Butler injury speculation

[Big O [enjin:13874644]]

Help me out guys, I torn my meniscus on my left knee in two places. And my doctor said repair was not an option. He could cut out the damaged area and well I would go forward, but I'm NO pro athlete. If I tried to go forward with a repair/surgery he stated that there is not enough/any blood flow to the meniscus for a repair to hold. And that it would tear again.

I'm no doctor but as I mentioned above mine was repaired and the repair held. The miniscus tore again 12 years later and 9 years after that in different locations. The first was a bucket tear near the middle and the later two were near the edge. The knee was in good shape after the first surgery but now I cannot run without pain.

[Monster]

Even with an injury Butler endears himself.

https://twitter.com/timberwolves/status/967573121669705728

[Monster]

Shabazz has a DRTG like 139 DFL in the NBA if I remember correctly. If he could have just focused on defense maybe he would have became a reliable player.

I think not. I'm not sure why people ever remained excited about his offensive game either. He can't shoot, he can't dribble, I literally cannot remember a single play in which he was rewarded an assist -- that's how few of them he has, not to mention he has blinders and sometimes just refuses to make easy passes, especially in transition. He has one post move (left hook over right shoulder), he has a terribly inefficient and highly predictable runner, and he gets a putback here and there -- usually at the expense of getting back on defense so most times his effort in crashing the glass is actually selfish and hurting the team.

He has the weirdest skill set I've ever seen for a wing, modern day or earlier. Not to mention, he has become my least favorite player to watch. His game is unproductive, but just really hard to watch.

I commend him for always playing with good effort, but that in itself is sometimes a negative for him because he's out of control.

I think he's been a professional in Minnesota and I haven't heard of him complaining about his situation, even when he got completely removed from the rotation and wouldn't even get garbage minutes. It has to be difficult to see your brothers, guys you were drafted with or played against in AAU or in the off-season, out there playing and thriving while you're collecting DNP-CD's. I respect him for how he's handled it. I also think the players genuinely like Bazz and I've seen videos of him hanging out with a lot of Wolves teammates over the years. That is about all I have to say about the man and the player.

I think this is a fair post. I think what I appreciate is how Cam gives Bazz credit for being a good dude. His game hasn't evolved but he seems to have turned out to be a good human based on what we know.

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

Shams reported that Jimmy is expected to miss 4 to 6 weeks. Big test for the wolves. Lets see how far Towns and Wiggins have really come this year.

4-6 weeks is right in the middle of that 1-3 month window I had for him. If it turns out to be six weeks, he'd have enough time to practice with the team and maybe even get a couple games under his belt before the hypothetical playoffs were underway.

Towns, Teague, Gibson, and Wiggins could be able to hold it down and stay in the top-eight. Our guys need to be rewarded with playoff basketball, though. Hopefully they can get there. Might be a big boost in their confidence if they can. "Winning without Jimmy."

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

The team has basically been playing .500 ball the last 10+ games with Jimmy, so I highly doubt we can hold it together the rest of the way. Sorry, but I think this pretty much is the beginning of the end in terms of our playoff hopes this year. The West is too tough and we don't have enough padding between us and the 9th seed.

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

The team has basically been playing .500 ball the last 10+ games with Jimmy, so I highly doubt we can hold it together the rest of the way. Sorry, but I think this pretty much is the beginning of the end in terms of our playoff hopes this year. The West is too tough and we don't have enough padding between us and the 9th seed.

It very well could be [the end of Minnesota's playoff hopes], but I still see one All-Star -- perhaps All-NBA -- center, one former All-Star guard, and one inconsistent/inefficient but gifted volume scorer on the roster. The optimist in me says I'd like to think that Towns can take this team on his back and lead the way, but he might be too inexperienced for that load. I'd also like to see Teague pick up the scoring load. We know he's capable of 15-16 a night. We definitely need Aggressive Jeff going forward.

And then there's whatever we're going to get from Wiggins...

It might be enough to hang on.

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

The team has basically been playing .500 ball the last 10+ games with Jimmy, so I highly doubt we can hold it together the rest of the way. Sorry, but I think this pretty much is the beginning of the end in terms of our playoff hopes this year. The West is too tough and we don't have enough padding between us and the 9th seed.

It very well could be [the end of Minnesota's playoff hopes], but I still see one All-Star -- perhaps All-NBA -- center, one former All-Star guard, and one inconsistent/inefficient but gifted volume scorer on the roster. The optimist in me says I'd like to think that Towns can take this team on his back and lead the way, but he might be too inexperienced for that load. I'd also like to see Teague pick up the scoring load. We know he's capable of 15-16 a night. We definitely need Aggressive Jeff going forward.

And then there's whatever we're going to get from Wiggins...

It might be enough to hang on.

I'm less worried about the offense. It's the defense...we're going to go from bad to worse. KAT can score 30+ per night if he'd like. It won't matter if they can't stop anyone.

[Wolvesfan21]

Shabazz has a DRTG like 139 DFL in the NBA if I remember correctly. If he could have just focused on defense maybe he would have became a reliable player.

I think not. I'm not sure why people ever remained excited about his offensive game either. He can't shoot, he can't dribble, I literally cannot remember a single play in which he was rewarded an assist -- that's how few of them he has, not to mention he has blinders and sometimes just refuses to make easy passes, especially in transition. He has one post move (left hook over right shoulder), he has a terribly inefficient and highly predictable runner, and he gets a putback here and there -- usually at the expense of getting back on defense so most times his effort in crashing the glass is actually selfish and hurting the team.

He has the weirdest skill set I've ever seen for a wing, modern day or earlier. Not to mention, he has become my least favorite player to watch. His game is unproductive, but just really hard to watch.

I commend him for always playing with good effort, but that in itself is sometimes a negative for him because he's out of control.

I think he's been a professional in Minnesota and I haven't heard of him complaining about his situation, even when he got completely removed from the rotation and wouldn't even get garbage minutes. It has to be difficult to see your brothers, guys you were drafted with or played against in AAU or in the off-season, out there playing and thriving while you're collecting DNP-CD's. I respect him for how he's handled it. I also think the players genuinely like Bazz and I've seen videos of him hanging out with a lot of Wolves teammates over the years. That is about all I have to say about the man and the player.

He wasn't offered 10 million a year for no reason. He actually was playing decently well for a good stretch last season. I remember he was really streaky, shooting around 30% from 3 for the first part of the season maybe worse, but then he had like a month or 2 where he was close to 55% or so from 3. He offensive rebounds really well. Solid post up player.

You're right about everything else. He's overall beyond bad defensively and overall is a black hole on the offense. I was just saying if he was a good defender, he could have been a decent backup. But of course, he's not. lol

[Monster]

The team has basically been playing .500 ball the last 10+ games with Jimmy, so I highly doubt we can hold it together the rest of the way. Sorry, but I think this pretty much is the beginning of the end in terms of our playoff hopes this year. The West is too tough and we don't have enough padding between us and the 9th seed.

It very well could be [the end of Minnesota's playoff hopes], but I still see one All-Star -- perhaps All-NBA -- center, one former All-Star guard, and one inconsistent/inefficient but gifted volume scorer on the roster. The optimist in me says I'd like to think that Towns can take this team on his back and lead the way, but he might be too inexperienced for that load. I'd also like to see Teague pick up the scoring load. We know he's capable of 15-16 a night. We definitely need Aggressive Jeff going forward.

And then there's whatever we're going to get from Wiggins...

It might be enough to hang on.

I'm less worried about the offense. It's the defense...we're going to go from bad to worse. KAT can score 30+ per night if he'd like. It won't matter if they can't stop anyone.

On some nights can the Wolves have enough firepower to just outscore some teams? They might. Look at what Teague has done the past 4 games (fun to cherrypick). 22 points per game on high efficiency with 25 total assists and total of 8 turnovers. Belly can give this team some spacing and that could help Towns, Wiggins and Teague have more space to operate. Crawford is gonna play more and he can fill it up. There could be a night when 4 guys put up 20 point games. I agree the defense is my concern but this team even without Butler has some firepower to put the ball in the hoop. Without Butler they can probably play a bit differently offensively. They took 35 3's last night. It was against the Bulls but still fun to see. I'm not saying get your hopes up but there have been teams that have won plenty of games basically just outscoring teams on various nights. We will see. We need some scoreboard watching games to go our way to help out.

[Lipoli390]

The team has basically been playing .500 ball the last 10+ games with Jimmy, so I highly doubt we can hold it together the rest of the way. Sorry, but I think this pretty much is the beginning of the end in terms of our playoff hopes this year. The West is too tough and we don't have enough padding between us and the 9th seed.

It very well could be [the end of Minnesota's playoff hopes], but I still see one All-Star -- perhaps All-NBA -- center, one former All-Star guard, and one inconsistent/inefficient but gifted volume scorer on the roster. The optimist in me says I'd like to think that Towns can take this team on his back and lead the way, but he might be too inexperienced for that load. I'd also like to see Teague pick up the scoring load. We know he's capable of 15-16 a night. We definitely need Aggressive Jeff going forward.

And then there's whatever we're going to get from Wiggins...

It might be enough to hang on.

I'm less worried about the offense. It's the defense...we're going to go from bad to worse. KAT can score 30+ per night if he'd like. It won't matter if they can't stop anyone.

On some nights can the Wolves have enough firepower to just outscore some teams? They might. Look at what Teague has done the past 4 games (fun to cherrypick). 22 points per game on high efficiency with 25 total assists and total of 8 turnovers. Belly can give this team some spacing and that could help Towns, Wiggins and Teague have more space to operate. Crawford is gonna play more and he can fill it up. There could be a night when 4 guys put up 20 point games. I agree the defense is my concern but this team even without Butler has some firepower to put the ball in the hoop. Without Butler they can probably play a bit differently offensively. They took 35 3's last night. It was against the Bulls but still fun to see. I'm not saying get your hopes up but there have been teams that have won plenty of games basically just outscoring teams on various nights. We will see. We need some scoreboard watching games to go our way to help out.

Monster --

I agree that this team, even without Butler, has the firepower to outscore teams. Last night was a perfect example as the Wolves put up 120 points. Note that they scored 120 points even though both KAT and Belly grossly underperformed from behind the arc - KAT going 0-5 and Belly 1-6.

The Wolves defense surprisingly good last night. Although the Bulls shore 46.7% from the field, the Wolves did hold them to 102 points and 26% from behind the arc. I thought last night might have been Wiggins' best game of the season defensively. He was in total lock-down mode the entire game. Teague was pesky and Taj was Taj. Towns had one of his worst games defensively -- looking too much like he did the first half of the season. That can't happen again if this team is going to finish in the top 6.

I'm not going to get my hope up too high. But Cam made some good points about what we have even with Butler out, including an allstar potential all-NBA type center (Towns), a former all-star PG still in his prime (Teague), a great young volume scoring wing with all-NBA talent who has shown he can be a great lock-down defender (Wiggins), a former 6th man award winner off the bench still playing at that level (Crawford) and a super solid consistent starting PF (Gibson).

So it's important to note even without Butler, this isn't the team from last season. Thankfully, Thibs didn't just add Butler to the roster last summer. He added Gibson and Crawford while also essentially swapping Ricky for Teague. Adding Gibson was a huge upgrade over Gorgui in our starting lineup while moving Gorgui to the bench substantially strengthened our second unit. Adding Crawford was another tremendous upgrade to our second unit. Both Gibson and Crawford have also no doubt helped the younger players from last season through their leadership and mentorship both on and of the court. Even though I don't like Teague's contract, I have long since conceded that Teague was an overall upgrade over Ricky as our starting PG and I get the sense that Teague is just starting to hit his stride after a period of adjusting to a new team and then coming back from his knee injury. Finally, some of the players back from last season are clearly better. Towns is much better defensively than last season -- a product of experience but probably also a result of Butler's presence both on and off the court. And Tyus Jones is clearly better as he's proven to be an excellent second unit PG who can also play well as a starter if called upon.

Last season's team was actually playing pretty well before Zach and Belly went down. Take that team with a better Towns and the offseason additions mentioned above. That's why I still have hope this team can hang on and finish in the top 6. Unfortunately, I still see us sliding out of the top 6 if Jimmy misses all or most of our remaining games. And as I've mentioned before, if we don't finish in the top 6 I would just as soon see the Wolves slide to #9 and get another lottery pick rather than watch this team get demoralized by a lopsided sweep at the hands of the Warriors or Rockets.