Depending on your perspective, the beauty or the shame of the NBA's play-in system is that it expands the playoff field by lowering the bar of entry.
Even amid the Timberwolves' early-season struggles, they haven't started sliding too far down the pole of playoff contention thanks to the play-in innovation, which is in its third season.
But that's what makes games like Wednesday's and Thursday's important as the Wolves try to assemble their roster pieces in a coherent way. The Kings will be in town Wednesday and the Spurs on Thursday, and in reading the landscape of the Western Conference, the Wolves' head-to-head matchup with those teams are important if the Wolves actually want to make the play-in games.
Of the 15 teams in the West, one franchise, the Rockets, has put an emphasis on young player development. Or as some others might say, Houston is tanking, and has started the season 1-13. New Orleans is 2-13 (with one of those wins coming against the Wolves), and would need a dramatic reversal of fortune along with a string of good health from Zion Williamson to get back into the play-in fold.
Assuming Damian Lillard will have a currently underachieving Portland in the playoffs as he typically does, that would mean the Wolves have to beat out three other teams for a shot at the No. 1 seed — the Spurs, Kings and Thunder. All are beatable, with the Kings leading this group in 10th place at 6-8 headed into Wednesday's matchup with the Wolves, who are 1.5 games behind Sacramento at 4-9. The Spurs are also 4-9.
The Wolves' defense will face another test with Sacramento owning the fifth-best offensive efficiency in the league. The Wolves are still trying to get theirs together but have seen hopeful signs of late. Even in his team's loss to Phoenix, coach Chris Finch said he liked what his offense generated.
"Everyone had good looks all throughout the game," Finch said.
They made just 37% of them. Karl-Anthony Towns had one of his strongest offensive performances with 35 points, but another problem for the Wolves is they can never seem to get Towns, Anthony Edwards and D'Angelo Russell all going at once.
"It's more about trying to find the flow, trying to find out how can all of us have a high usage but also playing off of each other," Towns said. "I guess that's the best word to put it together, a flow. I think that's what we talk about more."
Edwards had just nine points against the Suns, the second time in three games he didn't reach double digits while Russell had 22 but on 7 of 21 shooting.
The Wolves came out of Monday's game feeling good about their performance overall in limiting the team that went to the NBA finals to 99 points. But danger lurks for these Wolves anytime they start feeling good about their play. They followed Friday's win against the Lakers with a lackadaisical effort in a blowout against the Clippers.
"That's our challenge. It's always been our challenge here," Finch said. "We've got a couple games at home here that we have to take advantage of. This was always going to be a tough game, but having said that, the result still stands what it is, and we've got to make up ground somewhere."
There's no better chance to make up that ground than by playing the team near you in the standings.
