Timberwolves can help themselves on defense vs. Phoenix by playing better offensively

Since the Suns put the capstone on their seasonlong shellacking of the Timberwolves with a 125-106 victory Sunday at Target Center, there has been plenty of time for fans, players and coaches to roll around the matchup in their heads.

Among the points of discussion: Does Phoenix present an unsolvable matchup defensively for the Wolves? Does the combination of Kevin Durant, Bradley Beal and Devin Booker create problems in a way that nobody else was able to against the league’s No. 1 defense?

Before delving into that issue, the Wolves can do themselves a favor on the defensive end of the floor — namely, play better offensively.

The Wolves can mitigate some of the defensive issues they have encountered against Phoenix this season by taking better care of the ball, especially at the start of games, as the teams begin their Western Conference quarterfinal series Saturday.

In Sunday’s loss, the Wolves committed a horrid 11 first-quarter turnovers that led to 17 Phoenix points and a 44-22 Suns lead after one. In the teams’ previous matchup on April 5, the Wolves committed eight first-quarter turnovers, which fed a 32-20 Phoenix lead after one quarter.

Maybe it would be easier to defend the Suns if the Wolves weren’t frantically getting back in transition after their own offensive mistakes.

“No doubt about it,” coach Chris Finch said. “The turnovers, the transition that leads to them getting to the heart of the defense, making kick-out threes. They’ve done a really good job of making the extra pass when we’ve been in rotation. But a lot of that has come from just kind of scrambling from the get-go in transition.”

The Suns have played a packed-in style of defense and have hoped to lure Anthony Edwards into crowds that can compromise his decisionmaking. They’ve also, as Beal said, been intentionally fouling and being physical with Edwards, daring officials to blow the whistle.

The plan has worked so far, and the Wolves know they need a different approach to Phoenix’s defense if they’re going to improve on the regular-season matchups.

“We kept trying to play the same game, didn’t make the adjustments, played into the teeth of their defense,” Finch said. “Then when we did pass, the passes were kind of fancy, and that’s not going to get it done.”

When the game does get into the halfcourt, the Wolves are likely to come out with a different defensive game plan than they had Sunday when they had Karl-Anthony Towns matched up on the hot-shooting Grayson Allen, who shot 46% from three-point range this season. The Wolves could use more of a committee approach to guarding Durant by rotating defenders on him, with Towns included in that mix.

“We have a lot of versatility,” Towns said. “There’s a lot of things that we can do, not only to start the game but throughout the game, and change up the look of our team any single second.”

Finch has compared figuring out defensive game plans for different teams to solving a unique puzzle on a night-in, night-out basis.

The Suns haven’t been unsolvable — the Wolves held them under 100 points in the teams’ second matchup. But before the Wolves start making drastic changes to personnel and rotations to match up better with Phoenix’s starting unit, they can start by seeing how their defense looks when they eliminate their turnover problem.

“They’ve given us a body of work to go from, most recently Sunday,” Finch said. “Getting a chance to tear it apart and start putting it back together, come up with some answers, and then over the week you get to kind of install it — it feels like a football game.”