2023-11-20 17:41:37
NEW ORLEANS — Break up the Timberwolves! Minnesota stands alone atop the Western Conference at 9-3 after rallying from a 14-point fourth-quarter deficit in New Orleans on Saturday night to beat the Pelicans. The resume doesn’t lack for quality either: Five of their wins have come against the four teams that played in the last two NBA Finals.
That puts Minnesota in stark contrast to several other teams in a similar position in the early season: those with “win-now” rosters that, um, aren’t really winning that much. It’s important in the case of the Timberwolves not just because of all the picks they owe Utah from the Rudy Gobert trade, but because of a looming luxury-tax situation a year from now that stands as a major impediment to keeping the team together.
They have a lot of company, as you’ll soon see. The underlying theme of this season, so far, is one of teams reaching a point in their payroll trajectory where they need to prove why they should stay together.
Let’s stick with Minnesota for a minute longer, where the postgame vibes in the locker room were immaculate. The Wolves seem increasingly confident in their familiarity with one another after several key players were thrown together a year ago; Gobert is finishing lobs again and owning the paint for a top-three defense, while Karl-Anthony Towns has shrugged off a slow start with six straight 20-point games.
Offensively, Minnesota has been less impressive thus far, thanks in part to a piddling 3-point rate, but even here, there are signs of progress. The chatter among players in the locker room was about the different sets they felt comfortable running late in games, leaving them less reliant on Anthony Edwards isos that opponents could load up against. The shooting may come around too; Towns put Minnesota ahead on Sunday with a deep bomb, and overall, 31 of their 80 shots were from 3.
With Edwards fouled out, Minnesota had to turn to Towns for the game-winner, a shot the extremely right-handed Towns made by A) going left and then B) somehow not running over help defender Jeremiah Robinson-Earl for an offensive foul. Better yet, the Wolves social media team did my work for me by posting both Towns’ shot and his answer to my question about the shot:
All this stood as a glaring counter-example to my trip two weeks earlier, when Bulls coach Billy Donovan walked into his postgame news conference in Denver and talked fairly openly about the difficulty of building an elite offense around three players who don’t really want to shoot a lot of 3-pointers but also don’t get to the rim much.
Chicago is 5-9 after Sunday’s comeback win over Miami — a game in which they trailed 22-1 midway through the first quarter — and it’s perhaps slightly early to administer funeral rites to the Bulls’ season.
Nonetheless, the handwriting on the wall seems perfectly legible to everyone involved. The Bulls are 26th in offense and 29th in 2-point shooting and effective field goal percentage despite having missed only three man-games from their top nine players. Any kernel of hope for this season likely rested on breakouts from 22-year-old forward Patrick Williams and 23-year-old guard Coby White, but White can’t make a shot (48.3 true shooting percentage) and Williams has been unspeakably bad for reasons that escape me.
With 34-year-old forward DeMar DeRozan heading into his free-agent year and the Bulls going nowhere fast, trade chatter has heated up around Chicago’s other key players, most notably All-Star guard Zach LaVine. Call them the anti-Wolves; the Bulls, suffice to say, have not earned the right to keep the team together in a decision year.
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Bulls’ Billy Donovan facing heat from fans and the face of the franchise
This takes us full circle to the league’s other interesting decision points: the expensive, win-now rosters that dot at least a third of the league and can only justify their existence by piling up wins. A couple of these cases are obvious: Denver, certainly, has earned the right to continue its run despite a roster that figures to land well into the tax for the next several years. Ditto for Boston.
But what’s staggering is how many teams are reaching a decision point on old or expensive rosters and face much murkier answers about the way forward. Take the LA Clippers, for instance, who just traded for James Harden and owe draft picks through 2029 but are seemingly taking a wait-and-see approach about extending the contracts of 30-something tentpoles Paul George and Kawhi Leonard. They’ve slumped to 4-7 while trying to integrate Harden, and of their three max players, only George has played like an All-Star.
Steve Ballmer can throw cash at this team for eons, but at some point, it’s not even about the money; the new CBA makes virtually any meaningful transaction with a second-apron roster like this prohibitively difficult. That roster-building chokehold has made it easier than ever to reach a point where tapping out is the only viable option.
Paul George has played at an All-Star level this season, but the Clippers have struggled, especially since adding James Harden. (Ron Chenoy / USA Today)
Or, dare we say it, what about Golden State? The league’s most expensive roster is facing the prospect of getting bageled on a six-game homestand if it can’t beat Houston tonight. The Warriors have an obvious luxury-tax cheat code in their pocket because they can waive Chris Paul’s non-guaranteed deal after the season, but even that presumes the rest of the still-pricey roster is worth keeping together.
Said presumption is taking a serious beating. Most notably, the notion that a 33-year-old Klay Thompson would warrant a contract extension is worth questioning; he’s sporting an 8.9 PER on 52.0 percent true shooting, with a career-high turnover rate. Amazingly, he hasn’t been their worst starter (take a bow, Andrew Wiggins). Meanwhile, the increasingly volatile Draymond Green has played in seven fourth quarters; he was either ejected, suspended or injured in the rest of them. Stephen Curry’s brilliance and a rebuilt bench are the only thing keeping this team afloat, but the parts that make this team so expensive have all been disastrously bad. Even Curry will be 36 in March. It may be time to start asking some difficult questions.
The Clippers and Warriors aren’t alone. In New Orleans, where I was this weekend, the issue that hangs over the organization is the one of whether a Brandon Ingram–Zion Williamson pairing is really the right one going forward. Williamson is brilliant but unreliable and a weird player to build around because of his poor defense and lack of shooting, while Ingram’s reliance on the 17-dribble Tough 2 Tango again showed its limits in the fourth-quarter fade against the Wolves.
As with the Clippers and Warriors, New Orleans is currently both in the luxury tax and below .500; unlike those two, the Pels don’t blithely shoot cash out of firehoses as a general operating principle. The good news here is that the Pelicans have enough future draft equity, and just enough future salary-cap flexibility, to navigate this situation without a teardown.
And while we’re here, whither Memphis? The Grizzlies have been operating with plentiful cap flexibility for years, but that changes a year from now when extensions for Desmond Bane and Ja Morant put this team into the luxury tax. That makes this a bad time to start the year 3-10. Memphis’ situation contains plentiful injury caveats in addition to Morant’s current absence, and owner Robert Pera’s net worth can handle writing the tax checks. However, the roster-building handcuffs of the tax come right at the moment when the Grizzlies’ once-enviable depth has been whittled to a nub. Once this roster becomes expensive next year, it instantly adds another that is on the clock.
Even places where things are going a bit better, such as Dallas, Cleveland or Atlanta, aren’t immune from this question hanging over their season. Are the Mavs really worth cutting tax checks if they top out as a one-and-done in the unforgiving West? Does the need to keep Luka Dončić happy force their hand anyway? Similarly, is the Cavs’ best-case (but expensive!) long-term scenario of a supermaxed Donovan Mitchell and a maxed Evan Mobley good enough to crack the top three in the East? Will they need to shed Jarrett Allen for another perimeter player along the way? And in my home of Atlanta, is being inoffensively good still good enough for the Hawks to keep this core intact? Or are they pot-committed regardless due to the future picks owed to San Antonio in 2025 and 2027?
That’s to say nothing of the places where these issues are discussed more openly and urgently due to impending free agency. Philadelphia, at least, seems to have answered questions about the viability of its core despite nearly everyone being free agents after the season. The Sixers have earned the right to keep this going with an Joel Embiid-Tyrese Maxey dynamic duo; the only question is what to put around it.
Toronto, on the other hand … what does that end game look like? Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby are pending free agents, Scottie Barnes is emerging, and the team is …. fineprobably. But is that good enough to keep pushing chips in around what my colleague Eric Koreen calls “Project 6-9″? Especially when the siren song of Barnes and a raft of cap space lies behind door No. 2?
The Lakers and Heat, meanwhile, are birds of a feather in a different way: Scuffling along well enough but hardly making anyone think a 2020 Finals rematch is imminent. Both are in the tax, and both bask in the benefits that plentiful beaches and sunlight offer in the age of free agency and player empowerment. Nonetheless, each sits in the uncomfortable position that their rosters, right now, pretty clearly aren’t good enough to deliver on their aspirations — even with their veteran star centerpieces healthy and delivering.
As we get into December and trade season starts looming, sit back with your popcorn and look at some of the league’s more expensive and/or difficult rosters through this lens. At some level, all these clubs are fighting for their right to continue in their present form. Some, like Minnesota, are making the case evident. Others may be headed for a really interesting winter.
Rookie of the week: Jordan Hawkins, SG, New Orleans
I got a good look at Hawkins in the back-to-back in New Orleans this weekend, where he played 62 total minutes and scored 22 points as the Pels split a back-to-back against Denver and Minnesota. The skinny sharpshooter from Connecticut was a divisive prospect entering the draft, with his ability to bomb away on the move an undeniable skill but persistent questions about how much else he could deliver in the course of a game.
Thus far, he’s been a Rorschach test: Whatever you thought coming in, there probably isn’t overwhelming evidence to change your opinion.
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‘He’s fearless’: Pelicans rookie Jordan Hawkins is on a quest to be NBA’s next great shooter
Nonetheless, on balance, I’d say the evidence tips in favor of his sticking as a rotation player, with the possibility to be more. First, the Captain Obvious part: He’s a rotation player right nowas a rookie in his first month in the pros, and has hit double figures in nine of the 11 games in which he’s played at least 24 minutes.
While his overall numbers aren’t overwhelming, and injuries to the Pelicans backcourt pressed him into service sooner than perhaps was expected, his core skill has been as advertised: Hawkins has launched 12.4 3-point attempts per 100 possessions, which ranks 11th in the league among players with at least 200 minutes played. His impact would be even greater if he could knock down a few more; thus far, he’s at 36 percent after hitting 38.8 percent as a sophomore for national champion UConn.
Even at that, Hawkins has arguably left money on the table at times and could be closer to 15 3-point attempts per 100. For instance, here’s a “record scratch” from Saturday when he probably should have fired away and perhaps could have been more shot-ready when Dyson Daniels passed it. Instead, Hawkins fails to gain an advantage on the dribble, and Nickeil Alexander-Walker strips the ball out off his leg.
A minute later, with the same defender and a similar close-out distance, it’s splash city. Note here how Hawkins gets great elevation on his jumper and gets it away very quickly; I included the second clip to demonstrate he had plenty of room (by his standard) to take the shot in the first clip.
However, basketball isn’t darts, and the worries about Hawkins being too limited athletically haven’t totally gone away. Even with his shooting, he can’t justify being a late lottery pick (14th overall) if he’s just going to be Troy Daniels 2.0. On that front: Hawkins hasn’t blocked a shot all season, has rarely touched the paint offensively and mostly stays attached to the opponent’s least threatening offensive player.
Even with those limitations, one way Hawkins can improve his value is by leveraging the threat of his shooting to create more passes for teammates. On that front, it was an encouraging weekend; he had eight assists in the two games and has nearly two dimes for every turnover on the season.
Still, work remains. For instance, here’s a scramble play where Daniels ends up with the ball and two panicked Wolves defenders run out at him, thinking he’ll take a last-second 3 with the quarter about to end. Their hasty reaction leaves Cody Zeller wiiiiide open under the basket, and Hawkins picks up his dribble to throw the ball … elsewhere.
Want to see the better version of how that might look? Here’s a different scramble, where Hawkins races in from above the break to beat Kyle Anderson to an offensive board and immediately dishes to Ingram for an and-1:
For the season, Hawkins has shot often enough to average a respectable 21.4 points per 100 possessions, and a third of his shots have been inside the arc; he’s not getting to the rim in the half court, but he’s shown ability to take a bounce or two into an effective pull-up when opponents run him off the line, including a tough one he hit in the second half against Minnesota.
Overall, the 3-ball is a nice foundation to build on while the rest develops. He’s also only 21, and his body should fill out more (um … right?) in an NBA strength program, which would make him a more reasonable defensive option rather than a “hide at all costs” guy. If Hawkins does that and he keeps making incremental improvement in the other non-shooting phases, his outside stroke should keep him in the league for the next decade.
(Top photo of Stephen Curry: John Hefti / USA Today)
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