For the bandwagon fans who want to ride on the adrenaline of victories and playoff ratification, the second break in the right hand of Minnesota Timberwolves power forward Kevin Love complicates matters for the rest of the season.
Ever since Love foolishly acceded to an interview with a reporter with an ax to grind against the Wolves front office and said enough negative things about his past and current experience with the team to be selectively portrayed as an ungrateful bore masquerading as a slighted superstar, a segment of the fan base has been anxious to diminish his importance on the ballclub.
Love enabled their disdain by shooting horribly, defending intermittently and struggling to return to peak physical condition after the first break of his hand in the preseason.
Minnesota is often a prettier team to watch without Love on the court, especially if Ricky Rubio can ramp up the playing time for his extraordinary passing skills and court vision after being sidelined or hampered nearly the entire season from last year’s knee injury. But they are not a better team.
Synergistic chemistry and competitive moxie are valuable, endearing traits in a ballclub, and this year’s Wolves are blessed with both. But a team deprived of its superstar for most of the season is ultimately subject to the laws of gravity.
And math. The legitimate bonhomie surrounding this franchise right now stems from the fact that they have overachieved in the face of formidable adversity wrought by a chronic slew of injuries.
But the standings don’t grade on an adversity curve. The Wolves are 16-16 after 32 games, good for 10th place in a Western Conference that sends its top eight teams into the playoffs.
Kevin Love played in 18 of those 32 games — 56 percent. If Love comes back at the earliest point of his estimated 8- to 10-week absence from this latest injury, he will play in 25 of the team’s remaining 50 games — 50 percent. And it is a good bet that he will be at least as rusty upon his return as he was the first time this season.
At first glance, the upcoming level of competition would seem to be a silver lining. What appeared to be a remarkably easy early schedule of games underestimated the prowess of Golden State and Portland this season. Upgrading the four games against those two foes thus far (all losses) is one reason most of the mathematical formulas used around the NBA now rate the Wolves as having played one of the 10 toughest schedules in the league thus far.
Unfortunately, because the Western Conference is so superior to the Eastern Conference and teams play unbalanced schedules weighted toward games in their own conference, the nine toughest schedules thus far all belong to Western Conference teams. In other words, the Wolves rank 9th out 30 teams league-wide — and 9th out of the 15 teams in their conference. There is no advantage here.
To recap, the general consensus is that the Wolves have overachieved in the face of unremitting injuries. But that overachievement still isn’t enough to be playoff worthy — they are two and a half games behind the 8th-place team, and only eight teams advance to the postseason. Moreover, they will be without their best player for a greater percentage of games the rest of the season than they’ve been without him thus far. And it doesn’t appear that they will catch a competitive advantage from the upcoming caliber of competition.
To make the playoffs, then, the Wolves must overachieve to a greater degree than they have already demonstrated.
The Rubio factor
Ah, but what about the growing presence and impact of Minnesota’s second-best player the rest of the way? Ricky Rubio has logged a mere 132 minutes in seven carefully monitored games thus far this season in his measured return from significant surgery to repair torn ligaments in his knee. But he just competed in his first back-to-back set of games without incident and figures to keep getting physically healthier and strategically more prominent in the weeks ahead. Surely having the team’s best perimeter defender and offensive enabler on the court more frequently will boost playoff hopes.
Yes, it will. And it will be a blast to witness. Sometimes the size of the bandwagon relates as much to how a team wins or loses as it does to whether it wins or loses. Those who revel in the balletic majesty of the game will loyally tune in to see if and when Rubio will perform another magic trick. For a handy example, consider this behind-the-back, between-the-legs bounce pass to Lou Amundson on Wednesday night.
Does it matter that Amundson predictably blew the layup, or that the Wolves were down 22 points with less than four minutes left to play when it happened? Sure it does. No blowout is a good blowout, and the Wolves are thankfully beyond needing comic relief from inept plays such as Amundson’s wild shot as fodder for conversation about the team. But it also matters that die-hard fans were rewarded for their loyalty in continuing to watch an already-decided contest.
But I’ve already raved about the aesthetic pleasures provided by Rubio’s style of play. The abiding question is whether he can elevate the team enough to keep it in contention until Love and shooting guard Chase Budinger return in March?
No, he probably can’t. Rubio is almost certain to become increasingly vital to the Wolves as the rest of the season unfolds. After missing two weeks with back spasms, he provided the best perimeter defense by a Timberwolf thus far this season, pocketing four steals in 18 minutes and finishing a game-best plus-10 in a five-point win over Atlanta. On a roster where the guards are too willowy (Luke Ridnour), undersized (J.J. Barea) or inexperienced (Alexey Shved) to be above-average defenders, Rubio’s mixture of size, guarding width, savvy and competitive toughness presents a huge boost on defense. And his nonpareil passing speaks for itself.
But his shooting accuracy is ugly, and a legitimate cause for concern. It isn’t just his wretched 20.8 percent thus far this season — five makes in 24 attempts — which can be blamed on needing to regain his rhythm after the long layoff and regaining strength and trust in his body.
Last season, opponents figured out that it was better to step back and invite Rubio to shoot instead of guarding him tightly in spot-ups or on the move, which merely created openings in the defense that Rubio surgically exploited with his pinpoint passes. Consequently, Rubio’s field goal percentage declined every month he played a year ago — and it wasn’t very good in the first place. In the first 21 games of the 2011-12 season, he shot 38.2 percent; in the final 20 games, it dropped to 33 percent.
This inaccuracy extends to his finishing plays off dribble-penetration to the hoop. Last season, Rubio made just 47 percent of his shots in the restricted area closest to the basket, a terrible number. This season he is 2-for-5 thus far — 40 percent. That’s why you have increasingly seen Rubio maintain his dribble and back out from the basket to resurvey the floor this season. He doesn’t have great confidence in his ability to finish and opposing big men are not selling out and leaving the man they are guarding to block his shot.
So long as Rubio continues to clank jumpers and layups, he will rely on spacing between him and his teammates to execute those nifty assists. Fortunately, coach Rick Adelman’s system of player movement away from the ball creates the kind of shifting chessboard that maximizes Rubio’s virtues and hinders the ability of the man guarding him to drop away and seal off potential passing lanes.
But it really helps when defenses must respect and stay with shooters over a wider area of the court. It showcases the value of Love, who, provoking fresh memories of his three-point shooting championship at the last All Star Weekend, can draw opposing big men out on the perimeter while a beast like Nikola Pekovic prepares for a post feed in the paint and Andrei Kirilenko cuts toward the basket along the baseline. Take Love out of that equation in favor of Dante Cunningham springing out for his midrange jumper at the top of the key, or the still unproven and inconsistent offensive arsenal of Derrick Williams, and life becomes harder for Rubio in those half-court sets, increasing the need for him to nail his jumpers.
On the other hand, because Love is such a tremendous offensive rebounder and versatile shooter, his offensive game isn’t as reliant as his teammates on Rubio getting him the ball in the right spots.
Bottom line, on offense, at least, Love benefits Rubio more than Rubio benefits Love. Which is one reason why the upside of a healthy Rubio can’t fully compensate for the downside of a sidelined Love.