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I don't listen to a lot of podcasts, but when I do there's a good chance that it will be 1) About the NBA; 2) Feature some discussion about a Minnesota team; 3) Have much more to do with what might happen than what has already happened.
So congratulations to John Hollinger and Nate Duncan for sliding into my overlapping Venn diagram with the latest episode of their podcast, in which they promised to "disagree with our expectations for the Warriors, Lakers, Wolves, Pels, Hawks, Pacers and Rockets."
My apologies to your sponsors. I skipped over a lot of the content and headed straight for the part about the Timberwolves, where I was ... surprised, to say the least?
Perhaps I should not have been, given the conceit of the episode was a disagreement about expectations — signaling that one of the co-hosts was at least somewhat optimistic about the 2020-21 Wolves, who open the regular season next week against Detroit.
But still: I at least did not expect Hollinger — who invented Player Efficiency Rating and is a regular panelist at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference — to argue in favor of the Wolves to the extent that he did.
Hollinger predicts the Wolves will make it to the play-in tournament as the No. 10 seed and finish 36-36 in the crowded Western Conference — a game ahead of Golden State, which he sees as a 35-37 finisher and out of the hunt.
That would be quite an improvement from last year's 19-45 finish and would indicate an accelerated timeline after an offseason that was interminable and rushed at the same time.
Hollinger's argument hinges on a couple of things:
*The offensive gifts of Karl-Anthony Towns.
*His belief that the Wolves "have a lot of secondary pieces that are going to help push them forward," particularly on defense.
Duncan pushes back with a good argument: The Wolves have some very good offensive players and capable defensive players, but they really lack players who are proven to be good on both ends. So whatever lineup is on the court is going to have deficiencies.
Maybe that adds up to .500?
Duncan in particular hammers on KAT, calling his defensive numbers "atrocious." Hollinger says the key element is that Towns needs to at least be "mediocre" on defense for the Wolves to have relative success — low bars in both cases, but ones KAT and the Wolves have yet to clear in any recent season aside from the Jimmy Butler playoff year.
They both agree the Wolves have a lot of question marks beyond Towns, D'Angelo Russell and Rubio, which is fair. And they both agree the biggest question is what happens with Anthony Edwards, which is hardly surprising given that he's only 19 and is the No. 1 pick in the draft.
A reader also points out that Hollinger is already worrying about his prediction after just two shaky preseason losses to Memphis.
Near the end of the segment on the Wolves, Duncan — who is based on the Bay Area — asks Hollinger if he wants to make a bet on who will win more games: the Warriors or Wolves. Golden State presumably has a healthy Steph Curry and Draymond Green but a questionable core and a gaping hole from Klay Thompson's injury.
"I have a very small margin here," Hollinger notes of the one-game predictive difference between the teams' finishes. "So a small bet."
That theoretical wager will bear watching given how the two franchises are linked. In two ways — the Russell for Andrew Wiggins trade and the Wolves' selection of Edwards No. 1 while Golden State took James Wiseman No. 2 in this year's draft — the decisions made by both teams will go a long way in determining their fate.
