Scouting one-pager: Minnesota Timberwolves (MIN)
2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,260 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.
Terms
- PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
- xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
- shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
- EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
- FGA: Field-goal attempts.
- RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
- net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
- rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
- empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
- shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
- CI: Confidence interval.
Keys
- Anthony Edwards is a genuine shot-maker: +7.7 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: Rudy Gobert (1.39 xPPS on 491 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: M. Conley - R. Gobert - J. Randle - D. DiVincenzo - J. McDaniels (+15.9/100 over 226 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| MIN | League | Δ |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.118 | 1.091 | +0.027 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.106 | 1.097 | +0.009 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | +1.2 | -0.5 | +1.8 |
| Rim share | 29.5% | 28.4% | +1.1 pp |
| Mid-range share | 10.0% | 10.0% | -0.1 pp |
| Three share | 42.0% | 41.5% | +0.5 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 25.8% | 25.9% | -0.1 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 1.9% | 1.8% | +0.1 pp |
* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ≈ .9).
Personnel (top 8 by volume)
| Player | FGA | PPS | xPPS (diet) | Making/100 | EB making | RAPM/100 |
|---|
| Anthony Edwards | 1,231 | 1.145 | 1.047 | +9.7 | +7.7 | +0.4 |
| Julius Randle | 1,207 | 1.051 | 1.075 | -2.4 | -2.1 | +1.3 |
| Naz Reid | 871 | 1.098 | 1.066 | +3.2 | +2.2 | +1.3 |
| Donte DiVincenzo | 835 | 1.104 | 1.103 | +0.1 | -0.1 | +3.3 |
| Jaden McDaniels | 809 | 1.158 | 1.097 | +6.1 | +4.4 | -0.9 |
| Rudy Gobert | 491 | 1.365 | 1.393 | -2.8 | -2.3 | +1.5 |
| Bones Hyland | 468 | 1.154 | 1.094 | +6.0 | +3.1 | +1.3 |
| Ayo Dosunmu | 261 | 1.180 | 1.095 | +8.5 | +3.7 | -0.7 |
EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (±≈3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).
Most-used lineups
| Lineup | Min | Poss | Net/100 |
|---|
| R. Gobert - J. Randle - D. DiVincenzo - A. Edwards - J. McDaniels | 710 | 1,502 | +7.6 |
| M. Conley - R. Gobert - J. Randle - D. DiVincenzo - J. McDaniels | 106 | 226 | +15.9 |
| R. Gobert - D. DiVincenzo - N. Reid - A. Edwards - J. McDaniels | 92 | 198 | +13.1 |