Hey there, Last Night In Basketballers — I am, as I do every year, re-appropriating the Three Things I Noticed on League Pass format to preview the upcoming season. Instead of three things I noticed, it’ll be something more along the lines of three things I’m looking forward to, interested in, or want to see. Some of them might be narrative-based, some might be stats, and some might include video. But they'll all be focused on the 2026-27 campaign.
The schedule for those posts will be as follows (podcasts previewing each division with Mo Dakhil are in parentheses):
- Atlantic Division (BOS, BKN, NYK, PHI, TOR) (Podcast)
- Central Division (CHI, CLE, DET, IND, MIL) (Podcast)
- Southeast Division (ATL, CHA, MIA, ORL, WAS) (Podcast)
- Pacific Division (GSW, LAC, LAL, PHX, SAC) (Podcast)
- Northwest Division (DEN, MIN, OKC, POR, UTA) (Podcast)
- Southwest Division (DAL, HOU, MEM, NOP, SAS) (Podcast)
So without further ado, let's get to the Minnesota Timberwolves, who made a franchise-altering trade this offseason.
LaMelo Ball, identity-shifting
Here's an excerpt of what I wrote about the trade:
The questions here are a) whether that's a reasonable price to pay for a player of Ball's talent level; b) whether the Wolves should want to bet the next few years of Anthony Edwards' prime on Ball, given his myriad on- and off-court issues; c) what a core group of Edwards, Ball, Gobert, Jaden McDaniels, and Ayo Dosunmu will actually look like on the floor, and d) whether the Wolves can fill out their roster in such a way that they can actually contend with the best teams in the West.
On the first front, I think the answer is yes — and that's despite the fact that I've been relatively low on Ball throughout his career.
He's a frustrating player for so many reasons, from his shot selection to his aversion to defense to his eagerness to chase the highlight play even when the easy one is right in front of him. But he's also always been a high-level driver of offense; the Hornets were 11 points per 100 possessions better offensively with him on the court last year, for example, and his Charlotte teammates routinely posted better shot quality (and shot conversion) metrics when playing alongside him than when he was on the bench. (For his career, Charlotte was around 8 points per 100 better offensively with him in the game than out of it, sporting considerably better two- and three-point conversion rates with him on the floor.) That's largely because he is a genius passer, and I don't use that term lightly. Because of his height and vision, he sees things that other guys cannot, and he can get the ball to spots that are impossible for others to access. He generates a ton of good shots at the rim and from beyond the arc, both for himself (mostly from the outside) and for others (from everywhere). It's easy to see why Minnesota would target a player like him.
That's not to say he doesn't come without question marks. To me, the biggest one is that he is just not on the court very often. He's appeared in just 303 of 482 of possible games in his career. In the three seasons before this one, he played 36, 22, and 47 games. The Hornets dramatically limited his minutes this past season (28 per game) and it helped keep him healthy, but there's no guarantee that the Wolves will do the same nor that if they do, it will work just as well in the future. He's a major risk, health-wise, particularly when it comes to his recurring ankle injuries. There's no real way around that fact. Other players have of course been significant injury risks early in their careers and overcome it to be largely healthy going forward (most notably Stephen Curry, who also had recurring ankle issues early on and later became, well, Stephen Curry), but it's hard to bet on someone being an exception to the rule with any degree of confidence. If you're betting a significant portion of your future on a player, you'd ideally want to be more certain that he's actually going to be out there when you need him — especially because you really, really need him on a nightly basis given the construction of your team. And that's all before we get to the personality and behavior questions, which aren't insignificant. (Ball's driving — like in cars — is not a laughing matter, for example.)
The on-court fit is an interesting one. Ball is of course used to having the ball in his hands all the time, and he's carried a sky-high usage rate throughout his career, even leading the league in usage two years ago. (His career average is 30.6%, and that figure rose with each passing season until dipping for the first time last year, but even then it was still at a 32% mark.) He's able to affect offense the way he does because he always has the ball. Will he actually be willing to defer to Edwards as The Guy? And what happens now that he's the clear-cut second option on the team? Does he have the same affect? Will guys still shoot far better with him on the court than off if he doesn't have the ball as often?
Of course, the Wolves also targeted Ball because they wanted another guy who could play with the ball in his hands. They have desperately needed somebody else who could create from the perimeter, and that was especially the case in this year's playoff series against the Spurs. They simply did not have anybody other than Edwards who could create, the Spurs doubled and blitzed the hell out of him to get the ball out of his hands, and the Wolves couldn't do anything about it. They finished the series with a 103.1 offensive rating, a figure 5.7 points per 100 possessions worse than the Nets' league-worst regular-season mark. They were missing Donte DiVincenzo and both Edwards and Dosunmu were playing through injuries, but the issues with shot creation have been clear in other seasons, too. They were far too dependent on Mike Conley for offensive organization over the last few years, for example, and Conley is my age and clearly a diminished player. That was totally untenable, and Ball in theory alleviates that specific issue.