It may be early yet, but several suspects have already come to the fore in this year’s Coach of the Year race. The three Mikes of the Pacific Division – Phoenix’s Mike D’Antoni, Golden State’s Mike Montgomery, and the Clippers’ Mike Dunleavy – all are worthy candidates, as are Detroit’s Flip Saunders, Memphis’s Mike Fratello, and New Orleans/Oklahoma City’s Byron Scott.

But if I had to give out my vote right now, it would go to a first-time coach who has quietly done an impressive job with a deeply flawed team: Minnesota’s Dwane Casey. After serving for a decade as an assistant with the Sonics and quietly waiting for his shot to sit in the big chair, Casey is demonstrating why he should have been tapped much sooner. Through Monday’s games, the T-Wolves were atop the Northwest Division at 10-6, defying most preseason predictions that they would be lottery bound.

Casey’s performance has been all the more impressive considering his team has only one star-caliber player. Granted, that player, Kevin Garnett, is among the best – if not the best – in the game, but the surrounding crew is so suspect that few expected much from this team. Minnesota’s second-best player, for instance, is Wally Szczerbiak, a moderately gifted scorer with limited ball handling and defensive skills and a killer contract. The drop-off is even worse after that.

Minnesota’s depleted roster is the result of an extended bout of battiness by team president Kevin McHale, who cost the team four first-round picks when he foolishly made a secret agreement with the long-since departed Joe Smith to circumvent the salary cap. This was doubly stupid because it wasn’t even done for a valuable player – Smith was a modestly talented player whose skills were a bad duplication of Garnett’s.

With the first-round picks he didn’t forfeit, McHale chose Pam Anderson-sized busts such as Ndudi Ebi and Will Avery. In free agency, he used the T-Wolves money on players like Michael Olowokandi and Mark Madsen, gave Szczerbiak a $60 million extension, and threw a combined $60 million at role players Trenton Hassell and Troy Hudson. Chauncey Billups, the 2004 Finals MVP for Detroit, was allowed to leave without protest.

That trend continued this summer, when McHale traded Sam Cassell and a first-round pick to the Clippers for fourth-year guard Marko Jaric. Jaric is a decent enough player, but Cassell is thriving in L.A. and the draft picks are essential if the surrounding crew will ever be good enough to get Garnett to the promised land. As a result of all those ill-chosen maneuvers, the T-Wolves entered the season lacking muscle, quickness, and scoring power.

Somehow, Casey has found a way to cajole them into first place, on the strength of one overwhelming positive: Defense. Through Monday’s games the T-Wolves ranked sixth overall in Defensive Efficiency, my measure of points allowed per 100 possessions. You’ll note the parallels between them and my topic yesterday, the Golden State Warriors, and there’s more. As with Golden State, Minnesota has been unusually proficient in defending the 3-point line, allowing only 29.5% from downtown.

However, a few key differences between Minnesota and Golden State make me think Minnesota’s defensive success is more likely to stick. For starters, the T-Wolves are thwarting shots from all distances, not just long range. Minnesota’s opponents are shooting just 42.6% on the season, good for fifth in the league. In that light, the fact that their opponents can’t make 3-pointers doesn’t seem as mystifying.

Additionally, the T-Wolves aren’t giving away any free points at the foul line. Only two teams have committed fewer fouls, and only three allow fewer field goal attempts per free-throw attempt. As a result, opponents need to earn their points by shooting over the long arms of players like Garnett and sixth man Eddie Griffin.

That brings us to Casey’s secret to success: taking advantage of his team’s height. With a 6-foot-7-inch point guard in Jaric, a bulky 6-foot-7-inch forward in Sczerbiak, and two 7-footers in the frontcourt (though Garnett still insists on being listed at 6-foot-11), Minnesota is well suited to playing a half court game and taking few chances. The T’- wolves aren’t going to be playing the passing lanes and looking to steal passes – in fact, they’re near the bottom of the league in forced turnovers. Instead, they’re playing a risk-free containment defense that focuses on keeping opponents in front of them.

Casey has been smart enough to play along with that theme at the offensive end, as well. The T-Wolves are slowing the pace to a crawl (they play the league’s fifth-slowest pace) and send only one or two men to the boards – in fact, Minnesota is last in the NBA in offensive rebounding. Instead, Casey’s troops are running back on D when the shot goes up, ensuring that opponents have to manage their way past Minnesota’s airtight half court defense rather than score easy baskets in transition.

Monday night’s 91-77 win in Utah was a good example. The pace was slow and, aesthetically, the game was about as attractive as Margaret Thatcher with a cold sore. But it went as a 14-point win in the scorebook thanks to the T-Wolves’ style. Garnett hounded Utah’s leading scorer, Mehmet Okur, into a 5-for-19 nightmare, Griffin snuffed eight shots, and Hassell shut down Matt Harpring.

Overall, Utah made only 1-of-10 from 3-point range, and few of those were clean looks. Similarly, the Jazz shot only 37.7% overall and were held to 24 free-throw attempts. Those numbers helped make up for the fact that the T-Wolves forced only 12 turnovers. It was the second straight night they’d held an opponent to 77 points – and they did it on the road.

What makes Casey’s feat so impressive is that the defensive talent on this club doesn’t jump off the page. Hassell is an outstanding perimeter defender and Garnett obviously is brilliant, but the others have major flaws. Olowokandi sleepwalks six nights out of seven, Szczerbiak can’t guard a flowerpot, and Griffin is glaringly undersized for a center. The subs have similar deficiencies, with Jaric the only other rotation player whose defense was considered up to snuff entering the season.

Yet by playing to the one consistent strength across the roster – height – Casey has managed to cobble together a defensive unit that vastly exceeds the sum of its parts. As a result, instead of heading to the lottery, his talent-starved club seems headed toward the playoffs – perhaps even as a division champion. That’s why Dwane Casey is my (admittedly) early pick for coach of the year.

Mr. Hollinger is the author of the 2005-06 Pro Basketball Forecast. He can be reached at jhollinger@nysun.com.