With just one more three-point bucket Tyus Jones would’ve set a career-high in both points and assists tonight. I don’t mean to imply that what he did tonight wasn’t something special, but it could’ve easily been way special-er.
Truthfully, the path to assists for a point guard on the Timberwolves is wide and clearly-marked: get the ball to Karl-Anthony Towns. That’s all you have to do. He’s going to shoot it unless he’s in one of those moods (which are usually caused by him not getting the ball in the first place). Ricky Rubio was the king of racking up dimes by just spamming passes to KAT, and it seems he taught some of his tricks to Jones. Tricks like “just pass it to him” and “you should pass it to KAT if he is open even a little bit and also when he isn’t”.
The path to buckets for a point guard on the Timberwolves, on the other hand, is narrow and treacherous. Unless your name is Derrick Rose, it seems like Thibodeau’s game plan isn’t for the PG to shoot. Jeff Teague had a 3-point/18-assist game earlier that only proves my point. Still, Jones shot enough stuff at the rim and had enough of it go in that he scored the most points he has this season. I guess it’s easy to get stats when you play almost 40 minutes because the only other thing resembling a PG on the roster is the bald corpse of Jerryd Bayless (raise your hand if you forgot he was on the Timberwolves).