Are the Sacramento Kings Worse Than Every Wolves Team Ever?

It can be argued that the worst Minnesota Timberwolves team of all-time is the Isaiah Rider, Christian Laettner and Doug West-led squad from the 1994-95 season.

During that season, the league had 27 teams, as the Toronto Raptors and Vancouver (!) Grizzlies were added in the summer of 1995 and the Charlotte Bobcats were born in the summer of 2004.

Of those 27 franchises, Minnesota had a better offense than exactly one team and a better defense than exactly one team, according to offensive and defensive rating. This is the only season in franchise history that the Wolves ranked in the bottom two of those efficiency metrics.

This season, the 2017-18 Sacramento Kings -- the Wolves' Monday evening opponent -- are achieving that feat. The Bogdan Bogdanovic, Willie Cauley-Stein, De'Aaron Fox-led(?) Kings are ranked dead last in offensive efficiency (30th) and second-to-last in defensive efficiency (29th).

More simplistically – ignoring the total of teams in the league – a sum of the rankings can be used as a barometer of competency. This sum indicates not only how the Kings historically stack up -- 59 in the sum of ranks -- but how they compare to the "worst teams" in Wolves history.

10 Worst Wolves Teams Ever (by sum of O and D ranking)

If the numbers are parsed through down to the decimal, this Kings team does actually score more points per 100 possessions and allows fewer points per 100 possessions than that '94-95 Wolves squad.

So, to that fact, the argument can be made that this Kings team is "better."

However, an argument can be made that different seasons and particularly different eras muddle any team-to-team debate. Basketball has been played at different levels of efficiency throughout the course of history for a laundry list of reasons not limited to league size.

League-Wide Offensive Efficiency 1980 to 2018

[caption id=attachment_28294" align="alignnone" width="885] Graph courtesy of The Action Network[/caption]

The best uses of efficiency metrics come from focusing on one season at a time. Comparing one season to another is blurry.

Is it not a bit ironic that this season's version of the Houston Rockets and Golden State Warriors are the two of the most efficient offenses ever?

Perhaps you subscribe to the notion that these Houston and Golden State teams are the most formidable offenses ever -- there is certainly a fair argument to be made there -- but what about this season's Wolves team? Are they really the 25th-best offense in the history of the NBA?

That is what historical offensive rating data suggests.

Eye Test Versus Analytics

Analytics should be used. In my opinion, they are grossly under-utilized by the general public of basketball followers. However, when taking the analytical approach to comparing different seasons, those analytics should only be used as a guideline -- not a law.

Different developments in the game have occurred that make statistical output relative to the time and place the statistics occurred in.

For example, if you scroll down that basketball-reference page of the most efficient offenses ever, 22 spots below this Minnesota Timberwolves team is 1992-93 Chicago Bulls. That is, a team with arguably the best player and coach of all-time, both at the peak of their powers.

Are we at all confident in saying the Wolves have a better offense than the Jordan Bulls because they have a better offensive rating? They are a more efficient offense, sure, but that does not mean they are a certainty to have been better at offense.

Analytics have led us to believe that more efficient equals better. In ways, this is fair. But in other ways, it is apples to oranges.

If that Bulls team had played in 2017-18 and had an offensive efficiency inferior to Minnesota's then the argument that Wolves are "better" would be far stronger. But by those Bulls living in a different era, there is a definitive blurring of certainties.

To loop back to these Kings, if comparing them to the 1994-95 Wolves is silly -- which it probably is -- then crowning the 2017-18 Wolves for having the 25th best offense in history is similarly petulant.

Stats work. They allow us to glean terrific inference on historical conversations that we could not possibly internalize. However, to some degree, that internalization is key. Arguments with characters that transcend different generations need to rely on more than a set of analytics; there needs to be a modicum of subjectivity.

While the eye test internalization opens up a whole new can of worms that is equally ambivalent that test is still important. Comparing Bogdanovic, Cauley-Stein and Fox to Rider, Laettner and West is just a conversation. Statistics and analytics can be used, but it is not a solvable equation.

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