Minnesota Timberwolves: Is the Patrick Beverley effect real?

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Timberwolves Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports

In a meeting between the Miami Heat and the Minnesota Timberwolves last season, Heat guard Jimmy Butler got into a heated exchange with Karl-Anthony Towns, calling him, “soft as baby [expletive]”. The comment harkened back to Butler’s time on the Timberwolves, when Butler complained that the stars of the Timberwolves, mainly Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns, lacked a competitive spirit.

“I already punked you once,” Butler told him, referring to the practice where he joined the bench squad and beat the starters in a scrimmage.

Since then, almost the entire Timberwolves roster has flipped, with Towns being the sole remaining member. Though, between recent comments made by Towns and his performance in the team’s season opener against the Houston Rockets, it would be hard for anyone to claim that Towns or the Timberwolves as a whole lacked a competitive spirit. Between talks of D’Angelo Russell’s mindset being “Kill everything in front of us” and Towns’ pregame ritual of watching gorillas fight to the death, there have been a lot of questions surrounding what exactly has changed in Minnesota.

Enter Patrick Beverley, stage right.

Does Patrick Beverley bring a competitive fire to the teams he’s been on?

Many have speculated that this change is due to the Timberwolves offseason addition of Patrick Beverley, who they acquired in a trade with the Memphis Grizzlies that sent Jarrett Culver and Juancho Hernangomez to Memphis after Beverly had previously been traded from the LA Clippers with Daniel Oturu and Rajon Rondo in exchange for Eric Bledsoe.

Ever since his time with the Houston Rockets, Beverley has been looked at as a fiery defender and a player with an aggressive mindset. A mindset that once launched a rivalry with Russell Westbrook, which is reportedly continuing to this day. And though Westbrook would claim that Beverley, “don’t guard nobody,” the stats don’t really back that up. In the season that Westbrook made that claim, 2019-202, Beverley recorded a 104.0 defensive rating, putting him 28th among players with at least 50 games played that season (a total of 259). Interestingly, that rating puts him 13 spots ahead of former Defensive Player of the Year Kawhi Leonard at 41st (104.7), 48 spots ahead of the reigning Defensive Player of the Year in Rudy Gobert, who came in 76th (106.6), and 63 spots ahead of Westbrook himself, who came in 91st (107.1).

In that case, whether or not Beverley is a hard-nosed defensive player is mostly out of question. The answer is yes, the numbers show it. The real question, then, is does this carry over to the teams he’s been on, and do the Timberwolves have Beverley to thank for their newfound competitive spirit?

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