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Thibs right or wrong choice for Minnesota?
Is Tom Thibodeau the right choice to lead the Timberwolves?
The
Minnesota Timberwolves didn't need to hire Tom Thibodeau to have a bright outlook for the 2016-17 season and beyond.
Behind No. 1 overall picks
Karl-Anthony Towns and
Andrew Wiggins, the leaders of a core of young talent as promising as any NBA team can boast, the Timberwolves boosted hopes for the future by finishing this season strong. Now, with the addition of the top coach on the market, Minnesota looks poised to return to the playoffs for the first time in more than a decade.
However, giving Thibodeau personnel power in his combined role of head coach and president of basketball operations raises long-term questions that won't be answered for years.
Thibodeau's turnaround track record
When Thibodeau took over the
Chicago Bulls for his first NBA head coaching job, he spurred an immediate 21-win leap in the standings that took Chicago from the eighth seed in the East the previous year to the top of the conference in 2010-11.
That improvement can't be attributed entirely to Thibodeau, naturally. The Bulls also upgraded their roster by adding
Omer Asik,
Carlos Boozer and
Kyle Korver to a core of young talent headlined by another former No. 1 pick,
Derrick Rose, whose maturation into league MVP helped propel Chicago into contention.
Despite the upgrade in talent, the importance of Thibodeau's defensive scheme was clear. The Bulls improved from 10th in defensive rating under predecessor Vinny Del Negro to the league's top defense under Thibodeau and went on to rank in the NBA's top five each of the next three seasons before slipping to 11th in his final year in Chicago.
For a Minnesota team that hasn't ranked better than 14th in defensive rating in a decade and was 30th (out of 30) and 27th the last two seasons, Thibodeau's pioneering defensive scheme (now widely imitated throughout the league) and attention to detail should produce immediate returns. In particular, Towns and Wiggins have the potential to be better defenders than they've been early in their careers.
It's possible, however, that Thibodeau's defensive reputation has overshadowed his coaching at the other end of the floor. The Bulls actually improved their offensive rating relative to league average slightly more than their defensive rating during his first season, and they dropped off more offensively than defensively this year under replacement Fred Hoiberg.
Crediting Thibodeau more for defense than offense does make sense because coaches tend to have more control at the defensive end of the court, and the upgrades Chicago made to the roster had more impact on offense than defense.
Nonetheless, Thibodeau did have an impact by emphasizing better shot selection. Under Del Negro, per data from NBA.com/Stats, the Bulls had the league's highest ratio of 2-point attempts outside the paint to 3-point attempts. By increasing 3s and decreasing lower-value 2-point jumpers, Chicago improved its ratio to nearly the league average the following season.
Shot selection will be equally important for the Timberwolves, who, like the pre-Thibodeau Bulls, had the league's highest ratio of 2-point attempts outside the paint to 3 attempts under Sam Mitchell last season and in 2014-15, with the late Flip Saunders on the sideline.
Minnesota did attempt more 3s and fewer long 2s after the All-Star break, when the Timberwolves ranked 11th in offensive rating with youngsters
Gorgui Dieng and
Zach LaVine moving into the starting lineup alongside Towns, Wiggins and point guard
Ricky Rubio.
Minnesota showed promise down the stretch -- including upsetting Golden State in Oakland for the Warriors' final loss of a 73-9 regular season -- but still finished 12-16 after the break because of a leaky defense. Since Thibodeau seems likely to improve the defense and shift the offense toward higher-value shots, the Timberwolves have an excellent shot at reaching .500, something they haven't done since 2004-05 -- the first year of the team's 12-year playoff drought, the longest one in the NBA.
Concerns about Thibodeau's long-term vision
There's little doubt Thibodeau's arrival will have an immediate, positive effect for the Timberwolves. Any questions about this move center on the long-term implications of giving Thibodeau the dual title of head coach and president of basketball operations.
Calling the track record of NBA head coaches with personnel power "mixed" might be generous. Past failures like college coaches John Calipari and Rick Pitino haven't prevented more teams from offering dual roles as part of the competition for the best available coaches.
In part, the tension stems from the short-term outlook typical of coaches, which contrasts with the longer view front offices must take. Coaches with personnel power like Doc Rivers of the L.A. Clippers have tended to undervalue their draft picks in trade in favor of signing trusted veterans. And even Stan Van Gundy, who has done a nice job balancing the acquisition of young talent with trying to win now in Detroit, has tended to lavish rich contracts on free agents.
With the salary cap exploding, Thibodeau and the rest of his front office (set to include San Antonio Spurs assistant GM Scott Layden,
according to a report by the Vertical) must carefully manage their cap space to avoid being stuck with bad contracts as Minnesota's young stars begin getting more expensive extensions.
It's impossible to predict how Thibodeau will manage basketball operations, but his tendency to focus on the present at the expense of the future as a head coach is a discouraging sign. In particular, that manifested itself in Thibodeau's stars logging heavier minutes than almost anyone else in the league.
As coaches around the league reduced the load on their stars, Thibodeau remained a holdout. Four of the six highest minutes averages since 2011-12 belong to Thibodeau-coached players
Jimmy Butler and
Luol Deng,
per Basketball-Reference.com.
Thibodeau's comments since being fired in Chicago, including
his appearance on the Lowe Post with ESPN.com's Zach Lowe, don't suggest he has rethought his position on playing time.
During his five seasons with the Bulls, Thibodeau's top player in minutes per game (first Deng and later Butler) averaged 38.9 minutes, as compared to an average of 35.4 for leaders around the rest of the league. That lower number is almost exactly the average for the player who ranked second in minutes per game for Chicago. (After the top two, Thibodeau's minutes distribution was typical.)
That's a concern in Minnesota because the team's two leaders in minutes per game are likely to be Wiggins, who is 21, and the 20-year-old Towns. Already, Wiggins has played the second-highest minutes total over the past two seasons (only
James Harden of the
Houston Rockets has played more,
according to Basketball-Reference.com) and Towns led all rookies in minutes in 2015-16.
Thibodeau's defense against claims he's overworking his players, that there's little proof of a link between heavy minutes totals and injuries, is a valid one. The injuries that tended to submarine the Bulls in the playoffs were either fluky (including a spinal tap that sidelined Deng) or suffered by players (Rose and
Joakim Noah) whose minutes totals were unexceptional.
Still, protecting the development of Towns and Wiggins is more important for the Timberwolves than whether they make the playoffs next season. Hopefully for Minnesota, the long-term security of a massive contract and a dual role will help Thibodeau focus on the bigger picture. If so, the Timberwolves could enjoy years of prosperity under his coaching.
