60WinTim wrote:Welp, Bazz blew his chance this game. Rush in.
His charges were horrendous. You could see the one coming from a mile away, yet he just kept his head down and plowed ahead. I don't think he makes a lick of difference to this team.
So sick of him looking to score within the first 7 seconds of the shot clock. His help and man defense suck. Its post up and get an offensive rebounding or nothing from him..
Bazz has been much more patient this year this game he has a play or 2 he wasn't but other time he absolutely passé when he wouldn't have before. Just like Wiggins it was a bad night for him. As for that 2nd charge the Celtics announcers said that Smart made a pretty good play there because Bazz is a lefty and Bazz went to his right. I thought it was a pretty good observation.
Q12543 wrote:...and has Rush made a single pull up jumper yet this season. I swear that whenever someone runs him off the 3-point line and he has to take a single dribble for a wide open 2, he misses every damn time. He probably never missed that shot with Golden State!
1. Part of what has made this team terrific offensively is 3 point shooting espcially Wiggins and Lavine. Tonight neither could make a 3. Wiggins you can saw ok he wasn't going to keep that up but Lavine clanking shots off the rim just seems...weird. I was thinking at one point do you want Lavine to keep firing 3's or attack? That's a tough one.
2. Wiggins against Smart and Bradley is sneaky good matchup for the Celtics. What has Wiggins been doing so well lately? Doing great things off the dribble. What do those guard do well? Defend on the ball. The Wolves should have put Wiggins on the block and let him go to work on those guys and...oh yeah they couldn't hit an upside shot so...
3. Which brings us back to 3 point shooting. It had to be so frustrating to have such a huge component of your offense suddenly not exist. I mean Lavine had some wide open 3's and missed them. Despite all the stuff that happened if the Wolves could have made one more play they were right there.
Why didn't Thibs go to Belly? Dieng was playing terrific and the Celtic were going pretty small at times which made putting Belly at SF maybe unappealing.
Rubio was the Rubio Inam used to seeing doing a ton of good stuff. Dunn in the first half was good enough and he made a couple really nice on point pressure on the defense and dishes. The Celtics guys said the Wolves were working on having him make good quick decisions in situations like the pick and roll and Dunn delivered a couple good plays on cue.
Dieng and Towns were terrific. This may have been Towns best game of the year. Heck it may have been Dieng's best game of the year too.
Unfortunately, I was at the game tonight. And like LST, I'm not going to do a separate game report thread. I'll just note that I agree completely with LST's take on tonight's game. I almost posted in this thread during the game that Thibs must have be reading our posts since he had Ricky handling the ball and running the offense the first three quarters. And as LST noted, it was working. Then inexplicably, Thibs went to the Wiggins isolation game in the 4th with Ricky spotting up in the corner. And it was also clear that our starters were gassed in the 4th. I still can't understand why we didn't see Belly back in the game late. He was tremendous and, unlike Wiggins, he was hitting his shots tonight and not turning the ball over.
I guess I'll have to pay attention to the college game again and start scouting prospects for our lottery pick. Of course, I suspect that Thibs, a guy with absolutely not front office experience, and his sidekick, who was pathetic as the Knicks' front office head, will likely trade the pick.
I've decided to largely tune out the rest of this season. I won't watch many road games on TV. I'll still go to nearly all our home games, but I'm not going to get too into the games. Instead, I'll enjoy watching for the pure joy of watching basketball, including some great players and terrific teams coming to Target Center. And no more game reports.
I thought we hired the wrong guy when Taylor first announced he had hired Thibs. But I convinced myself to open my mind to the possibility that Thibs was, in fact, the best hire we could have made. Well, I'm now back to where I started. Thibs may be a terrific head coach or he may have simply gotten lucky with his team in Chicago as a team that would have performed just as well with any number of head coaches. But even if Thibs' coaching had a big positive influence on the Bulls, I still see Thibs as a bad fit for this team.
I understand the season is still young. And nothing would make me happier than to end up being wrong about Thibs. But sadly I think I'm going to turn out to be right.
Jeez this is depressing. Sucks to be a wolves fan. Sure we are young but things simply aren't clicking. And you have to start pointing the finger at Thibs for it.
But Lip please don't stop the game reports. They add so much to this board and your observations help paint a picture for us who can't watch the game live. Maybe even an abbreviated one like Cools 2 plus 1?
Wait, we're blaming Thibs for last night's meltdown? Yeesh. That's letting the players off the hook big time. They let Boston go on a 19-0 run -- 19-0 -- in the fourth quarter. Thibs used timeouts during that stretch too to try and stop the bleeding, but in the end, it's the players who took quick shots early in the possession, settled for jumpers and repeatedly missed, completely abandoned attacking the paint or feeding Towns in the post, and then playing completely lackadaisical defense on the opposite end. I was disgusted with the effort from our guys in the fourth quarter. Whenever this team has their back against the wall, they crumble. Up and down the roster, we're soft. It's going to be a miserable process to watch for Thibs to transition them from losers into winners.
And can the real Andrew Wiggins please stand up? After his great start to the season showing his mighty improvements to his perimeter shot and ball-handling ability, his last two games have been about as awful as they could be. If his first few shots don't fall, he disengages and becomes a fucking liability on the floor because he seriously doesn't impact the game anywhere else. It's funny (but not really), the games where Wiggins has a putrid game are when his jumpers aren't falling -- but he's still taking a lot of them -- and he's being too big of a pussy to attack the rim and get to the line like we know he's capable of. That's why the best scorers in the game don't have games where they go 2-11 from the field for 7 points, or 5-18 from the field for 14 points. They know they can get that at the line. He was a complete disappointment tonight.
I agree with you about Wig, Cam...I was so optimistic about him just 4-5 days ago, but his last two games have been way too remindful of the lackadaisical Wig that we have seen now and then. He needs to learn that true superstars (which I think he can become) know how to bring it every night.
But I do lay the 4th quarter disaster on Thibs...for the 8th or 9th time this season, he was outcoached, albeit by a great young coach in Stevens. Stevens understands that fresh players win close games, and by playing his stars 10 minutes less than Thibs played his, the difference in energy and quickness in the 4th quarter was vividly on display...Boston won every 50/50 play, and was the far better coached team last night. Yes, Thibs did call some good timeouts in the 4th, but he also left a very tired, underperforming team on the court when everyone could see they were getting their asses handed to them. Where was Belly? Resting on the bench with his 10 points in 10 minutes...ridiculous.
CoolBreeze44 wrote:You know it's bad when this board shows this much apathy. I don't even know what to say at this point. Coming into the season I never thought I would I could feel as demoralized about this team as I do tonight. I think this HAS to be rock bottom. I can't imagine it getting any worse. Can it?
Oh, it can get worse, Cool. Right now the Wolves are losing because they are getting blown out in second halves (and you all know my theory about that). But Thibs hasn't lost this team yet, and with the exception of the mercurial Wiggins, our guys are still playing hard. But if Thibs' overworking and sideline hysteria along with continuing losses starts to wear on the team, Thibs could lose them...and then you will see what rock bottom looks like. Even though last night was maddening, it was still quite entertaining. My fear is that the players will stop playing as hard as they did last night, and the season will be completely torpedoed.
Oh, we've lived through worse for sure. How about two years ago when Wiggins and LaVine were rookies? That was one of the worst defensive teams in league history and we had one embarrassing loss after another.
Let's remember last year after a promising 8-8 start the team went 4-21 after that. It was brutal Sam was getting lit up for being the worst coach in human history etc and then at some point in the 2nd half of the season...things came together and even Sam's worst critics were giving him some credit for what was happening. The Timberwolves have had a disappointing start of the season but they haven't had a stretch like that yet. They haven't found a groove yet. What if 4-10 and maybe the next 5 or so games is the low point before they break through?
I'm sure this ray of sunshine post will be considered homer but the Wolves are 11th in net rating. They are 20th in defensive rating on NBA.com. Here is another interesting consideration. They are 21st in pace. Some of that seems likely because they were missing Rubio for a few games. I don't see evidence Thibs wants them to slow down so I see them getting up and down the court more which will benefit this team offensively and if they keep improving throughout the season defensively that will help them get those quick easy possessions.
Why are they losing? One stat that jumps out is they are dead last in defensive rebounding. They were near the bottom last year too. Fortunately they at least are really good on the offensive glass but that doesn't help their defense ending possessions. Transition D points in the paint 2nd chance points are all problems. Can they improve in these areas? I think they can.
To me the bottom line is if this team found itself after a brutal stretch under Sam Mitchell last year at some point and finished the season on a promising chunk of games I don't see why it's crazy to think they will under Thibs and his staff who are much more highly regarded. It's not like Sam coached this guys easy last year. It's extremely difficult to have patience with this team I get it but I don't think the season is over quite yet but I do think doing some college scouting is a good idea. I don't see Thibs and Layden reading the pick because they have certainly tak n a measured approach and Thibs has looked more like a guy trying to develop than just win. Kinda surprising really.
