D’Angelo Russell’s minutes restriction is climbing, ever so slowly, since the Timberwolves point guard returned to game action April 5 after missing two months post-knee surgery.
What started as a 24-minute restriction is now up to around 30, Wolves coach Chris Finch said.
So Russell isn’t yet going full bore. Neither has he returned to the starting lineup. When Russell first returned, Finch explained the star guard would come off the bench because it was easier to control his minutes that way.
But the general assumption is that arrangement would only last a few games. That has not been the case.
“I talked to D-Lo this morning about it. It’s the plan, eventually, to get him into the starting lineup, but we’re all comfortable where he is,” Finch said Tuesday morning. “He’s basically a starter for us.”
That’s true in the sense that coaches consider it more valuable for a player to close the game than start it. It’s safe to assume a player of Russell’s stature would prefer to do both, but he hasn’t raised any qualms about the setup. “Whatever the team needs” has been his mantra.
Plus, Finch likes the way the second unit has played with Russell in that mix. It’s difficult to find concrete data that suggests the bench has been better of late — all the garbage time racked up in Minnesota’s three recent blowout losses skews the numbers — but the eye tests suggests things have improved for the reserves.
“I like the chemistry that he and (fellow point guard Jordan McLaughlin) have,” Finch said. “Takes some of the burden off him. I think the first unit has struggled to score at times, so I think that’s something we need to look at. But in general the second unit has been really good, and D-Lo has been a part of that and he’s been able to create out there with a defensive-oriented lineup that can get stops and get out and run and do things that benefit him and everyone else.”
If you move Russell into the starting lineup at this point, that would cause Finch and Co. to have to reconfigure the second unit. Without him, the bench probably wouldn’t feature enough scoring.
“Obviously you don’t want to leave yourself exposed,” Finch said.
GOALS?
The Timberwolves continue to emphasize the importance of these games down the stretch run of the season. They want to improve and establish a foundation to build off heading into what they hope will be a more successful 2021-22 season.
But Finch hasn’t quantified to his team what would equal a successful stretch run. Winning consecutive games for the first time since the Wolves won their first two games of the season would figure to be a positive.
“Winning consecutive games is going to be a by-product of playing better every time we step out on the floor, playing more consistently,” Finch said. “We’re not saying we’d like to win X number of games. Of course we want to win as many as possible. We haven’t necessarily even looked at how we want to improve analytically or anything like this. Are we going to continue to compete at a high level every night, give ourselves a chance to win? Execute the game plan and then are we going to do that repeatedly? That’s been our challenge. We’ve had a good run of games, we build up to a win and then we kind of let go. We’ve got to keep playing with some urgency.”
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April 21, 2021 at 07:12AM
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D’Angelo Russell will continue to come off Timberwolves bench for now. He’ll start eventually - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press
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