One of the ways the Timberwolves offense has changed since Karl-Anthony Towns went out because of a knee injury is that the team has begun firing away from three-point range with greater frequency.
On Sunday night, the Wolves outshot the team with two of the greatest shooters of all time — Steph Curry and Klay Thompson — in a 114-110 victory over Golden State at Target Center.
The Wolves trailed most of the night but pushed ahead in the second half thanks to a 21-for-40 performance from three-point range. Six Wolves hit two or more threes, led by Naz Reid, who had six threes on his way to 20 points.
Sunday's game continued this trend of the Wolves offense in the nine games Towns his missed. They have shot 40 or more threes in a game nine times, including Sunday, and four of those games have come since Towns went out.
"We haven't made a conscious decision to say, 'Hey we need to shoot more threes because KAT's not here.' It's a by-product of our spacing," coach Chris Finch said.
The coincidence is Towns was the second-highest three-point volume shooter on the team at 5.3 per game, trailing only Anthony Edwards (6.7). But in his absence, players like Reid, Mike Conley, Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Jordan McLaughlin have been firing away with more willingness. Conley said the spacing has changed without Towns and the Wolves playing smaller has opened up the floor a bit, even when Rudy Gobert is out there.
"Guys are just trying to fill that role by doing something different," Conley said. "They're finding gaps, finding space. A lot of five-out spacing sometimes in those units where there is nobody in the paint, Rudy sometimes is flat underneath the basket and we're doing guard-guard pick and rolls where Ant is rolling and Kyle [Anderson] is rolling."
Edwards and Reid both said they haven't felt like the Wolves have been doing many different things with Towns out of the lineup. But the Wolves have had more regular ball movement on offense over the past nine games. Their offense hasn't increased much in efficiency — they were 18th before Towns' injury and 16th after — but the style they play has changed. The Wolves took the 25th most threes before Towns went out (32.1) and have been 12th since (35.3). They are shooting them at a 39.3% clip over the past nine games, good for seventh in the league.
Finch offered this observation: "I don't think I've called a post-up play for a while."
He continued: "We're playing a little bit faster in transition. We have multiple handlers out there to be able to initiate and the ball is kind of flowing through everyone's hands a little bit earlier through that. But we've played this way a lot last year. So we're pretty comfortable with it."
The Wolves had plenty of experience playing without Towns in 2022-23, when he missed most of the season because of a right calf strain. They have relied a little on that muscle memory to get them through this stretch so far at 6-3.
"I've always been a big believer that the shooting comes from the spacing," Finch said. "If we space well and we create the right advantages, then we should be able to get to the right shots from the three-point line."
