Preseason Game #3 - Thunder@Wolves

[Monster]

The thing with Rose is that when he picks the right spots he is absolutely dynamite either getting to the rim or getting an easy long 2...which isn't ALWAYS bad. The problem is that he isn't always picking his spots and sometimes he assumes he is going to get a foul and to be honest there are times I think he does get fouled but...yeah it's too much. Like others have said if he was coming off the bench that makes more sense. There will be times he will feast on bench guys that can't keep up with him and in transition the guy is terrific. He needs to be reigned in though.

[Wolvesfan21]

Thats why i feel okogie needs a shot with the starters during the last preseason game. He can focus on defense and the small things while not having to worry too much about creating offense. Let rose be the shot creator with the second unit.

At least until we see what we get in return for jimmy.

I didn't see the first two preseason games but I was actually expecting to see Okogie starting over Rose. It just seemed to make more sense to me. We have enough scorers on the starting unit I think we could take the chance with Okogie to see if he can focus on D and hopefully hit the open J.

Rose isn't really that good anyways and Okogie should have easily better defense I think. We could use Rose against second teamers to create too like you said.

[Lipoli390]

Last year tyus usually had a shotmaker with him. This year, there isn't one on the bench, so there isn't as many wide open shots or lanes.

Good point, Crazy.

And this is where I will defend Thibs a little bit. Crawford was absolute poison to us in all the lineup combinations we saw in terms of +/-, but he was often the only guy that could create offense. How often would Tyus swing it to Crawford when the initial action didn't work. Crawford did all the dirty work of having to create something out of nothing, which often resulted in tough, contested shots.

That doesn't excuse Crawford's horrible defense, but offensively Tyus was left off the hook a bit because he'd rarely be the guy forced to create something. In the pre-season second unit we're seeing a lot more ball movement, but when sets don't work we don't have anyone that can create offense. Tyus needs to get better in this area.

That's more of a defense of Crawford than Thibs. In fact, it was Thibs the PBO who signed Crawford to be the key guy in the second unit of a defensively challenged team. It was Thibodeau the head coach who made Crawford the cornerstone of the second unit. And still Crawford was so unhappy here that he gave up $4.5 million to leave without anything lined up. Everything about Crawford is a further indictment of Thibodeau as both PBO and head coach. I know I'm being redudant. And I think I'm also stating the obvious.