What Zach LaVine's injury means for the Wolves -- and his future
— -- The Minnesota Timberwolves?received bad news Saturday, announcing that guard Zach LaVine suffered a torn ACL during Friday's loss to the Detroit Pistons and will undergo season-ending surgery.
In his third season, LaVine had started all 47 games he played and averaged a career-high 18.9 points per game as one of three Timberwolves younger than age 22 (he'll turn 22 on March 10) scoring at least that many.
What does LaVine's injury mean for Minnesota's hopes of mounting a late playoff push this season? And how will it affect his development and the Timberwolves' future plans? Let's take a look.
LaVine probably won't be missed, but playoffs still long shot
The surprising fact is, despite LaVine's prolific scoring, Minnesota might not miss him much over the remainder of the schedule. The Timberwolves have won all three games LaVine has been sidelined this season by double digits, including impressive home wins over the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder.
Three games don't tell us much, but the larger samples also don't suggest LaVine's production was helping Minnesota win this season. According to NBA.com/Stats, LaVine's minus-3.5 net rating is the worst among Timberwolves regulars. And that can't really be blamed on LaVine frequently playing with Minnesota's second unit, since the reserves have better net ratings than him.
Much of the drop-off can surely be attributed to LaVine's poor defense. His minus-3.0 impact per 100 possessions as estimated by ESPN's real plus-minus puts him among the league's bottom five in defensive RPM. And while that includes only this season's results, LaVine's defensive RPM drops to minus-4.1 per 100 possessions when we consider the past two years.
Even beyond that, playing alongside LaVine has seemed to hurt Timberwolves point guard Ricky Rubio by taking the ball out of his hands. According to NBA.com/Stats, Rubio has been much more prolific as both a scorer and a distributor on a per-minute basis when LaVine is on the sidelines, performing more the way he did last season.
Given his career effective field-goal percentage (eFG) is .410, Rubio is unlikely to continue shooting as accurately as he has without LaVine. But his improved playmaking is one reason Minnesota has also scored better with LaVine on the bench.
The Timberwolves should be able to replace LaVine in-house. Veteran Brandon Rush started the past two games LaVine missed, and Minnesota can also continue to extend the minutes of backup wing Shabazz Muhammad, who has scored double figures in six of his past seven games. If that means less of Muhammad as an undersized power forward, the Timberwolves have Nemanja Bjelica to fill in there.
Minnesota would have to maintain much of its seemingly unsustainable success without LaVine to make a playoff push. Although the Timberwolves are just 3? games out of the eighth spot in the Western Conference, simulations using ESPN's Basketball Power Index show them making the playoffs just 2.9 percent of the time. ( FiveThirtyEight's CARM-Elo projections have Minnesota in 5 percent of the time.)
How will a torn ACL affect LaVine's development?
While I've looked at how tearing an ACL affects a player's performance the following season, the more interesting question with LaVine is what it means years down the road for a player to tear his ACL at age 21.
To try to provide some evidence for that answer, I looked at the five players in my database of ACL tears who suffered the injury at age 21 and have played at least three seasons since then, a group that includes Rubio. (I also excluded Shaun Livingston, whose catastrophic knee injury was much more severe than a typical torn ACL.)
Let's compare their actual performance, as measured by wins above replacement player (WARP) metric as compared to what my SCHOENE projection system forecast based on their past performance and the development of similar players.
This group was projected to average 8.6 WARP apiece over the following three seasons based on their performance before the injury. Instead, they contributed just 4.6 WARP on average.
Much of the difference came the year after the injury, which isn't surprising because in addition to a drop-off in per-minute performance, rehabbing from an ACL also kept all of the players, save Al Harrington, out part of the following season. But even two and three years removed from the injury, they continued to lag behind their pre-injury projections.
With such a small group, it's hard to attribute all the difference to injury. It's possible, for example, that Rubio's projections overstated his potential because of the way his poor shooting limited his development. And LaVine can be encouraged by the rapid growth of fellow Seattle-area native Jamal Crawford, who dramatically exceeded his projections.
Still, the possibility that this injury hampers LaVine's development only makes it more difficult for the Timberwolves to project how he fits into their young core. Already, LaVine's poor defense and overlap with Rubio meant he might have been more suited for the role of instant offense off the bench (much like Crawford) than starting shooting guard.
Since fellow youngster Andrew Wiggins has often been more effective playing shooting guard, Minnesota might need to prioritize acquiring a 3-and-D small forward who can be more of a long-term solution at the position than Rush or Muhammad.
There's also the question of how the Timberwolves handle negotiations on an extension for LaVine next fall. Given the typical timetable for ACL rehab, LaVine probably will just be starting to return to the court by the end of training camp, which is when a negotiation would have to be completed. (The new NBA collective bargaining agreement moved this date up from Oct. 31 to the day before the start of the regular season.)
Most likely, Minnesota will be in wait-and-see mode. That would make 2017-18 a crucial season for LaVine's future, which looks a little cloudier than it did 24 hours ago.
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