Howlin' T-Wolf A Fresh Perspective and Completely Biased Blog About Everything Minnesota Timberwolves

First let me make this clear: I did not actually attend the conference for all those wondering, but my colleagues did all the work for me. Throughout the weekend, guys like Henry Abbott, Kevin Arnovitz and John Hollinger  reported and posted insights on what they learned at this year’s MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

All of the different presentations they reported on were quite intriguing and just worsened my desire to attend next year’s conference. But perhaps the theory that stuck out best in my mind was the Nash Equilibriums in NBA Offenses, which I learned via John Hollinger’s article “Basketball Stats World: Next Step?”. It’s an ESPN Insider article so to explain the idea of Nash’s Equilibrium, I’ll start by saying it is not referring to Steve Nash. It’s meant to pertain to John Nash, the crazy smart guy from “A Beautiful Mind”. The theory was presented by a guy named Brian Skinner. He says that NBA teams tend to give the ball to their go-to-guy in clutch situations. Seems perfectly obvious, right?

The problem with this scenario is the defender can intuitively know that the ball should be going to the opposition’s best player on the court and he then can adjust his defense to maximize his efficiency if that situation plays out.

Now, if you’re the team on offense, how do you combat that issue of having a defender that knows your best weapon will get the ball? Well the answer is pretty simple, you distribute the shot to someone else, of course.

Now, Skinner gave an interesting comparison to this exact situation in the form of traffic networks. The point of transportation is to get from point A to point B the fastest, and with so many different routes to get to point B, which do you choose? Well, obviously, most people would turn to the highway to get there the fastest. In basketball terms, to get from point A — the ball — to point B — the basket — you utilize your “highway”, or best player, to get there. But in Nash’s Equilibrium, Skinner points out that to avoid the highway being jammed — the defensive player stuffing your best option on offense because he is a smart defender and knows it’s going there– you need to distribute the ball to get to your destination, that is, the game-winning basket.

Hollinger goes on to say in the article that most NBA offenses do distribute the ball to other options but only for the first 47 minutes of any ball game. In that last minute or two, offenses tend to break down and become their worst enemy by forcing all their hopes onto their best player and hoping for a good result. This makes sense for anyone that’s watched some NBA basketball over the years.

What got me thinking deeper about this was when I applied this theory to the case of the Timberwolves. The Wolves have all the different options — roads to get to point B — as any team does in the league, but the problem that sticks out is the Wolves options seem to have some flaws. Many of our streets, or players, contain stop lights, speed bumps, pot holes and/or traffic jam causing accidents. All of which stop the team, or at least slow us down considerably,  from arriving at our destination. Well, then if our alternative roads or options don’t work, then we can just use our highway to get there. But I went on to ask myself, who is our highway? Well, err, umm… exactly.

Ever since we traded Kevin Garnett away, many have preached that the Wolves lack that superstar talent that could bring us to our destination: Victory. A lot of teams have that go-to-guy that they can depend on down the stretch. LeBron, Kobe, Wade, Durant, Roy, you know the guys. When the game is on the line, Skinner believes a team should distribute the ball until they find the best option to reach their destination. But as Hollinger puts it, most teams don’t do that anyways because its just the nature of the game and they instead rely on their main weapon as a means of obtaining that goal. The Wolves need to find their “highway”. Certainly Al looked like the team’s “highway” last night but how many times have we seen him on the bench down the stretch? In the few close games the Wolves have had, Jonny Flynn has gotten the ball the most and delivered just once (the Utah game). With a disappointing rebuilding season 3/4 of the way behind us and a potentially fruitful offseason nearly here, the Wolves have to find that guy who can be our highway at the end of the game, even if its in spite of discarding some of the other roads, or players, in the process.