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Minnesota Timberwolves: Tom Thibodeau’s rotations are a problem

By Jacob Doole

SHANGHAI, CHINA - OCTOBER 08: Head coach Tom Thibodeau of the Minnesota Timberwolves looks on as Karl-Anthony Towns
SHANGHAI, CHINA - OCTOBER 08: Head coach Tom Thibodeau of the Minnesota Timberwolves looks on as Karl-Anthony Towns /
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Minnesota Timberwolves coach Tom Thibodeau is pushing his players harder than any coach in the league. If that continues, it’s hard to see it ending well

In today’s NBA, good health is key. Almost every team monitors their players’ minutes carefully during the regular season, so that they will be rested and ready for big minutes in the playoffs.

It’s early December, and the Minnesota Timberwolves are already running like it’s the NBA Finals.

But when you realize that Tom Thibodeau is at the helm, this should not be surprising at all.

Thibodeau has always doled out heavy minutes to his core players, going back to his time in Chicago. And now that Minnesota are in the playoff race, he’s reverted back to his old ways.

Thibodeau has clearly settled on eight players he can trust, and only eight players. Over the team’s past nine games, no one outside of that core group has played more than 10 minutes in a single matchup.

That might have gone alright so far, with the Timberwolves 16-12 and fourth in the West, but it certainly isn’t sustainable. By pushing his guys to play such big minutes, and presumably doing so for the whole season, he’s risking both the short and long-term future of the franchise.

What it means for Minnesota

The team has four players in the top 20 for total minutes played this season. Jimmy Butler (927 minutes) has long been among the league leaders, but he’s below teammates Andrew Wiggins (995) and Karl-Anthony Towns (943). He’s also only slightly ahead of Taj Gibson (897), an especially surprising inclusion on the list as he hits the twilight of his career.

This is not a new or shocking trend for Thibodeau. He spent five seasons in Chicago coaching the Bulls. In all of those seasons, a Bulls player was in the top four for minutes per game. In three of them they had the league leader, with Luol Deng in 2011-12 and 2012-13, and Jimmy Butler in 2014-15.

This would all be fine, if it weren’t for the unnerving career paths of the key players in Chicago.

In Thibodeau’s first season, Derrick Rose was ninth in the league for minutes played. The next season he played only 39 games in the regular season, as a sprained toe, a groin injury and back issues kept him out.

And it was in the playoffs that season that Rose’s now-notorious first knee injury occurred, a torn ACL that kept him out for a year. After being the youngest ever league MVP, Rose has never approached those heights since, and he has struggled to stay injury-free.

Luol Deng was Thibodeau’s workhorse, the glue that held Chicago’s teams together. As mentioned earlier, he led the league in minutes per game twice. He averaged over 38.5 minutes per game in each of his three full seasons under Thibodeau.

He hasn’t played a full season since, and his athleticism appears to be gone completely. Deng should still be valuable in the small-ball revolution— instead, he can’t even get on the court for the lottery-bound Lakers, and his huge contract has made him un-tradable.

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Joakim Noah was a fringe MVP candidate and Defensive Player of the Year, and now he’s regularly injured or inactive for a Knicks team in need of veteran leadership. He’s another player that should still have a role in the league, if only a limited one.

There’s no definitive proof that high minutes were the cause of any of these injuries. But there are countless studies showing the wear and tear that players can go through over a full season.

No matter what your thoughts on Thibodeau as a coach, it’s easy draw a line between the heavy minutes and the disastrous injuries. And it’s hard not to envision the worst-case scenario for Minnesota when the similarities are so striking.

Butler has already played under Thibodeau in the past. He’s missed multiple games through injury every season since 2012-13, and while none have been major it is still concerning.

The remainder of Minnesota’s core is extremely young, and it’s hard to know how the rigorous minutes will affect their bodies. Maybe the immediate effects will be minimal, but similar to the Bulls players in the past, there could be long-term repercussions.

It would be horrible if, five or ten years down the track, Towns and Wiggins suffer similar downfalls to Noah and Deng. If that were to happen, it would be hard to deny the impact of Thibodeau’s coaching style any longer.

What it means for Thibodeau

In all honesty, probably not much. As it stands, the Timberwolves are fourth in the West at 16-12.

If they can keep themselves comfortably within the playoff race, then Thibodeau has nothing to worry about. However, there are some causes for concern.

Minnesota currently has a defensvie rating of 107.7, ranked 25th in the league. Considering Thibodeau has a reputation as a defensive-minded coach, it’s concerning how bad this team has been on that end during his tenure. They were even worse last season, with a defensive rating of 109.1 (26th).

At the moment they have the leagues fifth best offense, with an offensive rating of 108.4. But prior to the season, there were concerns about their ability to space the floor and move the ball.

Those concerns have not been entirely assuaged. They are shooting just 35.4 per cent from three as a team (22nd in the league), and are averaging 22.6 assists per game (15th). Only 56.7 per cent of their field goals have come from assists (19th).

Those are not the numbers expected from a highly-seeded playoff team. And with the current state of flux in the Western Conference, it’s hard to know if they will continue to be good enough.

This is without even considering the recent chatter around the league about his rotations. The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor even said he would fire Thibodeau today on The Ringer NBA Show last week (although he later took it back— kind of disappointing if you’re a fan of the hot take).

Tom Thibodeau shouldn’t be worried about losing his job, but if the results turn negative then it will be an interesting discussion.

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And if his players start suffering because of his rotations, then the Minnesota Timberwolves front office will need to think long and hard about his future with the team. It’s hard enough to find stars in this league— the least a coach can do is try to keep them healthy.

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