Game Report - Wolves v. Blazers

[Lipoli390]

A critical win tonight to prevent a downward spiral that might have taken us to or below .500 by the end of the Holidays. A great crowd generating a lot of energy tonight. On the court, the energy came from Butler and Crawford.

An interesting win tonight in that the Blazers outrebounded us by 8 while also having a higher FG percentage (54.8 v 46.2), higher 3-point percentage - 41.7% v 36.8. So what accounted for the win? The Wolves had 7 more field goal attempts and an astounding 16 more free throw attempts (21 v 5). The additional field goal attempts stemmed from Portland's 17 turnovers compared to our 10. So the Wolves did a better job protecting the ball and did a better job of defending without fouling - if you can call allowing Portland to shoot nearly 55% from the field and nearly 42% from behind the arc defending.

We did what I've consistently said we have to do to win, i.e., score over 100 points, usually closer to or more than 110 points. Tonight we scored 108 and it was barely enough. Our offense was the same motionless offense we've seen since Thibs got here. So not surprisingly, the Wolves had 19 assists compared to the Blazers' 26 assists. But Butler and Crawford made the most of their isolation opportunities and carried the Wolves to a win, albeit by the narrowest of margins.

I can't say enough about what Jimmy B did tonight with his 37 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 steals. Then of course, he had those 4 clutch free throws down the stretch. As great as his numbers were tonight, they understate his contribution to the Wolves win. Yet, the Wolves still would have lost if not for Jamaal's 23 points in 22 minutes, including 16 clutch points in the 4th quarter. Jamaal is incredibly streaky. He can be very frustrating to watch when he's off, but he can carry the team when he's on as he was tonight. Whether he's on or off, Jamaal brings a spark of energy to the team when he's on the court and that's what he did tonight.

I see Teague as tonight's honorable mention performer with 13 points on 46% shooting and some pretty good defense. This is the second game in a row that he's really impressed me with his consistent effort on both ends of the court.

Other players made some important contributions. KAT had an off night shooting and rebounding, but he hit some key threes, going 3-6 from behind the arc, while also hitting 3 of 4 free throws. As we all know, he struggles against really big physical centers and Nurkic is about as big and strong as they get. But KAT ended up our 3rd leading scorer with 16 points and our leading rebounder with 8. And again, his three threes were huge for us. I liked the minutes Tyus gave us off the bench, including 2 rebounds, 2 assists and 1 steal in only 10 minutes. At some point I'd like to see Tyus and Teague on the floor together. Tyus is so much better than Teague at organizing the offense and keeping the ball moving. Both are playing pretty well defensively and I think they could complement one another in some situations.

Even Wiggins contributed 6 rebounds and a critical steal from Aminu under the basket down the stretch. Unfortunately, Wiggins was pretty bad overall again tonight. He had another miserable shooting night with 9 points on 28.6% shooting, hitting none of his three-point shots and only 1 of his 3 free throws. He had a steal and a block, but zero assists in 33 minutes.

The mystery continues as Bazz doesn't even sniff the floor tonight. Yes, I know he hasn't been impressive to say the least, but I don't see much of an NBA career ahead for MGH, who played slightly over 7 minutes tonight. So I do find it odd that Bazz isn't getting any minutes. Belly's absence continued. I wonder if he'll soon be joining his pal Pekovic in medical retirement back in Eastern Europe.

This was the second game in a row where I saw Jimmy Butler walk up to Wiggins on the court during a break and give him an animated pep talk-- speaking to him and patting him on the chest. Jimmy is doing everything he can to buck up Andrew. I get the sense that Jimmy is trying to infuse some of himself into Andrew's psyche. So far, it hasn't worked.

This was a nice win, but it doesn't make up for ending the Suns' five-game losing streak with a home loss. And it doesn't make up for losing to the Sixers minus their third best player, Covington. The Sixers haven't beaten anyone since losing to us last Tuesday. It doesn't make up for ending the Grizzlies losing streak. But it was a critical win to avoid a downward spiral. More than anything, the win was testament to the individual talent of Jimmy Butler and to a less extent Jamaal Crawford.

So the Wolves remain in 4th place in the West and that feels good. But the going gets much tougher in the months ahead. So this team will have to improve to hold onto the 4th position and thus far I don't see signs of the necessary improvement. If Jimmy stays healthy, the Wolves will be in the playoffs somewhere in the 5-7 range, depending on the health of rivals like Denver, Portland and OKC. Yet, I think we have the talent to finish 3rd or 4th. Maybe the offense will start to look like a modern NBA offense with at least some semblance of movement sometime this season. Maybe Wiggins will suddenly absorb Jimmy's intensity. We'll see. But for now, I'm just happy we got the win. Now let's take the next three road games.

[Monster]

Thanks for the report Lip. Today I listened to Wolfson's podcast from last week and some stuff he said is worthwhile to share based on some of your comments.

He said Belly basically isn't coming back till he is basically 100%. He said that makes plenty of sense because it's that same foot that he had surgery on and even though it may not be related it makes sense to be careful. Wolfson said Belly may want to make sure he is healthy because he is in a contract year also. You don't want to end the year hurt. I've mentioned my concerns about him staying healthy for a while now. If Wolfson is right he could have probably already be playing now but regardless of who is behind holding him out a few extra games I am actually ok with it.

He also mentioned when addressing possible Dieng trades that Dieng is very popular and respected with the players on the Wolves which has been reported before. He said that "Jimmy thinks the world of Dieng". That specific info was pretty interesting to me but not surprising.

MGH ability to defend is why Bazz isn't playing plus unfortunately Bazz was not good when he did play. CJ cooked MGH in the first half onnsole possesions but he does that to a lot of people*. The 2nd half was much better he was getting through screens pretty well espcially. He had 2 defections in the half and one was directly because he denied the ball to the guy he was guarding. MGH is getting a few minutes now for Thibs so hey maybe that means a little bit of something. :)

*Jim Peterson was talking up CJ and saying teams passed on this guy because he was small and small school etc. He said Flip said he was too small. I was yelling at the screen "Lip knows it was also the foot injury!!!" Lol Benz did bring up his injuries held him back the beginning of his NBA career at least.

[AbeVigodaLive]

As usual... fun report, Lip.

Watching the game... I thought of only one thing: Thank goodness for Butler and Crawford. I know everybody does SOMETHING to help a team win a game...

But tonight, it's almost a disservice to those two guys by even mentioning KAT and Wiggins. Both guys played subpar games to varying degrees, and more importantly, were nearly forgotten during the 4th quarter.

This game was won by savvy veterans. Hopefully, KAT and Wiggins are learning some stuff.


[Note: This team is just goofy with TOs. They had only 16 TOs compared to 47 for Philly and Phoenix... and still lost. They simply don't convert TOs into buckets. Even tonight, Peterson mentioned the Wolves had only 4 points off Portland's first 10 TOs. That's atrocious. Is it about picking up the pace? Or are most of them dead-ball type of plays?]



Edit: One thing I was curious about... how was Wiggins' demeanor during that fun 4th quarter while he was on the bench? Was he engaged?]

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

Thanks for the report Lip, glad you saw them pull one out! I was damn sure we were going to lose that game after a pretty depressing 3rd quarter. As Abe said, thank God for Crawford and Butler!

I actually thought KAT played a pretty poor game other than the 3-point makes, but fortunately we didn't get burned by it too much. Multiple times he was trailing the play in defensive transition because on the prior Wolves possession he went flying in for an offensive rebound that he either didn't coral or didn't need to coral because the shot went in.

In typical KAT dramatic fashion, he likes to "high five" the backboard as he flies past the baseline and lands well out of bounds. Inevitably, he is the last guy down the floor. This is one of the reasons we get KILLED in transition.

He also turned it over a bunch of times with ill advised decisions and generally got abused on the pick and roll game.

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

I like how aggressive MGH is defending. You can tell he is hungry. That being said, it worked against him last night on a couple of plays. The refs won't give an inch to him since he's still kind of a newbie. Both he and Tyus tried to be aggressive and provide some defensive energy. The results weren't great though, at least last night, but I love the mindset.

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

I mentioned this in the game thread, but if I were a Blazers fan, I'd be livid at the refs for not calling two obvious travels on Butler in crunch time. One was on the open dunk he got off of Crawford's steal and the other was on the drive into the lane where he made a highly contested runner. Neither were difficult to see.

That's called star treatment. It's nice to be on the other side of it!

[Monster]

I mentioned this in the game thread, but if I were a Blazers fan, I'd be livid at the refs for not calling two obvious travels on Butler in crunch time. One was on the open dunk he got off of Crawford's steal and the other was on the drive into the lane where he made a highly contested runner. Neither were difficult to see.

That's called star treatment. It's nice to be on the other side of it!

Lilliard was not happy after the game. Personally I thought the calls ended up even in this game. I thought some calls were going against the Wolves earlier in the game. Evan Turner flopped on 2

[Monster]

I mentioned this in the game thread, but if I were a Blazers fan, I'd be livid at the refs for not calling two obvious travels on Butler in crunch time. One was on the open dunk he got off of Crawford's steal and the other was on the drive into the lane where he made a highly contested runner. Neither were difficult to see.

That's called star treatment. It's nice to be on the other side of it!

I though it even up being even in terms of the calls. The Wolves has some calls going against them earlier in the game. The Wolves has some calls go their way late. You are right it was nice to get some of those calls late though!

One sequence that bugged me was Evan Turner flopped on that foul he had on Tyus before Tyus even made contact with him. Then he gets a tech (stupid) and then flops on that Taj screen getting a foul the other way.

[Lipoli390]

As usual... fun report, Lip.

Watching the game... I thought of only one thing: Thank goodness for Butler and Crawford. I know everybody does SOMETHING to help a team win a game...

But tonight, it's almost a disservice to those two guys by even mentioning KAT and Wiggins. Both guys played subpar games to varying degrees, and more importantly, were nearly forgotten during the 4th quarter.

This game was won by savvy veterans. Hopefully, KAT and Wiggins are learning some stuff.


[Note: This team is just goofy with TOs. They had only 16 TOs compared to 47 for Philly and Phoenix... and still lost. They simply don't convert TOs into buckets. Even tonight, Peterson mentioned the Wolves had only 4 points off Portland's first 10 TOs. That's atrocious. Is it about picking up the pace? Or are most of them dead-ball type of plays?]



Edit: One thing I was curious about... how was Wiggins' demeanor during that fun 4th quarter while he was on the bench? Was he engaged?]

Now that you mention it, I do actually feel guilty at having mentioned KAT and Wiggins in the same post as Butler and Crawford. :).

As for the Wolves failure to convert TOs, it's lack of pace.

[Lipoli390]

Monster -- Very Interesting stuff in your post. Thanks.

I knew that Thibs loves Gorgui. Now we know the players do as well. As you know, I've always believed it's highly unlikely Gorgui gets traded because of how much Thibs likes him. Knowing the Butler also likes him a lot should remove any doubt. It's also worth noting that, if Taj goes down with an injury, Gorgui is the only guy on the roster who can reliably fill in behind him. Belly can't be counted on because of his foot and there's no one else. So folks should forget about trading Gorgui for a win. It's not going to happen.

More generally, I don't see the Wolves making any trades this season. We have 8 players on our roster who at least some teams would have interest in acquiring - Butler, KAT, Taj, Teague, Wiggins, Gorgui, Crawford and Tyus. Of those, Butler and KAT would probably be the only ones who would generate a lot of interest and it should be obvious that Thibs won't trade either one - nor should he. I don't see Thibs trading any of the other players he acquired last summer - Taj, Teague and Crawford. Thibs has too much of his ego invested in them and they are all playing well. Moreover, I think it would be hard to find a team willing to take on Teague's contract and also give us good value in return. If it were me, I'd be shopping Wiggins, but his contract extension includes a "poison pill" component that makes it nearly impossible to trade him before next summer. That leave's Gorgui and Tyus. As already discussed, Gorgui's not going anywhere and contrary to some of the opinion on this board, that's a good thing. Meanwhile we don't have any excess 1st picks or even any excess 2nd rounders to trade. That leaves Tyus. In my view he's worth far more to us than anything we'd get in return for him.