AbeVigodaLive wrote:Q12543 wrote:AbeVigodaLive wrote:Q12543 wrote:monsterpile wrote:Q12543 wrote:And that's the rub. Defense. We just seem to have an impossibly hard time finding guys that don't have some gaping hole in their game on one side of the ball. For Naz and KAT, it's defense. Same for DLO, Ant, and Beasley. Basically 5 of our top 8 guys heading into this season are offensive oriented one-way players.
We have two guys on the roster that are pluses on one side while not being minuses on the other: Pat Beverley and Jaden McDaniels....and even Jaden is a bit theoretical since the eye test with him proved more tantalizing than the actual results, which were quite mediocre last season.
Meanwhile, Memphis has worker bees like Kyle Anderson, Dillon Brooks, and Xavier Tillman that just run circles around our Tier II guys en route to a winning record in the Western Conference.
FWIW Dillon Brooks career TS% is 51.7 and his best year in that category was his rookie year.
I get it...On paper, he doesn't seem like much of a difference maker, yet he started pretty much every game and played the second most minutes on a team that reached a level of performance last season that we have reached once in the past decade. I attribute it to culture as much as anything. My guess is Dillon Brooks would probably look horrible the second he puts on a Wolves uniform.
Brooks is an interesting enigma, isn't he?
I looked closer at his stats. YUCK. He has a negative VORP every season which would indicate that he's worse than merely an average bench player. He's literally had a negative OBPM and DBPM every season in his career. Last year I discussed how crazy it was that the Wolves had guys with a negative Win Shares. Yet here's Brooks on a decent team with WS ratings in the Josh Okogie and McLaughlin range. Heck, Gorgui Dieng in only 22 games had a higher WS total than Dillon Brooks in 67 games. Brooks was 12th on his own team!!!
But he's a key player for a good team... getting more minutes than everybody else but the franchise PG.
Isn't Brooks one of the guys who routinely killed the Wolves historically? He seems wildly inconsistent when I watch him play. But he also seems like a confident tough guy who isn't backing down from anybody. He's known for good defense... but he's also a hack... leading the league in fouls for two straight seasons.
There's value there. Only how much? One of the league's oddities for sure.
Right. Memphis gets away with an oddity like Brooks and you just know in your gut that if he were on the Wolves, those poor stats would translate to losing. There is something unmeasurable at work here which I attribute to the fuzzy concept of culture. I get that Memphis had JoVal and Morant, but those guys aren't THAT good.
I know a couple of people here listen to The Ringer's Mismatch podcast.
One of the hosts is the Grizzlies play-by-play guy, Chris Vernon. While I agree with some of his older school takes that eschew some of today's more analytical-minded approaches... it's downright amusing when he tries to temper his disdain for the Timberwolves.
As a guy who earned his NBA keep during the Grit-N-Grind era, it's of little wonder why he'd marginalize/despise an organization like the Wolves so much. The two organizations should have a few things in common -- but it gets lost in how each has gone about building teams/rosters/cultures.
While I think ultimately the defensive culture and overall softness of the franchise needs changing starting from the bottom (coaches and players), I do think if one takes a longer view of the Wolves, the new ownership gives cause for some cautious optimism. Lore won't make KAT or DLO play better defense, but he could start setting a tone that eventually permeates the entire organization. It may take a couple years and countless personnel moves between now and then, but I am hopeful.
