A debate continuously rages on in the basketball realm. Is 3-point defense luck?

The argument for it being essentially roulette is the fact that every team shoots similar percentages. As CraftedNBA.com points out, over the past four seasons, 92 percent of NBA teams shot between 34 and 38 percent from distance.

So what CraftedNBA does is adjusts a team’s defensive rating — how many points it gives up per 100 possessions — and adjusts it to show what the number would be if the defense allowed opponents to shoot an average of 36 percent from 3-point range.

The number, updated a week ago, showed Minnesota’s defensive rating to be 106.9, and its 3-point adjusted rating to be 107.8. The nearly full-point differential was one of the biggest in the NBA. That makes sense, considering Timberwolves opponents have shot just 33.2 percent from beyond the arc this season. (Note, even if opponents shot 36 percent from three against Minnesota, it would still be an elite defense).

The question remains: Is that luck?

There certainly are arguments for it. For example, opponents shoot 29.7 percent from deep at Target Center, and 36.3 percent when the Wolves play on the road. Is Minnesota’s defense at home that superior to what it puts forth on the road? Possibly. Or it could just be a prime example of the variance in long-range shots.

Also, opponents are shooting just 34.8 percent on “wide-open” 3-point attempts this season, in which the Timberwolves don’t have a defender within six feet of the shooter. That is the third-lowest number in the NBA on such attempts. That number shrivels to 31.3 percent on “open” 3-point attempts, where a Wolves’ defender is between 4 and 6 feet away from the shooter. That number is second lowest in the NBA.

Houston has the lowest number in both categories. Like the Timberwolves, the Rockets also have one of the best defenses in the NBA this season. So maybe it is a product of good defensive play.

That’s something only the eye test can truly convey. But Sacramento coach Mike Brown put it into words after the Kings shot 8 for 33 from 3-point range, with 31 of those looks being either “open” or “wide open.”

“I thought we took pretty good shots throughout most of the night that didn’t go in, but you’ve got to give them credit,” Brown told reporters. “They’re long, they’re athletic and they fly around. You feel a little bit more pressure to get that shot off a little bit quicker, even though they’re not going to block it most times on a perimeter 3-point shot. But they make it tough on you.

“This is a game that you’ve got to go into with a lot of mental resilience, because there’s no telling what can happen throughout the course of the game with their length and the way they scramble and the protection they have at the rim.”

Certainly, if you can speed an opponent up and make it uncomfortable, it’s less likely to do even the routine things well. With that in mind, it would make sense a defense as aggressive and physical as the Timberwolves’ would lead to an opponent missing an easy look when it finally gets some space to breathe, simply because it is playing out of rhythm.

Or it could be luck. Because while opponents are missing open triples against good defenses like Houston and Minnesota this season, they’re also missing them against Portland, which generally is not strong on the defensive end.

And then there’s Golden State, against which opponents shoot the second-worst 3-point percentage on “wide open” attempts but the sixth-best on “open” attempts. Orlando is another team on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to “defense” on open and wide-open shots. It’s difficult to make a lot of sense of the data or find causation.

This is why for every Mike Brown, there’s an analytical mind that suggests that, over time, things will all even out in the end. The only way to know for sure is to continue watching, allow the data size to grow and see where the Timberwolves’ defense stacks up at season’s end.

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