allstar
Break is always dangerous and uh hopefully Portland is also looking ahead with none of those guys I don’t think really participated in any All-Star Weekend festivities hopefully they’re looking ahead to their vacations as well and uh the Wolves can lock in and get this win but rebounding uh defensive rebounding
Specifically and turnovers would be my main concerns here uh looking at this one in terms of the wolf schedule right after the break and obviously we’ll dig into this a bit more after the break we’ve got some time next week the Wolves don’t play again until a
Week from today uh or no I’m sorry a week from tomorrow Friday night against the Bucks that’s an ESPN game at in Minnesota at Target Center that got moved to 900m to accommodate for ESPN so a likely full strength Bucks team the Wolves did not see Dame they did not see
Chris Middleton last time they played them so that could be a ton of fun and then of course they come right out of the break with a back toback the Nets but at least that’s at home then the Spurs at home the Grizzlies at home the
King it’s a super long road trip which or excuse me home stand uh six or no seven games in a row at home which is just kind of nuts uh and I guess I guess a good thing I mean it’s definitely a good thing it’s just like then they
Follow that up with a six-game road trip so whatever scheduling um so six seven game home stand they you know the Bucks game but then Brooklyn San Antonio Memphis those are all games they’ll be favored in easily Sacramento at home Sacramento we know is a tough matchup
And then a Sunday mat n on March third with the Clippers at home which is going to be a challenge a big game and then Portland so that’s a home stand with seven games you got to go five- two um between Milwaukee Sacramento and the Clippers you Pro like it’s okay if you
Lose two of those three maybe they win two out of those three and they drop one of the ones against a lesser team but a five and two home stand is something the will should shoot for the road trip actually it’s a pretty tough one Indiana Cleveland Lakers Clippers two against
Utah that’s you know everybody but Utah’s almost a Surefire playoff team and then uh Utah still got a shot at the play end at this point too so anyway we’ll talk a lot more about that next week but there’s a real shot for Minnesota to Rattle off you know five
Out of seven or something like that right after the break right now uh the wolves are on a three-game win streak going for forign row against Portland tonight we’ll have the live postcast on the lockdown Sports Minnesota YouTube channel uh Jack Borman I believe with Luke gidman and so check that out uh
It’ll also be posted to this audio feed uh late after the live show and then I’ll have the post scan pod for you on Friday we’ll talk all about this game and uh we’ll also do predictions um I think I said the whole show would be about predictions it’s obviously the
Postgame pod but I’m going to close it with predictions for the weekend as well for the all uh All-Star Saturday especially so we’ll do all that on Friday show and then we’ll be back on Monday with an All-Star Weekend reaction show we’ll spend all of next week
Looking ahead to the second half of the Season Lots on tap a big thank you for making lock that wolves your first listen every single day of course this show is free and available everywhere including YouTube as well as all of your favorite audio platforms you can also
Watch the show on the lockdown Sports Minnesota app on Roku and Amazon Fire TV and you can follow an X at lockt wolves and also at B Beacon with 2bs 2 e CK of course the lockon Wolves podcast is part of the lockon podcast Network your local
Experts on all the biggest stories once again I’m Ben Beacon this is the lock on wolves podcast and we’ll catch you next time
It’s official: the Minnesota Timberwolves are atop the Western Conference at the All-Star Break. Ben Beecken (@bbeecken) breaks down some of the big-picture numbers of the season so far and over the last several weeks. Plus, the three most satisfying (and surprising) things about the Wolves to this point. Also, a look at the matchup with the Portland Trail Blazers and a peek ahead to the post-All-Star Break schedule.
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