Bill Simmons compares Timberwolves to all-time Detroit Pistons teams

The Minnesota Timberwolves are the darling of the NBA playoffs for the first third of games thanks to the sheer star power of guard Anthony Edwards and the team’s tenacious defense, which draws lofty comparisons to the best Detroit Pistons teams ever.

Minnesota leads defending champion Denver Nuggets 2-0 in the second round of the Western Conference playoffs. The Timberwolves are a perfect 6-0 in the playoffs so far after beating the Phoenix Suns in the first round, allowing teams to average 98.7 points per game in the postseason so far. They are coming off their most impressive defensive performance in Game 2 against Denver, holding the Nuggets offense, led by presumptive MVP Nikola Jokic, to 80 points and 34.9% shooting.

The impressive performance has led to bold statements about how good the Wolves are on defense. Longtime basketball head Bill Simmons, founder of The Ringer website and author of “The Book of Basketball,” said on his self-titled podcast released Wednesday that the Wolves defense reminds him of two of the best defenses in the modern NBA era: both belong to the Pistons.

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Simmons said Minnesota is his title favorite because of how good their defense is, saying it rivals the 1989 Pistons and 2004 Pistons, two of Detroit’s three NBA title-winning teams. He said those two Detroit defenses were the best of the modern era, while also giving some flowers to teams prior to the 1976 NBA-ABA merger, labeling the “Goin’ to Work” group as the best.

“They just made it through the playoffs, and we still didn’t quite believe that they were 5-on-1 underdogs in the NBA Finals, which was ridiculous, and they ended Kobe and Shaq,” Simmons said. ‘It was done. They finished them off.”

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Describing the versatility of Detroit’s starting five that year, Simmons called Ben Wallace and Rasheed Wallace the two best defensive bigs in the league at the time, Tayshaun Prince a wing stopper and the Richard Hamilton-Chauncey Billups defensive duo an asset defensively. After listing it out, he said Minnesota has some similarities.

“I think about the ’04 Pistons and it’s not just how incredible it was to watch them — very similar to what we watch in this Minnesota-Denver and what we watched with some of the Minnesota-Phoenix stuff,” Simmons said . . “It feels like Detroit had eight guys, but there’s only five. They can protect everything. They’re able to change the flow of a game and the pace and the teams are on their heels.”

He named the ’89 Pistons at two, calling Dennis Rodman one of the best defensemen ever and saying the rest of the roster was a “Swiss Army Knife” that any team could emulate to take them down while playing more physical than the opponent.

He then named the 1991 Chicago Bulls, the team that dethroned the Pistons as two-time champions, as the third-best defensive team, but said Minnesota could surpass them depending on how their run goes. He also mentioned other great teams like the ’96 Bulls and the ’99 San Antonio Spurs in that company.

“I would put the Minnesota Timberwolves pretty close to that third tier,” Simmons said.

Minnesota has the fourth-best defensive rating in the playoffs so far, with six points (105.5), behind Oklahoma City (94.8), eliminating Orlando (100.0) and Boston (100.9) and holds teams to nearly 16 fewer points per game than the NBA average. for the 2023-2024 regular season, 114.2. The Wolves are third in points against in the playoffs among the remaining active teams, behind Oklahoma City (90.6) and Boston (92.7).

Part of the argument in Minnesota’s favor is the opponent. Denver won the 2023 title thanks to one of the best offenses in NBA history, powered by Jokic. But the Nuggets have been neutralized in two games so far. Minnesota also played the Suns in the first round, who had Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal, but promptly swept them anyway.

The 2004 Pistons had a defensive rating of 90.3 in the playoffs and allowed just 80.7 points per game in their postseason run, which lasted 23 games over four rounds. However, the league average for points in a game that season was 93.4 points, meaning the Pistons held teams 13 points below the league average throughout the postseason.

The Timberwolves clear that goal, but still have a ways to go. But if Minnesota can win ten more games in three more rounds to win a championship while maintaining defensive tempo — still a tall task — the historic Pistons teams could potentially have more company in the proverbial rankings of all time. times.

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