24 Sloppy Seconds

USA Today

As we covered in Part One of the season preview, perhaps the biggest obstacle facing the Wolves this year (besides the very real potential for a chemistry-induced implosion) is how to coax improvement out of a roster with little-to-no financial flexibility and few valuable trade assets. The most likely path involves proper role and minutes management, combined with internal development from the remaining young guys. Outside of the obvious names at the tip-top of the roster, both of those considerations also factor into a key positional battle which could heat up throughout training camp and the regular season at point guard. With all due respect to Derrick Rose’s Corpse, the two-man race for minutes at the 1 between Jeff Teague and Tyus Jones could be both contentious (more turmoil!) but also instrumental to any marginal leap forward in the team’s performance, and a deeper dive into the numbers suggests the choice is not as obvious as it might seem at first blush.

The “Tyus Jones as advanced stat darling” narrative got quite a bit of play during the season, but it’s worth revisiting to see if it can tell us anything useful about minute/role allocation going forward now that we have more of a sample size. First, let’s talk about Teague. The only vaguely remarkable thing about Jeff Teague is his metronomic consistency. He has never played less than 70 games in a year (not counting the ‘11-’12 lockout year, when he played all 66 games). We tend to think about NBA careers as an evolution, where a player’s mind, body, and game gradually improve, peak, and then gradually decline. We obviously haven’t reached the decline phase of Teague’s career yet, but the front half hasn’t “evolved” at all in the way one would expect.

Since he became a starter in ‘11-’12 at age 23, his minutes, counting stats, and advanced metrics all look remarkably similar year over year. Somehow, over seven seasons and three teams, he’s basically the same player — moderately above average on offense, and moderately below average on defense. He made the All Star team in ‘14-’15, which was more of a tip of the cap to the lightning-in-a-bottle 60-win Hawks team than it was to Teague’s individual performance; in a lot of ways, his one season with Indiana (in ‘16-’17) was actually better, and I didn’t hear much “snub” talk surrounding his exclusion from that year’s squad. At age 30, he is what he is: a perfectly fine, competent player who any team would be happy to replace if a better option became available. It’s not entirely clear why Thibs thought that player was worth 3 years/$57 million (the ramifications of which we’ll discuss in a bit), but it’s far from the craziest contract we’ve seen since the cap spike.

Which brings us to last season. Our known quantity came over to Minnesota on the aforementioned questionable contract, and in his first season did…exactly what he always does. Teague played 70 games, averaged 14/3/7 on 45/37/85 shooting, and rated just a skosh above league average by nearly every advanced metric. Minnesota got the exact Jeff Teague for which it paid, and I suspect if Thibs hands him those same 33 mpg this season, he’ll get those same type of numbers again because it would be foolish to expect anything else.

There are only 240 available minutes of court time in a game, and every one of them counts. When a team is trying to show improvement at the margins, can it afford to give 33 of them every night to “slightly above average,” when it’s entirely possible there’s a better option already on the roster? Enter Tyus Jones. After spending the majority of his rookie season in the G-League, and bouncing in and out of the rotation in ‘16-’17, he played all 82 games last year, averaging around 18 minutes a night and starting 11 games Teague missed. His counting stats, per-36 numbers, and advanced metrics all look pretty pedestrian, but something special happened in those games and minutes when Jones played with the other four starters (not including Teague): the team took off.

Cover your ears because the stats are about to get really noisy, but the following are all indisputable facts. Tyus Jones played 1,467 minutes last year; 261 of those minutes were played alongside KAT, Wiggins, Butler, and Taj Gibson, which isn’t a staggeringly large sample, but it’s not nothing either. In those minutes, the Wolves had an unfathomable net rating of +23.6 points per 100 possessions. 23.6! In the 11 games Jones started, he averaged around 33 minutes per game (sound familiar?). His rate stats changed very little regardless of role, his offensive counting stats clearly did not match up with Teague’s, and the team went only 6-5 in games he started, but as a starter, Jones had a +/- of +18.4 (vs. only +2.3 as a reserve). Basically, when Jones started, the team either won in a blowout or lost in a tight contest.

His sterling on/off numbers as a starter suggest his absence may have been kneecapping the bench, a problem which would theoretically be mitigated by a healthy Teague playing with the reserves, but also that something interesting was happening when Jones was on the court with the top unit. The overplayed “there’s only one ball” trope has been deployed (and thoroughly debunked) frequently as an argument against star stacking over the last several years, but let’s look at it from a different angle, since it’s what we do around here. Fundamentally, TOOB is an argument about usage rate and opportunity cost — usage by one player is, to some extent, a zero-sum game, and takes away usage from someone else on the court. This is overly simplistic, but bear with me. While TOOB’s base conceit of diminishing returns on stars has been effectively disproven, what if the other side of the coin — replacing a higher usage non-star with a lower usage one who does “non-star” things better, thus amplifying the actual stars — is true?

Is this what was happening when Jones took Teague’s spot in the lineup? Is there any true signal within all the statistical noise? And most importantly, if there is, will Thibs recognize it and adapt or stick to his usual “because that’s the way I’ve always done it” ethos?

On the last question, the evidence so far points to the latter conclusion. Throughout last season, as the calls for more Tyus minutes would come (sometimes from inside the house!), Thibs consistently defended his veteran PG, calling him coachspeak-y phrases like a “winning” player and an “elite” point guard (as Inigo Montoya would say, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means”). Don’t get me wrong; a coach should defend his players, but he also should not look at them through rose-colored glasses.

So which are we supposed to believe, the coach or our lying eyes (and stats)? A winning player is someone who helps the players around him to consistently create a delta on the scoreboard between his team and the opponent, and however many asterisks and caveats you want to apply to the data, Jones just seems to have a bigger effect in that regard than Teague. And even if you prefer to dismiss the analytics entirely and enjoy your takes hot and spicy, we’ve got you covered there, too. [Stephen A. Smith voice] TYUS JONES WAS THE MOST OUTSTANDING PLAYER IN THE FINAL FOUR. HE LED HIS TEAM TO VICTORY IN THE MOST PRESSURE-PACKED CIRCUMSTANCES, WHEN HIS BEST TEAMMATE WAS JAHLIL OKAFOR. JAHLIL OKAFOR! MEANWHILE, JEFF TEAGUE IS BEST KNOWN FOR BEING ON THE TEAM THAT BECAME SYNONYMOUS WITH REGULAR SEASON SUCCESS COMBINED WITH PLAYOFF FUTILITY. IS HE REALLY THE PLAYER YOU WANT STARTING FOR A TEAM WITH CHAMPIONSHIP ASPIRATIONS?

Whoa, what happened there? I blacked out. Where were we? Oh yeah, about to bend some more semi-misleading stats to fit my argument. The most obvious area where the team can take a step forward is on defense (17th out of 30 in opponents’ scoring, 27th out of 30 in Defensive Rating), and while a lot of that is on Towns and Wiggins to step up their levels of effort and attentiveness, more consistent Tyus minutes could help out as well. Outside of the eye test, which paints Jones as simply a more focused, attentive, and tenacious defender than Teague, the stats also back it up. The on/off numbers are somewhat predictable: opposing offenses had a higher rating when Teague was on the floor than when he was off, and vice versa for Jones. This makes sense when you look at roles. Teague started every game he played, so he was generally matched up against other starting units consisting of the most skilled offensive players, whereas Jones played the majority of his minutes as a reserve against less-skilled opposition. All well and good so far, nothing to see here.

But…what about when Jones played with the starters? His Defensive Rating as a starter was actually better than as a reserve, possibly putting the lie to the “level of competition” argument. The data point sticks out like a sore thumb. Remember, otherwise Jones was statistically almost the exact same player, regardless of role. His Offensive Rating, already higher than Teague’s to begin with despite the discrepancy in counting stats, remained unchanged. His usage actually ticked up slightly as a starter, though it remained shockingly low. And while he shot worse from 3 as a starter (albeit on only 33 attempts, a pretty low number from which to draw any meaningful conclusions), his overall FG% was nearly identical.

We can argue about the sample sizes (370 minutes as a starter, 261 with the other four starters) until we’re blue in the face, but at a certain point, the data is so crystal clear it just HAS TO mean something. And the data all points to one thing with no ambiguity: when the Wolves change nothing else besides taking Jeff Teague off the court and replacing him with Tyus Jones, the offense scores more points and the defense allows less points. We can try to wrap explanations and context around it as much as we want (as I’ve been trying to do for 1,800 words now), but the fact is indisputable, and not at least attempting to see if the effect holds up over a larger sample size of minutes amounts to, at best, stubbornness and, at worst, organizational malpractice.

The good news is the minutes crunch may, to some extent, work itself out organically. Barring something catastrophic (and maybe not even then), the Wolves won’t bring back the decrepit Jamal Crawford, freeing up his 21 minutes per night from last season. Chances are good Teague and Jones will share the court more this season, and even though having two guys on the floor together who are both 6’2” and shoot threes at roughly league-average percentages is far from ideal both defensively and in terms of floor spacing, siphoning those minutes off from Crawford (who was serving as the sixth man on a playoff team despite being borderline unplayable by most any statistical metric) can only be a net positive. One can only hope, despite handing him a baffling veteran’s minimum contract, Thibs will finally divorce himself from the notion that Derrick Rose is still an NBA-caliber player, ideally amounting to a few more minutes Jones can soak up.

On the other side of the ledger, it remains to be seen how much of Thibs’ trust (and the corresponding burn) rookie Josh Okogie will earn. Despite Thibs’ well-chronicled habit of leaning heavily on veterans, as the only bench option with real length and athleticism on the wing, Okogie may get thrown into the fire early out of sheer necessity, whether he’s ready or not. I’m high on Keita Bates-Diop as well and think he was an insanely good get at #48 in the draft, but he profiles as more of a small-ball 4 rather than a wing, meaning he may struggle to steal minutes from Anthony Tolliver, who will be taking over Nemanja Bjelica’s “20 mpg off the bench/spot starter/only reliable floor spacer” role.

Besides all the statistical wrangling, Teague, Jones, and the team also all have massive financial incentives to figure out the proper minutes and role allocations. Jones will be a restricted free agent after the ‘18-’19 season, and a breakout season from him would obviously go a long way towards securing a big payday next summer (either from Minny to remain as the starter or elsewhere if the Wolves won’t match). Additionally, the interplay between Jones’ RFA dance and Teague’s own contract situation will also be fascinating. Teague will make $19 million this season, and has a player option for ‘19-’20 at another $19 million. While it’s tough from a PR standpoint to have a guy making $19 million coming off your bench (I’m picturing Coach Thibs and Front Office Thibs facing off on opposite sides of a chess board, a la Jerry and his penis on Seinfeld), as a capped-out team, there may be some appeal in persuading a then-31 year old Teague to opt out of his deal and seek one more long-term contract in lieu of a reduced role, then playing hardball with Jones on his new deal and matching the offer if something else materializes.

While there will be more cap space available next summer after the Great Cap Crunch of 2018, there will also be a glut of free agents available. At a moment in the league ecosystem where the supply and demand calculation for starting-caliber point guards is decidedly off, the Wolves could find themselves getting a bargain on Jones while also creating additional flexibility to chase a new backup PG and/or retain Jimmy Butler while dodging or minimizing the luxury tax. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but all the alternatives seem worse, financially and competitively, so why not shoot for the moon?

Part of maximizing a championship window is betting on upside at the right times to create excess value. Jeff Teague is a perfectly fine player, but he has absolutely no potential for excess value. He is exactly what he is as a player, and his contract, while not untradeable, is certainly not going to have teams lighting up Thibs’ phone with offers. Tyus, on the other hand, is a 22 year old ascending player with the exact combination of pedigree, skills, intangibles, and fit the team should be looking for on this roster. His presence on the court already appears to amplify the performance of his star teammates, whereas Teague’s higher usage and questionable defense provide diminishing returns for a lineup which tends to need the opposite.

Will Thibs be willing or able to gamble on upside this year? His history doesn’t suggest as much, but if he is so concerned with fielding “winning” players, maybe it would make sense to stop yanking around the minutes of the only guy on your roster who has actually led a team that, you know, won something.

USA Today

NBA team-building is hard. This seems like an obvious point, but when you drill down, the scope of all the things having to go right to drag a franchise to 55+ wins and championship contention becomes pretty staggering. An abridged list of the challenges facing any incoming front office:

• The roster and salary cap sheet leftover from the previous regime [both likely to be in bad shape, or else why would they have been replaced?]
• An owner or ownership group who meddles too much, not enough, or is generally incompetent
• The byzantine financial rules and regulations of the CBA
• Hurdles to attracting talent to your market — climate, state income tax, non-bustling city life, etc.
• Navigating the crapshoot of drafting and scouting
• Gathering the assets (or losing prolifically enough) to land a star
• Landing a star
• Landing another star to pair with the first star
• Keeping the stars happy during the period of their contracts and retaining them in free agency
• Finding the right role players to complement your stars and cover for any of their weaknesses
• Drafting/developing young talent and finding veterans to fill out the roster with 9-10 competent, NBA-caliber players without overpaying
• Doing all of this within the financial means of ownership, while managing potentially competing motivations and timelines

Managing all of this is a Herculean task, especially for someone who has never been in charge of personnel. Add “coaching the damn team” to the list of responsibilities, and the chances for success become pretty negligible. This is the uphill climb facing Tom Thibodeau and the Minnesota Timberwolves. What makes it more daunting is they’ve already jumped a number of the hurdles to contention, defying the odds of decades of organizational futility, and it STILL may not be enough to truly get off the treadmill of mediocrity and vault into the upper echelon of the league.

 Taking over the team in 2016, Thibs was of course fortunate in some ways. Yes, he took over a rotten team (29-53 in ‘15-’16), but it was a rotten team with a clean cap sheet, two consecutive #1 overall picks, and several other intriguing young players. The assets and the flexibility were already there; in short, it was a desirable job, despite the challenges of the market itself and the dual role working against him. Towns was the no-doubt, up-and-coming superstar. Wiggins hadn’t wowed anyone to that point, but he wasn’t yet the overpaid, semi-disappointing contractual millstone he currently appears to be. Kris Dunn, Zach LaVine, and Gorgui Dieng profiled as high-upside complementary guys with a lot of room for growth. And many people reasoned Thibs’, the purported defense whisperer, would undoubtedly mold all of this talented clay into an elite unit on that end of the floor.

As we know, it didn’t exactly go that way in ‘16-’17. The team went 31-51 and had the 27th rated defense in the league. Yes, they endured a ton of tough losses, and their overall net rating was that of a team somewhat closer to .500, but this lack of “clutch” bona fides was basically portrayed by the media as a function of youth and inexperience, fair or not. In any case, they got monster offensive production from Towns, Wiggins, and LaVine, scored efficiently inside, and got to the line well, but still struggled because they couldn’t defend worth a lick and shot and made the fewest threes in the league.

The future now somewhat murkier, Thibs pushed his chips to the center of the table. The trade for Jimmy Butler seemed, at first blush, to be an absolute no-brainer. NBA history suggests the team who gets the superstar in a superstar trade almost always wins, so dealing away Dunn, LaVine (fresh off tearing his ACL, no less), and the #7 pick on draft night for Butler (AND the #16 pick, a throw-in on Chicago’s part which felt confusing and unnecessary to me at the time) looked like a home run.

And it kind of was. The team went from 31 wins to 47 and their first playoff appearance in more than a decade. Butler had two more guaranteed years on his deal at the time of the trade, so it didn’t strike anyone as a rental, but rather a smart, strategic move to get an All-NBA player in his absolute prime. Butler still couldn’t will the subpar defense into overall competence (their Defensive Rating was still 27th in the league overall in ‘17-’18, though they showed some improvement for a stretch midseason), but he played phenomenally for his new team for much of the year before being derailed by a torn meniscus in late February.

But for all the team’s newfound success, it took a de facto play-in game in Game 82 of the year against Denver to clinch the West’s 8th seed, followed by a mostly dispiriting, though hardly surprising, gentleman’s sweep at the hands of Houston in Round 1. And just as quickly as the future brightened upon Butler’s arrival, once again it appears murky.

It is safe to say the ‘17-’18 season killed off the prevailing “Timberpups” narrative for good. The hiring of Thibs’ presaged its demise, and the acquisition of Butler — and to a lesser extent, Jeff Teague and Taj Gibson — put the final nails in the coffin. A good number of the hurdles mentioned at the beginning of this long, winding intro have been cleared. The team has two frontline stars, along with productive veteran presences and young players with room to continue to develop.  Depth and financial flexibility are sure to be issues, but those are cans to be kicked down the road for now. This is no longer a team where, if you squint hard enough, you can see the grainy outlines of a contender somewhere down the road. This team is built to win big and ascend the West now, and all the attendant expectations that come with it.

Again, improving by 16 wins in a single season is truly commendable, and it somewhat undersells the actual improvement that occurred, since Butler missed 23 games during the regular season (the Wolves went 10-13 in those games vs. 37-22 in games he played, good for a 51-52 win pace if he plays the whole year). But even 52 wins doesn’t make them a contender in the brutal West, so where does improvement come from in ‘18-’19? The team is butting up against the luxury tax and is hard-capped this year due to the moderately baffling Anthony Tolliver contract, so financial flexibility is extremely limited. Additionally, all of their secondary assets (especially Wiggins, Teague, Gibson, and Tyus Jones) don’t have much in the way of positive trade value, if at all, and a team expected to win 50+ games can’t get a whole lot for its future draft picks, either.

So as not to bury the lede any further than I already have, there is one additional challenge team brass has to deal with I neglected to mention at the outset: determining and managing roles and responsibilities of the players. NBA rosters are not flat organizations; there is a hierarchy that is vital to maintaining harmony and balance among the tribe, and this is often a difficult needle for coaches and front offices to thread. In addition to finding players with the correct sets of skills to occupy the various roles, they also need to be able to get those same players to buy into their roles in order to form a whole greater than the sum of its parts, and it’s a constantly moving target.

What does this have to do with the Wolves? Possibly everything. The hierarchy requires an alpha dog (or Wolf, as the case may be), and you’d be hard-pressed to find somebody who would suggest the current alpha is anyone other than Jimmy Buckets. He clearly spent the first 15 or so games of last season feeling out his teammates, attempting to find his place within the hierarchy of the team. When it became clear to him he had to be the alpha for them to succeed, he took the reins and rattled off a stretch that had him garnering mid-season MVP consideration.

That’s great, right? Of course you build your hierarchy around a guy who has MVP-level upside and is a ferocious competitor and defender. That’s the tone you want to set for your team. But it’s not entirely that simple. First, as a practical matter, Butler bears a huge minutes load (thanks, Thibs!) and his record of durability is not exactly spotless. If you employ Butler, you pretty much have to accept him missing 15-20 games a year, and removing his aggressiveness and ferocity from the lineup seemed to have a trickle-down effect on the rest of the team last season, which was borne out in their record without him.

Second, there is the existential question about the roster as currently constructed. The healthy, engaged version of Butler is, by most any measure, somewhere between the 9th and 15th best player in the NBA. Obviously you’d rather have that player than not have that player, but the breadth of NBA history tells us pretty clearly — with a few glaring exceptions —  if your best player tops out as 2nd/3rd Team All-NBA, you probably are not a true championship contender. This is not a shot at Jimmy in any way, but it is a reality which must be confronted. There is no “leap” coming from Butler. He’s about as good as he’s going to get.

And this brings us to a guy we’ve talked about relatively little so far: Karl-Anthony Towns. First, a personal aside: I’ve been a fan of KAT from the start, and this is my origin story as it pertains to him. I try to watch at least a little bit of the McDonald’s All-American Game each year. As a competition, it’s obviously pretty dumb and pointless, and the stats don’t matter a lick. What I’m watching for is flashes, guys who stand out from their peers in some tangible way. Of course we can’t know exactly what a guy will turn into in 5-10 years, but I’m just looking for dudes with a star quality and/or some elite skill in their game.

In 2014, I happened to turn the McDonald’s game on right at the beginning, as the announcers were doing their intro to the broadcast. Most of it was about Jahlil Okafor. He was the #1 recruit that year, and the announcers were quick to praise his blend of size, skill, footwork, and polish. The game started, and the rhetorical rose petals kept flying for Jah. To his credit, Okafor mostly lived up to the billing. He scored well around the hoop, moved well laterally and in transition for his size, and fortunately for him, his troubling lack of defensive acumen and effort wasn’t particularly noticeable due to the setting. He looked the part of an elite prospect, even if you had the game on mute, which makes his pro career to this point seem even more bizarre. But I digress.

One thing that stood out to me was KAT’s presence on the defensive end. This is obviously an odd thing to notice in such a defense-optional game, but it was glaring to me at the time. He had several weakside blocks which highlighted his length, athleticism, and anticipation, and the few times he was matched up individually with Okafor on the block, Jah basically wanted nothing to do with him. He would receive the ball, size up KAT, and then passively toss it back out to the perimeter, almost like Jah knew something we didn’t all know yet. I certainly wouldn’t have faulted anyone for sleeping on him after seeing that game — he was more or less invisible on the offensive end and the boards (it’s a little shocking watching it back now in retrospect how easily he gets pushed around underneath on rebounds, and how much it affected the timing of his jumps for such an athletic guy). But the lateral quickness, length, and feel for the game were evident if you watched closely. The seed was there, and obviously we all saw it sprout in his year at Kentucky and early on in his pro career. If it makes me a KAT hipster, so be it, but I was a fan of his before it was cool.

Over the course of his first two-plus seasons in Minny, that defensive impact I spotted in the McDonald’s game (and which he showcased in his one scintillating-yet-also-bizarre season at UK) was nowhere to be found. His raw defensive stats and advanced metrics don’t paint him as an atrocious defender, but this is one way stats can be misleading (we’ll get to another shortly). Watching him actually play, he had the look of a guy going through the motions on defense, just waiting for the possession to be over so he could go to work on the other end. He alternately looked out of position, confused, like he simply wasn’t trying very hard, or some combination thereof. Even with the requisite level of effort, it often takes young players, especially bigs, several years to acclimate to the speed and precision of NBA offenses and to internalize the defensive schemes and rotations, to learn to react rather than to think.

Anthony Davis is the obvious analogue here. He came into the league as one of the top defensive prospects of all time, another one-and-done, #1 overall pick from UK whose length, lateral quickness, and anticipation would warp the dimensions of the court on the defensive end from Day One. Guess what? That didn’t happen. New Orleans ranked 28th and 27th, respectively, in Defensive Rating during Davis’ first and second seasons. They improved to 22nd in his third season (no great shakes, but improvement is improvement), and Davis got named to his first All-Defensive team that year (adding two more since) as the Pels snuck into the 8th seed in the West before getting summarily waxed by a 65+ win juggernaut in the first round. The game slowed down for him, allowing him to internalize the defensive schemes and unleash his prodigious physical abilities in a more consistently devastating way.

Minus the All-Defense nod, does this sound familiar? Towns was nobody’s idea of an elite stopper last season, but he clearly achieved a higher level of effort and focus during the middle of the season. He stopped gambling for blocks quite as much, stayed within the scheme, and improved in the pick and roll, peaking with a tidy-for-him 105 Defensive Rating in the month of December, not coincidentally the Wolves’ best month of the season by record and net rating. This coincided with the timeframe in which Butler began to assert his control over the offense, so there is certainly a correlation between KAT settling into a secondary offensive role and his increased intensity on defense, but the extent to which one impacted the other begins to wade into a subjective narrative territory I’d rather avoid. In any case, I still believe there is an elite defensive player inside of Karl-Anthony Towns, and the next step in his development at that end of the floor could be the single biggest factor in whether or not there is untapped upside for this year’s team. The offense will still be elite, but another bottom-third finish on defense simply isn’t going to cut it.

When we factor in the offensive end of the floor, it’s not too difficult to craft an argument that Towns is already the Wolves’ best player [WARNING: misleading stats ahead]. On offense, Towns is the hyper-efficient, versatile modern big man you’d build in a laboratory. He shot 55/42/86 in ‘17-’18, with a True Shooting % of .646, good for 9th in the NBA, and the only player ahead of him who took a higher volume of shots was Steph Curry, so…yeah. His net rating was the highest on the team, barely edging out Butler (net rating is noisy, so take it with a grain of salt, as the presence or absence of one guy on the court impacts the net rating of the other and vice versa, among other variables). Both Towns and Butler were voted 3rd Team All-NBA in ‘17-’18, but Towns rated more highly by most rate-based advanced value metrics: PER (24.9 for KAT vs. 23.7 for Butler); Win Shares per 48 Mins (.230 vs. .198), and Box Plus/Minus (5.5 vs. 5.0). By almost any measure of efficiency you can cook up, Towns is Butler’s equal if not his superior.

BUT. There is one advanced stat which simply cannot be ignored, and it goes a really long way in fleshing out this alpha dog debate: Usage Rate. In ‘16-’17, Towns had a Usage Rate of 27.5. In ‘17-’18, it dropped all the way to 22.9. By contrast, Butler logged a Usage Rate of 26.5 in ‘16-
‘17 with Chicago, and then 24.9 in ‘17-’18 to lead the Wolves (if you discount the 25.0 put up by Derrick Rose in 9 games, a hilariously informative statistic). Moreover, the month-by-month splits in Usage bring the picture further into focus:

                  JIMMY BUTLER                                                  KARL-ANTHONY TOWNS

MONTH	USAGE RATE	MONTH	USAGE RATE
October	20.0	October	25.0
November	23.1	November	23.3
December	26.8	December	21.6
January	26.2	January	20.6
February	26.3	February	23.8
March	Did Not Play	March	26.1
April	30.1	April	21.8

Usage is certainly an imperfect measure of “alpha-ness,” but as a convenient shorthand, it paints a useful picture here. At the outset of the season, Towns was the offensive hub, but as the year progressed, Butler gradually wrested control of the offense, with the biggest delta coming in January. That month, Towns only used 20.6% of the team’s possessions, and he scored only 18.6 ppg, his lowest mark in any month. However, all his rate stats are right in line with the rest of the season, and he posted an Offensive Rating of 130, still an elite mark. On a related note, the team went 9-8 in January, though to be fair, Butler missed 4 games, during which the team went 2-2 against a tough slate (vs. TOR, @ LAC, @ POR, @ GS). In those 4 games, Towns averaged only a shade under 12 FGA per game as the team rode one of Andrew Wiggins’ far-too-infrequent hot streaks (he averaged 25.1 ppg on 21 FGA/game during the stretch).

When Butler tore his meniscus in late February, Towns picked up the mantle of the offense again, posting his most prolific offensive month of the year in March (25.7 ppg on 17 FGA/game and a 26.1 Usage Rate in 13 games), but the defense cratered and the team struggled to a 6-7 record. It should come as no surprise having Butler in the lineup is preferable to not having him, but the question can still fairly be asked: is having Butler as the alpha dog the best path to success for this year’s team?

One thing is clear: this team cannot reach its ceiling with KAT having a lower Usage Rate than Andrew Wiggins and a beyond-washed Jamal Crawford (or whoever replaces his spot in the rotation). He must attempt to maintain some semblance of his phenomenal efficiency while taking on a larger share of the offense, regardless of Butler.

The challenge is figuring out where the inflection point is at which it goes from being “Jimmy’s team” to “KAT’s team,” and if that’s a desirable outcome. To reach the team’s potential, it seems like it has to go this way, that KAT needs to take another leap forward into Unibrow territory within the league hierarchy for Minnesota to be taken seriously as a contender. If Towns takes Butler’s place in those midseason MVP discussions (and to a lesser extent, Wiggins manages to make at least somewhat good on his absurd contract), then you have something interesting.

Is there a world where Towns averages 27/13/4 and anchors a top-12 defense? Sure, I don’t see why not. But is Butler down to be part of that world? At long last, we come back to Thibs, who faces the challenge of managing not just the X’s and O’s, but also the egos and roles of his guys. Butler is, by all accounts, a ruthlessly competitive dude, and a faithful disciple of Thibs’ hardscrabble approach to coaching, so if anyone can get Jimmy onboard with accepting a lesser role in the service of winning, it’s Thibs. But this is still a superstar player we’re talking about, who is a year away from a monster payday in free agency — not to mention his ability to exercise his “pre-agency” (h/t Bill Simmons) before then if he so chooses. The promotion of KAT to alpha status absolutely has the potential to tear apart a locker room which already seems to be showing significant signs of strain.

It has been widely reported Butler is both displeased with the effort levels of Towns and Wiggins (remember, he’s ruthlessly competitive and cannot tolerate less from his teammates) and is invested in the idea of teaming up with Kyrie Irving in future seasons, either via a trade to Boston (unlikely) or having both guys opt out of their deals next offseason and team up somewhere else through free agency.

This sounds bleak for Wolves’ fans either way, but doesn’t that mean the catch-all solution is for KAT and Wiggins to bust the doors off the ‘18-’19 season, lessening Butler’s burden and making it seem like a place where he can win? And to do that, doesn’t the team have to empower KAT to be the very best version of himself? What is the upside of letting a pissed-off Butler run roughshod over the organization (and possibly demand a trade or simply leave in free agency anyway) in the service of winning 50 games and losing in the first round of the Playoffs, at best? The only logical paths are to trade him sooner rather than later to maximize his value (a ship which may have already sailed since now he’d be a rental, even if another team thinks they can pull a Paul George with him), or to convince him this roster is on the same page with him and ready to win big. It’s a gamble either way, but such is the nature of superstar agency in today’s NBA. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

Of course, Thibs the Coach is the confounding factor here. His history suggests he will likely dig in his heels and double down by deferring to the veteran player over empowering the young guys. The devil you know and all that jazz, but to quote Sam Presti quoting A Tribe Called Quest, “scared money don’t make none,” and no disrespect to Thibs, but he’s always kind of been a “scared money” coach (hi, Derrick!). So all of these hypotheticals probably get thrown out the window, and they run back some version of what we saw in the middle of last season, with perhaps a bit more usage funneled towards KAT. In that scenario, which is more likely: 1) Butler stays healthy all year, KAT blossoms as a defender, Wiggins makes strides on both ends, and a 55+ win powerhouse emerges; or 2) Butler drags the team along while playing hurt, becomes even more resentful of his “entitled” teammates, and a chemistry-induced meltdown takes place, causing the team to miss the Playoffs entirely in the loaded West and Butler to leave in free agency for nothing?

Even if the most likely outcome lies somewhere in the middle (as is usually the case), the former scenario feels like the only way to keep the core of this team together long-term, and there’s a saying you might have heard about doing the same thing and expecting different results. Jimmy Butler is who he is at this point of his career, and the team is capped out for the foreseeable future, so if there is a next level for the franchise, it hinges on Towns ascending to The Special Place sooner rather than later. And if Thibs wants to maintain his stranglehold on the organization, he better realize there’s no time like the present.

The Lead Sports Media

Every headline will begin with some version of “Rockets trade Ryan Anderson…” or “Rockets dump Anderson’s salary…” but in reality, Ryan Anderson is perhaps the least interesting part of last week’s Suns-Rockets trade. Without a doubt, Anderson’s contract, signed in the batshit crazy summer of 2016, was a fatal millstone in Daryl Morey’s team-building plan. The signing represented an epic miscalculation of value (albeit amid a sea of other, even worse miscalculations) from a man who stakes his reputation on getting those sorts of details correct. A 6’10” player who could stand around and bomb 27 footers while offering nothing else was a useful player 4-5 years ago; now that guy is an unplayable liability in a Playoff series. And when that guy also earns $20+ million a year for two more seasons, the price to get off the deal is a super-intriguing talent on a cost-controlled contract, AKA De’Anthony Melton.

There’s a non-zero chance Melton is the only actual asset in this trade, even as he is being treated as some sort of throw-in to the deal. He was considered a lottery-type talent who was derailed at USC by the NCAA investigations, and he 100% looked the part of a real NBA player at Summer League, regardless of how predictive one considers Summer League success to be. So the Suns rented out their effectively worthless cap space to let the Rockets out from under the weight of Anderson’s albatross deal, extracting a potentially good young player who costs them nothing and fits with their existing timeline. Bully for everyone, right?

Maybe. For such a transparently simple-looking salary dump, there are quite a few potential layers to it. The flexibility achieved from getting off Anderson’s deal is obviously the selling point for Houston, but it goes deeper and probably portends additional moves coming. Brandon Knight is still owed $30+ million over two years and is at the nadir of his value, having not played a competitive minute in 18 months after coming off an ACL tear. Buying low on him may be the smart move here, though. Worst-case, he is a shell of his already inefficient self, and Morey has simply acquired a slightly less expensive millstone. Best-case, he comes back and is actually useful, allowing Mike D’Antoni to use him liberally to spell Chris Paul, keeping CP3 fresh for the postseason, which, based on how last season unfolded, appears to be an absolute necessity. A possibly more intriguing scenario is where Houston spends the first 40-50 games rebuilding his value, then packages his significantly-more-tradeable $15 million salary in an “all-in” deal to take another run at Golden State.

Taking a flier on Marquese Chriss also makes sense. He has been a somewhat predictable bust to this point of his career whose only real claim to fame is leading the league in blown dunks, but he’s only 21 years old, and perhaps a change of scenery will do him good. I don’t particularly believe that will be the case, but even if I’m right, it’s still a win for Houston. They can see what they have in training camp and early on in the year, and if they determine the answer is “nothing,” then they create additional roster flexibility and save another $4 million against the cap next season by declining his fourth-year option. Morey has to think CP3’s new four-year deal will become an albatross by the end, leaving a 2-3 year window to compete for titles, so he doesn’t necessarily have to move all his chips to the center of the table in ‘18-’19. Some might argue he already did with the Carmelo signing, but when you pair that move with this trade, I would say he’s actually lowered his risk profile (to borrow Daryl’s phrase) by effectively turning over Anderson’s minutes to Melo, who for his many faults, remains a superior, more useful player at this point in his career, and at a bargain salary. And if Chriss somehow makes good on his talent, then you have a nice rim-running, lob-catching backup for Clint Capela at a palatable salary figure next year who also brings theoretical outside range (which, in case you haven’t heard, the Rockets like to shoot 3’s a bit).

This is all a roundabout way of saying I like this trade for both teams. The Suns add probably the most impactful player in the trade (Melton), while Anderson (assuming the Suns can’t find another taker for him, which seems unlikely) gets to stand around for two seasons, listlessly jacking up 3’s while playing traffic cone defense, ultimately costing an already-rebuilding Suns team a few extra wins and bolstering their lottery chances (even with the new odds taking effect next year), and pockets a cool $40+ million for his “efforts.” Houston gets its much-needed cap flexibility, as well as the seamless upgrade of Anderson to Melo at the 4, plus a low-cost tryout for a talented big.

Phoenix moves on from a young guy who just wasn’t working out for them, as well as the likely addition-by-subtraction of Knight, who doesn’t fit the team’s competitive timeline and whose inefficient, ball-dominant style would only serve to stall Devin Booker’s development as a lead playmaker by taking the ball out of his hands. Houston may come to regret giving away Melton, but it is the price to be paid for the sins of 2016, so at least they took their medicine in the pursuit of something greater.

Houston’s grade for the deal remains somewhat incomplete, since we don’t know what other moves will be made downstream as a result of the flexibility afforded by this trade, but even of its own accord it’s pretty solid. It might be even better for Phoenix, and I don’t downgrade them for the whole “they don’t have a starting point guard on their roster” narrative. It makes total sense to turn the reins of the offense over to Booker (playmaker with size alert!) and see what they have in rookies Melton and Elie Okobo. If one or both of them can handle a Derek Fisher-type complementary role, great. If not, they can theoretically still compete by just surrounding Booker and Ayton with long, rangy wings at the other three spots on the floor (some combination of Jackson, Ariza, Bridges, and Warren). They have Tyson Chandler’s moderately enticing expiring contract as a trade chip this year, and eventually, Anderson’s stinker of a deal will come off the books right in time for the team to extend their young guys and be ready to make a run at the West as the existing powers (hopefully) decline. That’s a good job by you, Phoenix!