The Timberwolves beat Dallas 133-94 at Target Center on Thursday night, their fifth straight win and their most lopsided of the season. My favorite number from it is two. That’s how many free throws Cooper Flagg shot, per Basketball Reference’s box score, three nights after he scored 43 against Indiana.
That’s the plan worth keeping. Minnesota guarded a star who lives on contact without sending him to the line, and it should defend every high-volume foul drawer on this homestand the same way. In my preview I said the Wolves should make Flagg settle for floaters and that his free-throw attempts were the number to watch: under five, with a pile of missed runners, meant Minnesota made him play its game. He got one trip.
One trip to the line
Flagg came into Thursday with 72 free-throw attempts in 10 games, and he’d made 65 of them, per his game log. His previous low was three, in Miami on October 26. Against the Wolves he shot 1-for-2, on a Jaden McDaniels foul to open the third quarter.
It wasn’t for lack of contact. The play-by-play shows Flagg drew four fouls, from Terrence Shannon Jr., Jaylen Clark, LaMelo Ball and McDaniels. Only McDaniels’ was a shooting foul. The other three came away from a shot, so none of them sent him to the line.
Chris Finch saw it the same way. “I thought we did a good job of keeping him off the line,” he said after the game, per Jack Azoulay-Haron of ClutchPoints. “That’s huge. When he has his big games, he’s getting there about eight, nine times a game.”
Finch credited the size of McDaniels and said Clark did “a really good job with him too, kind of like taking away his space to be creative.” He called it “a lot of different looks.” I like that better than handing one stopper the whole job.
Where his shots went
Flagg finished with 12 points on 5-of-12 shooting in 27 minutes, and he didn’t play in the fourth quarter. The shot locations tell me the plan held up. Of the five shots the play-by-play lists between six and 15 feet, he made one.
Within three feet he was 3-of-5, and one of the misses was a Rudy Gobert block in the first quarter. Both of his turnovers were steals: Jonathan Kuminga picked off a pass in the first quarter, and Bones Hyland took the ball from him in the second. Flagg also went 1-for-2 from three, which is a trade I’ll make every night.
He wasn’t the only Maverick who struggled. Kyrie Irving scored 10 on 4-of-11, and Dallas shot 13-of-48 from three. I won’t pretend all of that was defense. Walter Clayton went 0-for-5 from deep, and Dallas won’t shoot 27% from three every night.
I’ll own the part of my plan that didn’t work. I said the Wolves could help off Zaccharie Risacher, who came in shooting 25.0% from three. He made 4 of 8 and scored a team-high 22 for Dallas off the bench. That one’s on me.
The fouls that didn’t happen
This is the habit I most want the Wolves to keep. I wrote in October that LaMelo Ball’s foul totals were a problem the blowouts hid. On Thursday he had one foul in 25 minutes. McDaniels had two. Dallas shot 14 free throws as a team.
Minnesota’s defense is already the best in the league by rating, at 104.8 points allowed per 100 possessions, per the Wolves’ Basketball Reference page. Opponents’ effective field goal percentage against them, .493, is the lowest in the league. But the Wolves rank only 13th at keeping teams off the line, measured by free throws per shot attempt. That’s a hole in an elite defense, and Thursday showed what it looks like when they close it.
The offense made the rest easy. Ball scored 22 with six threes and a season-high nine assists, per the AP recap on ESPN. Hyland scored 24 on 10 shots off the bench, with five threes and eight assists. The Wolves outscored Dallas 74-42 in the paint and won the third quarter 36-17, and their lead reached 44 in the fourth. I made the case before this game that Hyland should run the bench while Anthony Edwards is out, and he backed it up with 24 points and one turnover.
What still needs work
The glass didn’t go the way I expected. I thought the Wolves would win the offensive boards, and they didn’t: the Mavericks grabbed 14 offensive rebounds to Minnesota’s eight, and Tobi Lawal had five of them in 12 minutes, all in the fourth quarter with the game long decided. Both teams rebounded 25.0% of their own misses.
The turnovers were also still there. Minnesota gave it away 17 times, and the starters had 12 of them, with Ball at four. That’s better than the 20 starter turnovers against Utah, but it’s the same issue, and a 39-point win makes it easy to shrug off.
Who’s next
The Wolves are 9-3 and host Chicago on Saturday, then Portland twice and the Knicks next Thursday. For contracts and depth, see the full Wolves roster guide.
The Bulls are 1-9 going into Friday night’s game with Atlanta, but they have a player who tests exactly this habit. Norman Powell averages 19.3 points and 8.6 free-throw attempts a game, per Chicago’s Basketball Reference page. That page also lists him as day-to-day with a shoulder injury after he missed Wednesday’s game against San Antonio, so the test depends on him playing. My number for Saturday is the same as it was for Flagg. Keep Powell under five free-throw attempts, and the Wolves will have shown Thursday was a habit, not a one-night plan.