Wolves defense struggling in the paint and on the outside

Saturday night in San Antonio, for the ninth time this season, the Wolves allowed an opponent to shoot better than 50 percent.

This is getting to be common. The Wolves rank dead last in the league in opponent shooting (50.3 percent). Indeed, Minnesota is the only team whose opponents are making more than half of their shots. And, until the team's injury situation improves, that's not likely to change.

"We don't have the personnel," Wolves coach Flip Saunders said after the loss in San Antonio. "And we haven't had the practice time to work on things. When we had injuries that changed things."

Starting center Nikola Pekovic has been out of the lineup the past 10 games with a combination of wrist and ankle injuries. Perhaps even more damaging has been playing without point guard Ricky Rubio the past 14 games.

On defense the Wolves have struggled both inside and out. They rank 29th in the league in points allowed in the paint (48.6 per game). They are also 28th in the league in opponent shooting percentage on shots from 20-24 feet and 29th on shots from 25-29 feet.

"We don't have guys, right now, who protect the rim," Saunders said. "What happens is we're getting beat off penetration, which is leading to either open shots or to where Gorgui [Dieng] steps up to provide help and we have no rim protectors."

While Pekovic is not known as a rim protector, Rubio did a decent job of keeping opposing guards in front of him, which meant the Wolves defense wasn't in scramble mode as often.

Going against Spurs star Kawhi Leonard on Saturday, Wolves rookie Andrew Wiggins had a difficult night. As Saunders said, "He got his butt kicked."

Saunders said teams have begun playing Wiggins more physically in recent games. And it appears Wiggins is having difficulty adjusting. In his past six games Wiggins has shot 20-for-62 (32.3 percent) and averaged 8.7 points. Both figures are below his season averages.

"Teams have gotten extremely physical with him," Saunders said. "He's in a role right now of having to try to score, and he's not completely ready for that role. They come at him. I mean, he couldn't get around Leonard, and Leonard was basically posting him up at will on the other end."

Wolves rookie guard Zach LaVine didn't learn he had gotten the first double-double of his career until he was about to leave the team's locker room after Minnesota's loss at San Antonio on Saturday night.