Kuminga and Ball, basketball epinephrine

How Jonathan Kuminga and LaMelo Ball bring welcome questions to Minnesota

Every year, the Wolves end up being one of my top-five most-watched teams on League Pass.

I don’t have any ties to the team or area, nor am I a die-hard Anthony Edwards stan. But the Timberwolves remake themselves in fascinating fashion season after season; I can’t help but tune in.

Think of all the silly, cool, and crazy things this franchise has experienced in the last half-decade. A non-exhaustive list: There was Patrick Beverley jumping on the table, crying, and celebrating like he’d saved the world after a play-in win in 2022 (a move I still think was perfectly justified — acting like you’ve been there before is overrated). Then, it was the widely reviled, retroactively justified trade for Rudy Gobert (which I had to defend as “not as bad as Twitter thinks”) coming just months after Anthony Edwards claimed that Gobert “put no fear in my heart” as a rim protector.

That was the year in which Jaden McDaniels missed the entire (short) playoffs because he broke his hand after accidentally punching a concrete wall at the end of the regular season.

Then, it was the 2023-24 breakthrough, with Gobert winning DPOY, Naz Reid winning Sixth Man of the Year, and Anthony Edwards emerging as the All-NBA force we know him to be today. The Wolves shockingly swept the Kevin Durant/Devin Booker Suns in Round 1 after entering the series as underdogs and surmounted the hated Nuggets before falling to Luka Doncic’s Lobgoblins in the conference finals.

2024-25 brought the Randle-for-KAT swap, which culminated in another Western Conference Finals appearance (to say nothing of what it did for New York!). The run of on-court success covered up the team’s utter failure in trading up in the 2024 draft for Rob Dillingham, who was summarily jettisoned just halfway through his second season.

(None of this even touches upon multiple bizarre ownership changes. Longtime owner and chicken magnate Glen Taylor tried and failed to take-backsies a deal to sell the team to Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez before Lore flipped the team to Marc Stad a few days ago, just a year later. It’s all very weird.)

Finally, last season, the team beat the Nuggets yet again, but their ceiling became apparent in a disheartening second-round loss to San Antonio. “It just felt like we kind of ran out of bullets as this series went on,” coach Chris Finch said. Randle and Gobert combined for three points in the team’s 30-point Game 6 loss.

And so lead decision-maker Tim Connelly, never afraid to take risks, threw a couple of boulders into the pond.

Out goes Randle, and out goes Reid. In comes LaMelo Ball, one of the more polarizing players in the NBA, to become the first alpha-level point guard Edwards has ever played with (no offense to the wizened sage, Mike Conley). In comes the unwanted and unloved Jonathan Kuminga to fill a suddenly vacant power forward slot.

The Wolves regain their status as dark-horse contenders, but more importantly (in my eyes), they become one of the league’s most watchable teams yet again.

Since we’ve already discussed Ball’s impact a little, let’s start with the most recent news. Kuminga joins on the taxpayer midlevel exception, a two-year deal for about $6 million annually with a player option in the second year. (The Wolves will likely move or stretch Josh Green to make the finances work.) In other words, for a second straight season, Kuminga decides to bet on himself, reportedly turning down a bigger offer from the Lakers — albeit one that may or may not have had as much guaranteed money or playing time attached to it.

There are two things to talk about here: Kuminga’s value as a player, and Kuminga’s fit as a starter.

First, the Wolves desperately needed an infusion of talent. Kuminga certainly brings that, along with a boatload of caveats. Kuminga believes (believed, maybe?) in an outdated path to greatness. He came into the league wanting to be a ball-in-hand, heads-down scorer, but the league doesn’t reward that kind of play anymore unless you’re Giannis Antetokounmpo. Just ask Bennedict Mathurin and Cam Thomas, two other players strangled by restricted free agency and changing NBA fashions.

Kuminga’s entire young career so far has been spent balancing his instincts with both his own limitations and his employer’s needs. He’s a solid individual scorer; he’s not a great one. He also isn’t quite good enough at everything else, at least not yet, to earn the major payday he’s sought for so long.

Steve Kerr and Golden State prodded him to take several begrudging steps in the right direction: quicker decision-making, stiffer defense, and a growing acceptance of place. Kuminga particularly thrived in the open floor and as a canny cutter, learning from savvy vets like Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler. Ultimately, though, the relationship with the Warriors fractured too much to recover from.

Now, after a fine but ultimately shrug-worthy stint with the Hawks (who declined their team option on Kuminga and didn’t seem particularly interested in bringing him back) and a few months trying and failing to drum up interest in a bigger role and contract, Kuminga arrives in Minnesota at a price too low to ignore.

Let’s state the obvious: for six million dollars, Kuminga is absolutely worth a gamble. How will he fit? I’ve warmed to the idea as I’ve written this piece, particularly since Minnesota doesn’t have many palatable options. Obvious issues abound on offense. There is a lot of overlap in how Edwards and Kuminga mentally attack the game and a lot of overlap in the physical spaces that Kuminga and McDaniels occupy.

Edwards and LaMelo Ball are two of the league’s most prolific catapults, but the frontcourt of McDaniels, Kuminga, and Gobert combined averaged barely as many threes per 100 possessions (12.2) as Edwards did alone (11.5, although Ball’s 18.2 led the league!). Can they generate enough spacing to open up the driving lanes that Edwards, McDaniels, and Kuminga so desperately need?

McDaniels has shot 36% from deep in his career on mostly wide-open catch-and-shoots. Kuminga has shot somewhat more but less accurately. Still, neither has ever played with a three-point generator like LaMelo Ball.

Ball assisted on 235 three-pointers last season, tied with Deni Avdija for the fourth-most in the league.¹ The Wolves don’t necessarily need both Kuminga and McDaniels to turn into overnight gunslingers, as long as at least one can increase their volume and/or accuracy to acceptable levels. I’m betting that Ball’s mere presence will do a lot of the hard work for the forwards.

Ball’s ballhandling and passing should also refine Anthony Edwards’ superstar skill set. Notably, Edwards shot a whopping 50% on catch-and-shoot threes last season on 2.3 attempts per game versus just 35% on six pull-ups per game. Balancing that lopsided see-saw will immediately enhance Edwards’ efficiency.

As fantastic as Edwards is, he’s never been a great or even good passer for his position. Now, the grunt work of walking the ball up the court (or running it up — more on that shortly) and getting guys into position won’t be his problem. He can focus on doing what he does best: getting buckets.

The Wolves will likely utilize more plays to get Edwards on the move, where his unique combination of shooting and athleticism puts trailing defenders into an impossible situation. Look how much harder he had to work here…

…than here:

The latter play is an anomaly. The Wolves don’t run nearly as many off-ball actions to get Edwards the rock in advantageous positions as you’d hope, mostly because they didn’t have someone else to handle the keys. ~40% of Edwards’ buckets over the last few seasons have been assisted, but they were typically basic drive-and-kicks or the occasional Gobert/Randle hand-off action. Coach Chris Finch should be able to draw up better set plays to simplify Edwards’ reads and give him more straightforward paths to both scoring and assisting. Imagine the highlight reels TikTokers will come up with for those sexy Ball-to-Edwards alley-oops!

Edwards isn’t the only ready for the feasting table. Gobert must be crying tears of joy; Ball will feed him unmissable dunk after unmissable dunk. Kuminga will finish the plays that Ball makes, too. He’s an outrageous athlete on both the horizontal and vertical planes, an obvious on-court stand-in for Charlotte’s Miles Bridges. Julius Randle’s biggest strength as a player was his willingness to use his battering-ram shoulders; Kuminga isn’t quite as strong as Randle, but he’s got moon-shoes:

Also like Randle, Kuminga has had too many moments where the ball dies when it reaches him. To his credit, he’s cut back on the truly awful jump shots, but you can tell he’s itching to prove himself. Staying disciplined is the key to Kuminga’s offensive success.

All told, I might be more intrigued by what Kuminga can do for the Wolves on the other end of the floor. Jaden McDaniels is a Certified Stopper™, but McDaniels is also an elite off-the-ball team defender, which Kuminga is not. Kuminga has the athleticism and instincts to be human handcuffs. What if the Wolves make Kuminga their 1A defender? That plays to his strengths while allowing McDaniels to either guard the other team’s second-best player or prowl the middle as a free safety.

Kuminga locking guys up like this…

Allows McDaniels to do this:

Letting McDaniels roam more could also ameliorate his greatest flaw, a tendency to stumble into foul trouble. Perhaps the Wolves have Kuminga do yeoman’s work for the first three quarters to save McDaniels’ stamina and fouls for crunch time?

As for the rest of the cast, even after a career-best year, Ball is a bad and often lazy defender. Gobert is one of the best guardsmen of all time and remains elite even with Father Time nipping at his heels. Edwards, like Kuminga and Icarus, has moments where he reaches the sun but regularly melts back to inattentiveness when he’s not directly involved.

Still, the Wolves will be a good defense whenever the Stifle Tower is on the floor, and they could scrape the league’s ceiling at their peak.

Ball and Kuminga should also inject more pace into the team. Minnesota wasn’t a bad transition team last year (particularly turning on the jets after they traded for Ayo Dosunmu), but the newbies should turbocharge the engines. Ball’s offenses have never been as fast as you’d expect (the Hornets got out in transition about 15% of the time with Ball on the floor over the last two seasons, right at the median), but I suspect the Wolves will try to run like their namesake this season. Few players are as good at the hit-ahead as Ball, and few players glory in a transition bucket quite like Kuminga (to say nothing of Bones Hyland, Dosunmu, and Terrence Shannon Jr. cutting the backup unit’s brakes).

The Wolves still have plenty of question marks. Off the top of my head and in no particular order:

• Can Ball stay healthy? Okay, I lied, this is first because it’s the most important concern. He played 72 games last season while operating under a minutes restriction, which was his first time cracking even 50 games since the 2021-22 campaign.

• Can Ball build on last year’s career-best defensive effort to become something close to mediocre?

• Minnesota’s offense will be so different from prior years. Can they score at an acceptable level in the halfcourt with such limited frontcourt shooting?

• Similarly, can they finally overcome the crunch-time issues that consistently plague them? They haven’t had a positive net rating in the clutch in any of the last three seasons. That’s unacceptable for a team with a superstar scorer and talented coach (I’m a Finchie believer!).

• Do the Wolves have enough in reserve? Dosunmu was fantastic for Minnesota last season, draining threes, defending rabidly, and racing up and down the floor… but he can’t be a bench by himself. Bones Hyland resurrected his career in Prince’s homeland, but he’s about as unproven as a rising sixth-year player can be. Shannon and second-year center Joan Beringer have shown flashes, the same way a shooting star illuminates the night sky for approximately three seconds of a ten-hour period of darkness. I love Jaylen Clark’s defense in two-minute spurts. That’s it! Right now, it projects as the weakest bench of any team with even remote championship aspirations.

• Relatedly, will the injured Donte DiVincenzo recover from his torn Achilles in time to help the team? Will he even be on the team after the trade deadline?

• Can Kuminga play within himself?

• Can Kuminga lock in defensively?

• Kuminga, reportedly, will begin the season as a starter. But will he keep the job all year? And who closes games?

• How high is this team’s ceiling on defense?

That’s, um, a lot of questions for a team that wants to win a ring, and a disconcerting number directly relates to the team’s newest members. Ball and Kuminga (who averaged eight minutes per playoff game as a rookie in the Warriors’ 2022 championship run) have had limited postseason success. Meanwhile, Edwards, McDaniels, and Gobert have been the core of several strong playoff teams.

But not strong enough. No, the Wolves had stagnated. They were a known quantity, and wishing fervently for the collective to simply be better clearly wasn’t working. Minnesota needed a shot of epinephrine. Ball and Kuminga are a basketball adrenaline rush.

I’d argue that, in many ways, all those questions above are a good thing. It means this team has mystery. The Wolves need to answer a lot of those bullet points positively for this team to make the noise it wants to make, but my ears are still ringing from the Knicks’ wondrous run to a championship.

No matter how it all goes, I know one thing: I’ll be watching.

1. I know you want to know, so the first three, in order: Nikola Jokic (duh), Jalen Johnson (!), and Stephon Castle (!!)