As they speed towards a back-breaking descent against the Golden State Warriors on Thursday night, the Minnesota Timberwolves might be the NBA’s most pleasant surprise. They’re 4-3—with road wins against the Chicago Bulls and Atlanta Hawks—and boast the seventh best defense in basketball.

Last year, they won 16 games and finished 30th out of 30 teams in defensive rating. Crazy world, right? How are they doing it? 

Minnesota is either lucky and make you want to shout SMALL SAMPLE SIZE from a rooftop, or maybe the Timberwolves are actually a legitimately stout up-and-comer. It’s an ideological battle that applies to any team that exceeds low expectations in the season’s opening month. Let’s investigate both sides of the coin. 

Hurray for optimism!

Minnesota’s most common five-man unit in 2014-15 was Zach LaVine, Andrew Wiggins, Shabazz Muhammad, Thaddeus Young and Gorgui Dieng. They allowed 118.5 points per 100 possessions, the most of any group that played at least 150 minutes, per NBA.com. They were a rough symbol for all that team’s meaningful problems.

Injuries forced really young players into uncomfortable spots: Wiggins was a small forward far too often, Ricky Rubio’s ankle injury (that eventually required surgery) obliterated any semblance of organization in the backcourt and the center position was a total mess. 

Today, the pieces fit. Minnesota’s starting lineup of Rubio, Wiggins, Tayshaun Prince, Kevin Garnett and Karl-Anthony Towns has already tallied 74 minutes this year, and have done nothing but stack bricks on their opponent’s forehead, holding them to 77.1 points per 100 possessions. That’s the best defense in the league by a very wide margin, and, on paper, it makes sense that they’d perform so well. Just look at the individual defensive talent in this group!

The most notable addition is first overall pick Karl-Anthony Towns, a prodigious, shot-swatting teenager who already looks better than advertised. He’s inexperienced, but a meaningful upgrade in last year’s starting lineup, over guys like Nikola Pekovic, Gorgui Dieng and Justin Hamilton. Towns is defending 10.7 shots at the rim per game (third highest in the league) and opponents have only shot 36 percent when he’s there. Among all players guarding at least six attempts per game, the rookie only trails Draymond Green and Rudy Gobert—aka two of the NBA’s three best defenders.

He still picks up tacky fouls—and can stand to trust his enormous wingspan when a shooter flaps a feeble ball fake in his shadow—but this is a very intimidating interior presence, and he’s already a safety net.

Towns is great, and having the still-stingy Garnett by his side is an undeniable plus. At 73 years old, the first-ballot Hall of Famer lacks the lateral quickness that let him singlehandedly swallow up pick-and-rolls in his prime—there is zero margin for error—but he’s still a positive influence. Garnett’s really long and always knows where to be; very few anchors communicate from the back line as naturally as he still does. 

His mentorship holds significant, unquantifiable value for Minnesota’s youth, but he does really good stuff on the court, too! It goes without saying that he’s a vacuum cleaner on the defensive glass, and opponents are shooting 16.9 percent below their average when Garnett is the defender.

Minnesota’s starting frontcourt is fierce, but the perimeter defense can’t be overlooked. Wiggins and Rubio are both above-average hawks on the ball; long, physical, versatile troopers who can put their individual assignments in a straight jacket. (Wiggins tends to lose track of his man when he’s roaming on the weakside, but, like, he’s still 20 years old. Cut the guy some slack!) Prince is 35 years old, but those pterodactyl arms and adroit instincts aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

#WellActually, the Timberwolves are big fat frauds

After reading all those nice words about Minnesota’s defense, why should you sell? Unfortunately, there’s almost too many reasons that suggest a steady drop from the top 10. Let’s start by looking at a few numbers.

So, we’re dealing with a small sample size here, and with it comes a lot of fluff. Players miss shots they’d normally make, and teams get away with defensive breakdowns that would cripple them if uncorrected over the course of an entire season. 

On that note, opponents are shooting a slightly-below-average 42 percent on uncontested shots, including a very-below-average 35.6 percent from the mid range. (Atlanta’s Al Horford—a very dependable shooter—looked like he was in a gym all by himself when the two teams played on Monday.) 

But more significant than long twos, the Timberwolves are somehow holding teams to the NBA’s third lowest three-point percentage despite allowing the third most attempts per game (pretty sure shooters won’t go 6.7 percent from the right corner all year long). To recap: not guarding good shooters and letting teams fire away behind the three-point line is not a recipe for success, and consequences will catch up to any defense that does it. 

A lot of these problems relate to their depth. Minnesota’s bench is loaded with sieves. LaVine might be the worst perimeter defender in the Western Conference. He’s perpetually caught in screens or dives below them then forgets to recover; it’s suicidal to put him on anybody who knows how to dribble. 

Beyond that, Dieng is constantly out of position, Nemanja Bjelica is slow-footed on the perimeter, Muhammad and Adreian Payne are green and Kevin Martin is Kevin Martin. The following thought applies to almost every team in the league, but if any starter goes down these guys would drown. And as they stand, Garnett is already sitting back-to-backs.

What to make of all this? The Timberwolves have a cohesive starting lineup that complements each other well. They’re athletic, intelligent and frisky. But the margin for error will only narrow as the year goes on, and it’s difficult to get too high on a group that will clearly suffer once a few significant statistical averages start to normalize.

In the meantime, they’re an awesome feel-good story that should be appreciated to the fullest. So everyone go do that before it’s too late.