Zach LaVine: The Overlooked Cornerstone Of The Minnesota Timberwolves

In an era of “positionless” basketball, it was a midseason positional change that fully unhinged the potential and progression of Zach LaVine; but despite the noticeable leaps he’s made, his name is seldom mentioned when discussing the pillars of Minnesota Timberwolves basketball.

Minnesota Timberwolves guard Zach LaVine remains an enigma to many NBA fans.  To some, he’s known purely as a gimmick dunker after coming off his back-to-back slam dunk championship fame. For others, he’s viewed as a perpetual work-in-progress after his sobering one-and-a-half-year experiment at the point guard position.

As such, outside of Minnesota, rarely would you find a casual fan who immediately brings up the name Zach LaVine when discussing the mouth-watering potential of the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Alternatively, the names that usually supersede the 6’6″ human kangaroo are Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins — the team’s two former No. 1 overall picks and back-to-back “squires of the year” (while Zach does “cool dunks”), as Bleacher Report’s animated series, “Game of Zones,”  perpetuates.

But, as we sit roughly one week in into the 2016-17 regular season, it is LaVine, and not KAT or Wiggins, who looks to have made the biggest year-to-year leap.

Yes, it’s early, but Towns is taking some time to adjust to the more physical brand of defense and hard doubles opposing teams are sending his way, while Wiggins, who’s essentially putting up an efficient 25 points per contest thus far, still brings little to no impact on any other aspect of the game.

LaVine, on the other hand, has come a long way since his rookie season.  Coming out of UCLA in 2014, the then 19-year-old was clearly not ready physically for the rigors of NBA basketball. It didn’t help either that he was literally thrown into the fire as the starting point guard for the majority of his rookie season when Ricky Rubio went down with a career-altering ankle injury.

Weighing in at a frail 180 pounds soaking wet, the Bothell, WA-native was hopeless in fighting over screens — not exactly ideal when defending the point of attack. On offense, LaVine had troubles making simple post entry passes, never mind running an actual NBA offense. When he looked to score, he’d usually opt to settle for a contested long two, as opposed to using his athleticism to attack the rack or simply taking the open three.

Even though he’d end the year putting up some impressive raw stats, driven in large by just having the ball in hands, and show some breathtaking flashes of open court athleticism, he was still objectively bad on the aggregate.  In fact, most advanced statistical measures had him as one of the worst players in the NBA that season, famously ranking as the fourth worst player in the league, per ESPN’s RPM stat.

Fast forward to last season, he began the year in a similarly uncompromising position.  Prematurely named as the team’s starting shooting guard in training camp, then-head coach Sam Mitchell quickly rescinded his decision after a couple of disappointing preseason performances, and relegated young Zach back to the bench as the backup point guard.

Although he did look a bit more competent given his pacified role, especially when his J was falling, it was clear to anyone who paid attention that LaVine was simply not a point guard.

When the season was lost for all of its all playoffs dreams and hopes, Mitchell finally gave in and began starting the former Bruin on the wing beside a pure point guard in Rubio. Lo and behold, LaVine took off after the All-Star-break, a weekend that crescendoed with him winning the MVP of the Rookie-Sophomore Challenge and his second straight Slam Dunk title.

More specifically, during said stretch, LaVine started 26 of the Timberwolves’ final 28 games, where he averaged over 16.4 points per game on a True Shooting Percentage of 59.5, which included 47.1 percent from the field, and more impressively, 43.7 percent from beyond the arc.

He evolved into a contemporary hyper efficient beast, nailing roughly 45.6 percent of his catch-and-shoot 3s, while converting on over 63.7 percent of his field goal attempts from 10 feet and in, per NBA.com.

LaVine began finding his offensive niche, playing off of Rubio on the break and the two-man dribble-handoff game with Gorgui Dieng in halfcourt settings.

The growing pains all Timberwolves fans had to endure in watching him slug through countless lead guard minutes also began to reap its unsullied rewards. The nifty pocket passes he slices to Dieng and Towns, as more and more teams begin to outright blitz Zach off of said dribble-handoffs, are the fruits to the late Flip Saunders’ grand vision.

Accordingly, LaVine has ridden that late season momentum into the early year.  Adding an even tighter handle and a more confident stroke to his repertoire, there are times when you wonder if the Wolves are better off featuring Zach more and Wiggy less.

He is even seeking and accepting contact while attacking the rack thus far — something he routinely avoided in his first couple of seasons.

Four games in, the former 13th overall pick is averaging 21.3 points, 4.8 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game.  Most notably, he’s shooting at a blistering 46.6 percent from the field and 46.4 percent from beyond the arc, while scoring on a TS% of 63.1.

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Are those numbers sustainable?  Conventional wisdom tells us no, but with the strides he’s made in such a short period of time, in combination with his perfect shooting mechanics and unbridled confidence, I wouldn’t exactly put it past the 21-year-old at this point.

His dazzling play has even garnered the attention of some of the most respected minds in the NBA:

“If he can figure out how to be average, or just slightly below average, on defense, that dude is going to be really good; because he is a once-in-a-generation athlete and a really good shooter”, Zach Lowe said on a recent episode of the Lowe Post.  “And, all that time he spent playing point guard, where he was a complete disaster, will help him (in the long run) when he runs the pick-and-roll in a pinch. He is going to be really good.”

If early season returns are of any indication, LaVine is well on his way defensively. Thus far, he has been a much more attentive off-ball and help defender under defensive drill sergeant and new Wolves head coach, Tom Thibodeau.

And on Thursday night, despite losing another double-digit lead and suffering their third defeat of the young season, Zach was a complete revelation in the fourth, playing some of his best on-ball defense of his young career on Emmanuel Mudiay, while coming down with several highly contested rebounds — contributing and impacting the game in different ways, on a night where his offense was somewhat marginalized by Towns’ unrelenting aggressiveness and Wiggins’ arrogated touches.

By all accounts, Zach LaVine is one of the hardest workers on a the team and a known gym rat, and the strides he has made is living proof that hard work pays off.

For the Minnesota Timberwolves to turn around their archaic ways, it is LaVine — and not Wiggins — alongside Towns, who hold the keys to unlocking the Pups’ devastating potential.

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