Again: I'm very happy to see the team ending the season on a winning note. However, for a second there right before the 1/2 I thought that they had found a new way to utilize Mark Madsen's amazing tanking abilities: the little-known you-can't-come-off-the-bench-with-your-shirt-untucked technical. At that point in the contest I started to prepare myself for a 4th quarter full of an unkempt Madsen making his way off the bench for 30 second increments, possibly jacking up a few 3s in the process.

Last night's game was the 3rd statistical oddity in a row. Here's how the 2 teams stacked up in the 4 Factors:

The Wolves::

• FG% (eFG): 51%
• TO: 13
• Offensive (and total) rebounds: 24-62
• FT: 11-16

The Grizz:

• FG% (eFG): 44%
• TO: 7
• Offensive (and total) rebounds: 17-45
• FT: 26-43

While I'm clearly not part of the "tank it" crowd, and I love to see the team do well and win, if anything is to be taken from last night's victory in Orlando, it is that we may have to change the name of the team to the Blind Minnesota Timberquirrels.

Last night, the team with the worst free throw shooting discrepancy, fewest FTMs, 2nd worst FTAs, 8th worst 3pFG%, 6th worst 3pFGM, and 6th worst 3pFGA went 17-20 (85%) from the line and 9-16 (56.3%) from beyond the arc.

Actually, I shouldn't get too caught up on the attempt side of things. The Wolves pretty much hit their attempt averages for both FTs and 3pFGs. What they did do was increase their makes by nearly 4 beyond the arc and by nearly 2 at the line. All in all, good shooting brought about 14 additional points with essentially the same number of total shots.

There are many ways of grading good basketball. One of my personal favorites for team play is Dean Oliver’s Four Factors of Basketball Success: shooting, rebounding, free-throws, and turnovers.

While the Four Factors are indicative of team success, they also are pretty useful when attempting to analyze individual play. How well do individual Wolves stack up with the Four Factors? Let’s take a look:

First of all, I’m only measuring Timberwolves with 300+ minutes on the season. This gives us 10 players. Secondly, I measured shooting with eFG%, rebounding with TRB%, free throws with FTM/36 minutes, and turnovers with TO/36 minutes. Finally, I ranked the 10 Wolves players in each category and then added up the totals for a composite Four Factor score. This gives a pretty accurate 1st hand glimpse as to how well each player handles the Four Factors within the confines of a 10 win team. For example, Al Jefferson finished 3rd in eFG%, 1st in rebounding, 1st in FTM, and 6th in TO/36 minutes for an overall ranking of 11. Here’s how the team breaks down (ties were broken by the player with the most minutes getting the higher seed):

1. Al Jefferson- 11 (3/1/1/6)
2. Ryan Gomes- 12 (4/3/4/1)
3. Craig Smith- 13 (1/2/3/7)
4. Antoine Walker- 22 (6/4/10/2)
5. Gerald Green- 25 (9/5/2/9)
6. Rashad McCants- 26 (2/8/6/10)
7. Greg Buckner- 26 (7/7/9/3)
8. Marko Jaric- 27 (5/9/5/8)
9. Corey Brewer- 27 (10/6/7/4)
10. Sebastian Telfair- 31 (8/10/8/5)

I’ll break this list down a bit more in the future by figuring in offensive and defensive numbers and assigning Ed Kupfer’s percentage system to each Factor (example: Offensive shooting % is worth 22.4% while defensive shooting % is worth 19.5%), but this is a pretty good place to start with breaking down how each individual player adds into the Wolves’ Four Factor success.

As you can see, the Wolves are absolutely killed by a lack of a perimeter shooting threat. Of all the backcourt players, only Rashad McCants is in the top half of the team’s shooters. Also, for all the (relative) rebounding success of the squad, they get below average rebounding marks from their backcourt and wing players. Gerald Green is the team’s only top-half wingman rebounder and he has played all of 333 minutes.

Outside of the outside shooting woes, the Wolves are hurt the most by a well below average free throw shooting operation. Only 4 Wolves players average 3 or more FTM/36 minutes: Big Al, Ryan Gomes, Gerald Green, and Craig Smith. For a team that gets outgunned by 8 FTM/game, this is a disturbing trend and it, along with outside shooting woes, should be taken into consideration when scouting players for this year’s draft.

More to follow.

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, one of the biggest obstacles the Wolves have to overcome on their way to winning is a massive free throw disparity. The Wolves give up 32 FTA/game which, if you consider in the Wolves' 21 FTA/game and their opponent's 80% FT%, results in a built in 9-point disadvantage for the puppies. It’s pretty hard to win games when you’re giving away this many points.

My gut reaction to the Wolves’ FT disparity is that Randy Foye’s absence may have a lot to do with the Wolves being unable to get to the line. Foye is one of the few Wolves who can create his own shot by getting into the lane and drawing contact. Is this hunch correct? Does Foye’s absence have a lot to do with the Wolves not getting to the line? Let’s take a quick look at Foye’s stats:

As a rookie, Foye got to the line 2.34 times per game. Of course, per game stats are not the way to judge effectiveness, especially with rookies. If you adjust his stats for game minutes, Foye makes roughly 4.1 FTA/40 minutes. During his senior year at Villanova, Foye got to the line 6 times/40 minutes. While Foye simply doesn’t have a large enough resume to dig too much deeper into his FTA impact (to say nothing of the small sample size of backup Wolves guards this year), it can reasonably be assumed that the Wolves are losing 4-6 FTA/40 minutes by not having Foye in the lineup. If you take into consideration Marko Jaric's 3.35 FTA/40, we’re talking about a net loss of 1-3 FTA/40 minutes. All in all, Foye’s absence hurts a little bit, but the Wolves are getting blown out by such a large amount at the line that even a nice contact player like Foye doesn’t make that big of a difference. To give you an idea of where Foye lies in the scheme of FTA, last year Kobe Bryant led the league with 9.77 FTA/40 minutes. KG led the Wolves with roughly 6.6 FTA/40 minutes. If Foye could get in the lane to the tune of Ben Gordon (447 FTA; 6.5/40 in 06/07) or Chauncey Billups (440 FTA; 6.9/40 in 06/07), he would be a vast improvement over anyone currently on the Wolves' roster.

To give you an idea of just how strapped the Wolves are for players that can get to the line, the only other player they had in the top 100 FTA during the 06/07 season was Ricky Davis (285 FTA). Al Jefferson, then a Celtic, logged in with 295 FTA. Once you take away KG’s 498 FTAs….well, the puppies are screwed. (In case you are wondering, Big Al averaged 3.46 FTA/40 minutes last year.)

Cutting to the chase, the Wolves have lost their only 3 legitimate free throw threats from the 06/07 season. KG and RD are gone via trade and Foye is still aching on the bench. While Davis’ 285 FTAs have been replaced by Jefferson’s 295, that equation still leaves us with a –488 FTA disparity since KG left for greener pastures. Yikes.

This is the single biggest drop off between last year’s team and this year’s squad. If you take out the massive discrepancy in FTA, this year’s Wolves are more effective on the defensive end than they were during KG’s last year. The 07/08 Wolves are giving up nearly 9 points per game at the line and it is killing them. If the Wolves played the FTA game even, they would have a nearly identical offensive/defensive efficiency rating. Last year, with KG’s nearly 500 FTAs on the books, the Wolves had a defensive efficiency rating of 108. This year, they are at 112 while giving away 9 points/game at the line.

Since I’m on the subject of KG, it should also be noted that while the Celts are having a fantastic defensive year, it could be a mirage as they are near the bottom of the league in FT/100 FG. In other words, the Celts give up a lot of free throws and if their offensive pace slows down just a little more than its current rate (as it did vs. Cleveland and Orlando) and their opponent has a player that can get to the line (LeBron James went 14-15; Dwight Howard and Rashard Lewis combined for 18-30 in the Celts' 2 losses), their defense struggles. Luckily for them, they play the Knicks, 76ers, Miami, Charlotte, and Chicago for nearly a quarter of their games.

Getting back on track, the Wolves need to seriously think about FTA when making their top selection in next year’s draft. It should be one of the main considerations if 2 players with similar stats fall in their laps (OJ Mayo vs. Derrick Rose; Roy Hibbert vs. Deandre Jordan; etc). As far as the Wolves are concerned, free throws are the most important of the four factors as it has a trickle down effect on both their offense and defense.

As a parting tidbit, Derrick Rose is getting to the line at a clip of 10 FTA/40 minutes. Michael Beasley is averaging 9.41 FTA/40 minutes. In his junior year, Roy Hibbert got to the line 6.27 times/40 minutes. Freshman Deandre Jordan is averaging 6.62 FTA/40 minutes. If the Wolves are going to field a competitive team, increasing their free throw attempts is the most important statistical need they have to address.

Last night’s loss to the Dallas Mavericks was one of those games that forces folks to drop one of the most cartoonish clichés in all of sports: moral victory. I’m all for players feeling good about their efforts, so I’m not completely opposed to this term, but I am opposed to its incorrect use. Last night was not a moral victory. Last night was an inverted loss.

Typically, the Wolves come out with high energy; they match the opposing squad for a quarter, maybe even outscoring them in the 2nd to take a half time lead before falling behind in the 3rd and getting blown out in the 4th. Last night, the Wolves got blown out in the first, found themselves even further behind in the 2nd, rallied in the 3rd, and played the Mavs even in the 4th.

Beyond the inversion, typical Wolves problems were on full display: massive free throw disparity, out of position players, McCants being unable to play nice with any of his teammates, a lack of frontcourt depth (on a good note, Craig Smith is starting to play like his nickname again), and so on and so forth. Just because the Wolves faltered where they usually prosper (and vice versa), does not mean they had a noble moral victory. Quite the opposite; this was more of the same from the Wolves….it was just inverted.

Looking at the game flow from last night’s game, you can really see that Wittman was struggling to find a line up that worked in the 2nd half. After subbing Brewer and Walker for Gomes and Madsen, the Wolves went on a nice 23-9 run to (nearly) end the quarter. Telfair and Smith were added to the mix late in the 3rd and the Wolves went hodge-podge from about 9 minutes left in the game.

One thing that was particularly noticeable about last night’s 3rd and 4th quarters was the defensive pressure put on by Brewer and Telfair when the were on the court together. Looking at the five-man floor unit stats, Brewer and Telfair have been on the court together for 44 minutes with an overall +1. Nothing to write home about, but you could see an increase in defensive intensity when the 2 were allowed to harass Mavs, especially around the perimeter. Please, please, please give Brewer some playing time at the 2.

For all the garbage I talk about Shad, I kind of felt bad for him last night in the 2nd half. I don’t know why, but it appears that I’m not the only one who noticed that he changed his game up a little after the break. Britt Robson has a much better take on this matter than I could…being that I would bench Shad if given the keys to the car.

Getting back to the inversion thing for a moment: the reason why this game should not be thought of as a moral victory is because it is simply a backwards example of the type of game that is emblematic of the Wolves’ failures. The Wolves are almost always incapable of putting forth a solid effort for 48 minutes. Whether for lack of talent, poor execution, or poor coaching, the Wolves are in the bottom half of the league in both offensive and defensive efficiency (points scored and given during 100 possessions). They turn the ball over far too many times per 100 possessions, and even though they have a respectable effective FG%, it is undone by their inexcusable inability to get to the line.

On defense, things get even worse. (Actually, this year’s club is better defensively than last year’s KG squad if you can believe it.) The Wolves give up nearly 112 points/100 possessions to their opponents (while scoring only 103). They allow their opponents to have an effective FG% over 50%. They force a fair amount of turnovers and they do a decent job on the defensive glass, but once again, they get done in by the combined FG/FT number: allowing a league worst 32.8 FT made for every 100 opponent possessions.

To give you a sense of just how far off the Wolves are from the league’s elite squads, the Dallas Mavericks lead the league in offensive efficiency with 114 points/100 possessions (vs. the Wolves 103). The Mavs convert 28.8 FT/100 FG during this span compared to the Wolves’ lowly 17.8. Even though the Wolves out offensive rebound the Mavs, this advantage is thrown to the wind by the Wolves’ inability to a) put the ball immediately back in the hoop or b) get to the line.

On the defensive end, the team to beat is the Boston Celtics. The Celts allow a league low 98.2 points/100 possessions. They hold their opponents to a ridiculously low 45.4% effective shooting percentage. They force a bucket-load of turnovers and limit their opponents’ offensive rebounding numbers. Where the Celts fall flat (and where they will end up getting in a lot of trouble down the stretch) is that they allow a terrible 27.2 FT per 100 FG. If someone gets into the lane (cough…Dwight Howard…cough...LeBron...cough), the Celts have trouble defending.

Anyway, you can get a sense of just how far behind the Wolves are when it comes to effectiveness over extended periods of game time. Last night’s loss was no exception; even if it was backwards from what we are used to seeing.

In order for the Wolves to turn this thing around, they need to find a way to correct the free throw disparity. It is absolutely killing them at both ends of the court. Last night the Wolves were out shot at the line 32-39 to 20-28. Overall, the Wolves are being out-gunned at the line by 329-416 to 194-270. That works out to opponents averaging 32 FT attempts per game vs the Wolves’ 21. Taking into account the Wolves' opponent FT% of .791, that works out to a built-in 8.7 point buffer between the Wolves and their opponents. This nearly-9-point-spread is exactly enough to address the 9 point gap between the Wolves’ offensive and defensive efficiency numbers. There is no other stat in the same ballpark of explaining why the Wolves are losing.

Speaking of ballparks, how about the Twinkies and their latest trade. I’m all for it. The Twins need bats and if they can get a front-line starting pitching prospect back for Santana (or Nathan), then this deal looks even better. I think the Twins will end up with a better record next year than they did this past year. Of course, I don’t know all that much about baseball as I never could hit the damn ball. So disregard anything I write about the Twinkies and head over to Aaron Gleeman’s site for some real baseball knowledge.