They are basically saying our guards need to step up big time. They are making our bigs look worse than they are.
The Gobert-Towns fit itself, while far from seamless, hasn't been the problem. In fact, Towns has been better than anyone on the team, by far, at targeting Gobert and utilizing his finishing ability. Nearly half of Gobert's assisted baskets have come from his frontcourt mate, many of them off of high-low feeds but plenty more out of 4-5 pick-and-rolls and driving lobs to the dunker spot. The issue has been the lack of synergy between the frontcourt and the backcourt, particularly as it pertains to Gobert.
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Making a two-big alignment work is usually contingent on elite guard play, or at least elite off-the-dribble shot creation. There's a reason things have looked more functional in Cleveland and Memphis than they have in Minnesota. Whether it's Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell or Ja Morant and Desmond Bane, those teams' guards can mitigate spacing issues and offensive limitations around them thanks to their pull-up shooting, downhill juice, tight-window passing, and switch-busting ability.
