Deep Dive: PJ Dozier Is More Than Statistics And More Than A Benchwarmer
PJ Dozier will need to fight for a roster spot, but he has history and winning on his side.
The individuals that twirl together to form this new and improved Minnesota Timberwolves roster have begun trickling into the Twin Cities and, on September 27, training camp will officially get underway. As of now, there are whopping 20 players on that roster and a bunch of decisions to be made by the coaching staff and front office cohort.
There are 11 guaranteed contracts, with the obvious names in Rudy Gobert, Karl-Anthony Towns, D’Angelo Russell, Anthony Edwards and Jaden McDaniels joined by Kyle Anderson, Taurean Prince, Wendell Moore Jr., Jordan McLaughlin, Bryn Forbes and Josh Minott. No surprises and no contract decisions to make in that group of stars, up-and-comers and sturdy veterans.
However, the batch underneath those solidified guys is laced with big bold question marks. There are four non or partially guaranteed contracts in Naz Reid, Jaylen Nowell, Nathan Knight and Austin Rivers. There are the two-way players who will swivel between the big club and the G-League in Eric Paschall and AJ Lawson. And there are the players with exhibit 10 contracts: CJ Elleby, Luka Garza and, the newest and perhaps most interesting of all the players without fully guaranteed deals, PJ Dozier.
On the surface, Dozier doesn’t seem like a player who will end up on the Minnesota Timberwolves’ roster. He is currently at the back end of an ACL recovery that kept him out of the majority of the 2021-22 season. His exhibit 10 deal is extremely easy for the holding team to waive on the cheap and rarely gets parlayed into a full contract. And, underpinning it all, there is clearly an enormous amount of competition for the final roster spots.
The surface-level numbers don’t really pop for Dozier, either. In his last full season before his injury (2020-21) he averaged 7.7 points, 3.6 rebounds and 1.8 assists in just under 22 minutes a night while knocking down a middling 41.7 percent of his field goals and 31.5 percent of his 3-point attempts.
So why is he so intriguing? Because his impact on that Denver Nuggets squad transcended the box score. He is a legitimate glue guy and a player who can morph into a variety of roles and provide value next to star players rather than trying to filch shine away from them. He played winning basketball for the Nuggets and the Timberwolves are now a team who should cherish every minute they get to spend with guys like that.
Before his injury, he had cemented a place on a Denver team that was a staple in the Western Conference playoffs and Dozier has had a multitude of big playoff moments in those runs. The injury derailed his budding career for the time being and there is certainly no guarantee that his connections with Minnesota’s front office head honcho Tim Connelly will provide an open path to a heavily contested roster spot.
But he should have just as much shot as anybody. Maybe he even deserves more.
Despite his vanilla counting numbers, the ‘20-21 Nuggets were 4.6 points better per 100 possessions when Dozier was on the floor. That’s a team that racked up 47 wins in a shortened season. Dozier’s impact was tangibly felt every time he was on the floor and just as tangibly missed when he was sitting on the pine.
The bulk of that on-floor impression comes from his defensive work. In fact, that same Nuggets team was actually 4.7 points per 100 possessions (23rd percentile) worse on offense with Dozier on the floor. While he has shown the ability to operate around star-level players and rim-running bigs (both of which Minnesota now have in abundance) as a pick-and-roll playmaker and a deviously smart cutter, the 25-year-old hasn’t found his niche as a shooter from anywhere outside of three feet and that has tempered his other offensive tools.
The Nuggets were just so much better defensively (9.3 points per 100 possessions, 96th percentile) when he was out there, though, and that meant Dozier could not only cover his offensive weaknesses, but still add immense value when he was on the floor.
His 6-foot-6 size and 6-foot-11 wingspan allowed him to play a multitude of positions — he spent legitimate minutes at shooting guard, small forward and power forward in ‘20-21 — while using his high-level feel to put out defensive spot fires. There is still some untapped potential as a scorer and especially as a snaking facilitator in ball screen actions, but if Chris Finch and his coaching troop call on Dozier for a roster spot it’s going to be because he can supplement that potential with genuine defensive acumen.
As Timberwolves fans, we see nightly how length and, importantly, how to leverage those limbs into defensive success, is such a mouth-watering trait with Jaden McDaniels. While Dozier doesn’t quite have the same unique body type that Big Mac has, it’s glaringly obvious how well he uses it when you watch him use it to turn the mundane into the abnormal as a defender.
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