http://www.minnpost.com/sports/2012/11/ ... ng-defenseIn the afterglow of such a blue-collar triumph, one can savor the comprehensive makeover in team chemistry and character that was enacted by the Wolves’ brain trust during the off-season. Last year’s roster was pockmarked by high-profile underachievers such as Darko Milicic, Michael Beasley and Wes Johnson, who were all chosen among the top four players in the year each was eligible for the NBA draft. They have been replaced by low-profile overachievers like Greg Stiemsma, Dante Cunningham and Chase Budinger, who were all bypassed in the entire first rounds of their respective NBA drafts.
Nowhere is this personality transplant more evident than in the team’s dedication to defense thus far this season. Last year, the Wolves ranked 25th out of 30 NBA teams in defensive efficiency (which is measured by the number of points allowed per possession to opponents). Even that dismal placement obscures how much the team laid down like dogs after then-rookie wunderkind Ricky Rubio was sidelined with a knee injury more than halfway through the season, a time when the Wolves’ defensive efficiency was only slightly below average.
By contrast, after seven games this season (an admittedly small sample size), Minnesota’s defensive efficiency is second-best in franchise history, behind only the 2003-04 team that won more games and advanced further in the playoffs than any other edition of the Wolves.
Adelman is rightly regarded as an offensive mastermind, but his commitment to defense is underrated, in part because the up-tempo pace often deployed by his teams tends to run up the score for both sides. Over the course of his career, teams he coached in Portland, Sacramento and Houston all cracked the NBA’s top seven in defensive efficiency multiple times. Finally given a chance to offer his first appraisal of the Wolves’ personnel after the lockout at the beginning of last season, he castigated the defense and said changing its performance would be a top priority.
Assistant coach Bill Bayno has been the point person for that endeavor. An obsessive student of the game whose intensity has burned him out in previous head coaching stints, Bayno has learned to circumscribe his duties. Yet he worked tirelessly with players over the summer, including Pekovic and Derrick Williams, both of whom have upgraded their defense this season. Without discounting the flaws he sees in his troops — he still worries about the Wolves getting caught flat-footed in transition — Bayno has been cautiously optimistic that the Wolves could be “slightly above average” on defense this season. With a deeper cadre of front court personnel coming out to defend the pick and roll more aggressively, the team’s interior defense has been bolstered and his prediction is on track.
