How the Wolves snapped a 4-game losing streak

Facing the Sacramento Kings this year mean two things: to challenge one of the best teams on road (they already collected 9 wins, T-2nd most in NBA) and expecting a full court offense, high pace and high productivity on fast breaks.

The Wolves played two times this season against them, with a huge meltdown on transition defense in the first half. Sacramento scored 22 fast breaks points per game just after 24 minutes of play on both of the face-offs, according to NBA/stats.

Would you believe that the defensive adjustments have not been the crucial point for this blasting 132-105 Wolves’ win?

CLEANER ENTRY-PASSES

Teague was out for a left knee inflammation, D-Rose started in his place and it caused a significant improvement in feeding and looking for the bigs from the first quarter onward.



Thibs ran wedge actions for the first 3-4 minutes to let Towns and Taj cutting into the post. If it doesn’t work, it turns into a side pick and roll. No constant dribble, great timing by the post feeder.

Delivering timely to Towns also helps him on double teams, he can kick it out again before the help’s coming at the top of the key.

Wiggins was more confident attacking the rim from 5-6 feet away from the 3 point line, if he operates from the mid-post, he doesn’t have to overthink, to rely on his handles and his fadeaway jumper.

The Wolves scored 16 points in the paint just in the first 9 minutes of play, they finished the first half with 77 percent on field goal in the restricted area, per NBA/Stats.

BENCH POWER

Okogie and Jones helped to propel the 20-2 Wolves run at the beginning of the second quarter. In this short 6 minutes stint, they probably played their best basketball since they’re in the NBA.

You can call this second unit teamwork

The Wolves converted 6 points off turnovers and 12 points on fast breaks in the second quarter raising the on-ball pressure with the second unit. Part of this task just felt much lighter because of Joerger’s decision to rest Fox for the remaining of the match when the Kings were down by 33.

Wolves’ bench scored 63 points and the second unit had 4 men in double digits.

LET THEM PLAY HALF COURT OFFENSE

When it comes to keeping out of up-tempo mode teams like the Kings, a healthy Covington can direct better a lot of things. Starting the 2nd quarter the Kings were still scoreless in transition.



No middle, closing the main passing lanes for Fox: it needed an almost perfect shape to cover such amount of space. Covington isn’t totally at his best in terms of lateral quickness, but there’s a relevant difference between this game and last 3 losses (he didn’t play against the Blazers) prior last night win.

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