CoolBreeze's 2 Things I Didn't Like Tonight Plus 1

[worldK]

This was a tough loss to swallow combined with rubios injury and he looks to be in a lot of pain.

The worst was that it was a winnable game for us.

Mo blew the inbound play when we were up 2 in regulation. Should have pass it to pek who rolled to the rim and only had payton BEHIND him and a beeline to the rim with no one near. Instead, mo pass it to martin near midcourt with defenders around him to trapped him and forced a turnover. Martin had little space to maneuver out of there since he was near midcourt and defenders just swarmed him and forced the turnover. There were still a lot of time left for 2 posessions so the magic werent going to foul immediately so no sense to forced it to martin. Rubio would have recognized the situation and dumped it to pek for a point blank layup or payton would have fouled him and put pek on the line.

Miami would be tough tom with a rejuvenated bosh and wade.

[worldK]

"Coach let me rock so I rocked." - Aaron Gordon with a shitty grin on his face. Shut up, douchebag.

That has got to be the one of the worst quote ever.

[Lipoli390]

Three general take-aways from tonight's game:

1. Rubio is a great player as measured by the positive impact he has on his team. You might recall three years ago when Ricky went down with the knee injury. At the time, the Wolves were one of the hottest teams in the NBA and most commentators proclaimed the team playoff bound. But the team dropped off the table immediately after Ricky's injury even though Love remained healthy and continued to play for a long stretch before he was hurt. Yeas, tonight's game was another illustration of Ricky's central importance to the team.

2. Wiggins biggest flaw isn't his ballhandling; it's his tendency to be passive and disappear from games. That was the knock on him coming out of Kansas and it co panties use to be a serious anchor on achieving his potential.

3. This team still lacks a legitimate backup PG and needs more ball handlers.

[TAFKASP]

Co panties? :shock:

[SameOldNudityDrew]

That Rubio injury looked bad. Like T-Hud bad. He's going to be out for awhile. Ugh, where's the ball movement going to come from now?

I don't know anything about Aaron Gordon as a person (though his quote and haircut aren't doing him any favors by me), but that kid looks awesome as a player. He looked like a mini-Blake Griffin with really good defense. It's one game, but could he end up being the best player out of this really deep draft?

It really hurts that we let them beat us with their rookies, Payton and Gordon basically. We've got more vets and really should have been able to pull this one out.

I hope we learn from this game and co panties use to be competitive down the stretch of games like in Brooklyn.

[SameOldNudityDrew]

Also, I think at one point we had a lineup of LaVine, Martin and Brewer or Wiggins out there with Young and Dieng down low. That lineup was pretty exposed to Orlando's physical style of play. Dieng is big but tends to play with more finesse (holy cow, nice 2nd quarter by the way!). And Young is strong but still going against bigger 4s generally. Getting Pek, Bennett (if he would play down low more), and Muhammad in can help with our physicality (even Hummel a little bit), so we have the players who can give us that style, but not many. Turiaf off the bench if needed. This isn't a big problem, but just an observation.

I can't think of a team with skinnier players than some of our guys.

Where was Bennett tonight?

[Phenom]

One thing I really didn't like was one of Flip's substitutions. Martin's offense took a sharp decline as the game was going on. I was losing confidence in his jumper by the minute. Taking Wiggins out for Brewer late in the game was not cool considering how poor Corey is playing right now. I think a few plays for Wiggins to merely shoot some jumpers would have been enough this game. I don't understand that one at all. If the idea is to throw Wiggins into the fire, what better time than when no one else can buy a jumper?

Early in the broadcast they mentioned that Bennett was "getting worked on" so he must not have been 100% otherwise another poor choice as his offensive skill could have been used as well.

[bleedspeed]

Ridnour looked good. He would have been a good backup PG for us. I would have prefered him over Mo Williams. Not that I hate Mo, just felt Ridnour was always asked to do to much here.

[khans2k5 [enjin:6608728]]

The only thing I haven't liked about Flip's rotations is the wing veterans have been outplayed by the young guys so far this year and yet Bazz and Wiggins (to a lesser degree) still have to fight for playing time every night against guys who aren't really bringing it night in and night out right now. Corey finally stepped up tonight, but if the young guys earn it on the court, you have to give them the time regardless of how the vets feel. They are vets. They should know if you get outplayed, you don't play. The way Bazz has played consistently this year should be enough to make him the first wing off the bench. Also, I don't think Wiggins is being passive. I think we don't run too many plays for him because we have better offensive options right now than to try to have a rookie who is still developing an offensive game be a guy who gets a lot of touches on offense. He's not exactly in a position to demand the ball either because he doesn't have the experience or skill to be able to do that yet.

Finally, why does the second unit always have such little ball movement. It's like they don't even call any plays outside of pick and rolls. The whole offense is run the pick and roll with Mo and have him take a jumpshot or pass the ball and try again. I liked getting Dieng the ball at the free throw line because he showed he can hit the shot and hit cutters if they get to the rim. I'd like to see them at least pass the ball to get the pick and roll moving side to side a little more than always have it at the top of the key. The two-man game players like Martin and Brewer have shown to play on the wings don't require almost any ball handling because of the passing action back and forth so that should be a go to for the second unit with guys other than Mo to give that offense a little more diversity because it is pretty much like last year where we live and die by the backup PG's shooting night. If you give Bazz more PT we have a few plays dedicated to post ups. Throw in some Dieng post action and pick and pop with Bennett and the second unit should have a diverse enough offense to not continually run the pick and roll practically every play. That is important because Mo doesn't attack the rim at all so the pick and roll is not the greatest play to run to begin with if the guard isn't going to pressure the defense with anything more than a jumpshot. At least Ricky goes at the rim even if he doesn't intend to shoot it because it forces the defense to have to provide help to stop the layup so it opens up better ball movement to get a better shot. That's the main reason why the second unit offense has been mostly stagnant with guys like JJ and Mo at the helm when the shooting just isn't there. That's part of the reason why I'll be excited to watch some Lavine action now. If he can attack the rim it should open up the second team offense a little more.

[Bayou Wolf [enjin:6635650]]

I understand that Martin was ice cold in the 4th and overtime, but he is a shooter, and they were giving him wide open looks. While frustrating, it is hard to say stop shooting wide open threes...probably didn't need to take 11 or12 of them though. Getting absolutely killed on the boards didn't help either.