Deep Dive: Lean Into Kyle Anderson

Minnesota have an offensive problem and an unexpected solution.

Alonzo Adams-USA TODAY Sports

There is something about Kyle Anderson that just makes Minnesota’s offense click. You wouldn’t suspect it, and maybe he isn’t the stir that would usually stir Chris Finch’s offensive drink. From everything we’ve seen and heard about the Timberwolves’ head coach, he wants to play heavy metal basketball; fast-paced ball movement, quickfire player movement, a style that is predicated on head-banging and face-melting guitar solos.

But Anderson is jazz. Anderson is a cacophony of sounds that shouldn’t quite fit together but somehow do. Anderson is funkiness. Anderson, at least on the surface, is the antithesis of speed and flair. Most importantly, though, Anderson works. And on a team who has been probing every available way to make anything work, Anderson has been a glimmer of gold in a season-long pilgrimage through the muck.

So maybe it’s time to lean into the jazz. Maybe it’s time to lean into the glimmer and lean into what works. Heavy metal might be Finch’s preference, but this strange roster construction experiment that Minnesota’s front office undertook when they traded for Rudy Gobert (and away Patrick Beverley, Malik Beasley and Jarred Vanderbilt) has left them devoid of their amplifiers. Their current batch of instruments aren’t particularly cohesive, but Anderson’s presence seems to bind them into somewhat of a tolerable sound.

So just lean into it. Lean into the things that Anderson does that help the team. Forget the pecking order that should be clear, because it isn’t and it hasn’t been all season long. Embrace the new and weird sound while this season still has the faintest of pulses running through its veins.

So far, we’ve seen that leaning into Anderson means a more proficient offense. Funnily enough, contrary to the Wolves franchise as a whole and sometimes even what we see on the floor, Minnesota has graded out as a pretty reliable defense this season.

At the time of writing, the Wolves rank 11th in points allowed per 100 possessions — or defensive rating — according to Cleaning The Glass. The 113.4 points per 100 possessions they allow isn’t the cleanest number in the world, but it’s a top-half-of-the-league number and far outweighs the output of playoff competitors like Phoenix, Portland, Utah and Sacramento. It turns out that, even for all of his flaws and all of the collateral damage his trade seems to be causing, Rudy Gobert remains someone who drives down points allowed.

Anderson does his thing on that end, too. His gangly limbs that accompany an ever-shocking mobility allow him to swing across positions and hold his own, evidenced by the fact that he has spent at least 12 percent of his minutes guarding every position excluding point guards. Throw in the fact that his four deflections per 75 possessions rank in the 94th percentile, his 1.7 steals per 75 rank in the 93rd percentile and his one block per 75 ranks in the 76th percentile, per Basketball Index, and he adds a heavy dosage of defensive chaos-causing into his defensive diet, as well.

But the Wolves have been a wet fart offensively all season long. A sloppy mess that has never found a way to clean itself up. There is no denying Gobert’s part in that, either, or the gaping chasm left by Karl-Anthony Towns’ bung calf. But in-between bouts of back spasms, Anderson has been an elixir to Minnesota’s offensive ailments.

He isn’t the fledgling superstar that they need Anthony Edwards to be and he isn’t going to bleed into a secondary scoring force like Towns will need to when he returns, and he is never going to fill microwave scoring roles like Jaylen Nowell and occasionally Jaden McDaniels. But he is the glue. The adhesive that can pull all of those things together and help them tick.

So far this season, the Wolves are 4.6 points per 100 possessions better on the offensive end when Anderson is on the floor. Their effective field goal percentage is 3.2 percent higher. They make shots at the rim at a clip that is 6.4 percent higher than when he is off the floor — a whopping difference that ranks in the 93rd percentile for all players — and they shoot 3.8 percent better from long-range.

They just play better. And for a team who currently ranks 20th in offensive efficiency, playing better with the ball in hand is the most crucial wheel that needs greasing. A stringent-ish defense mixed with a bunch of isolation scorers is something that probably has more upside in a playoff setting, but the regular season is ruled by offensive firepower. Without finding some of that, Minnesota won’t have a playoff series to wield their weapons.

So lean into the Anderson experience. Not the kind of experience that demands a usage rate over 30 percent. Not even the kind of experience that asks him to stretch the limits of his abilities. But the one that allows him to flourish in all of the ways that his game wants to flourish.