Opener T pups vs Raptors GDT

[KG4Ever]

Gobert and Conley were the only guys shooting well tonight.

[KG4Ever]

Our best player is sitting, so this isn't too surprising.

[kekgeek]

On to next one

[Crazysauce]

Typical karl stat padder Towns. Looking more like Carl Winslow

[WildWolf2813]

expected loss. They never win in Toronto. Just couldn't get shots to fall.

Different game with McDaniels.

[Q-is-here]

Tough loss. Not to make excuses, but I thought Toronto was really good defensively and made Ant and KAT take a bunch of tough shots.

We also saw the same old problem crop up where we try to force the ball into Rudy who is rim-running. Over half the time it results in a turnover.

[KG4Ever]

Maybe move Naw to second unit and start SloMo.

[Q-is-here]

Matt Ryan 3 of 4 from three so far with 9 points for Pelicans in 2nd quarter

Of course! All former Wolves shoot the ball well when they leave.

Incredible. Ended up going 3-6 from 3 and was a +20 in only 14 minutes of action. Could have used that version of Matt Ryan off our bench tonight!

[60WinTim]

I love you ANT acknowledges his deficiencies and strives to do better:


Jon Krawczynski @JonKrawczynski
Anthony Edwards on the offensive struggles: "Started with me not moving the ball. I don’t know what I was doing tonight, but I’ll get back to it. We’ll be all right."

[Lipoli390]

Tough loss. Not to make excuses, but I thought Toronto was really good defensively and made Ant and KAT take a bunch of tough shots.

We also saw the same old problem crop up where we try to force the ball into Rudy who is rim-running. Over half the time it results in a turnover.

I’m not too concerned about tonight’s loss to a pretty good team on their home court in their season opener. We won’t see both Ant and KAT shoot this poorly very often if at all the rest of the season. KAT missed a lot of shots he typically makes. He had a horrendous shooting night. If he simply had a bad shooting night the Wolves would have won in spite of Ant’s poor shooting. And we will likely have Jaden in the starting lineup for most of the next 81 games. I like NAW, but the difference between him and Jaden is huge.

Two aspects of the Wolves performance tonight concern me longer term:

1. Repeatedly attempting to force the ball into Rudy. As you pointed out, it too often results in turnovers. More fundamentally, it stifles offensive flow and ball movement. This team won’t go very far this season if it’s going to rely on Gobert rim runs as a significant portion of the offense. Watching tonight’s game was a reminder that we still don’t know if the KAT-Rudy pairing will work. KAT was terrible tonight, but I can’t get too excited about Rudy shooting 50% on 12 shots that were all at the rim or his -11. We’ll just have to see if the coaching staff can make this work. There’s still plenty of time.

2. The disparity in fast break points. I don’t see this team going far this season with that kind of fast break disparity. This is a space and pace League. The Wolves had poor space and pace tonight. It’s hard to win in the NBA relying heavily on half court offense and even harder when you don’t get back defensively. Part of the issue is that this team still doesn’t have an identity. We were a fast-paced, athletic high energy team two seasons ago. Last season we lost that identity as we tried to reorient the team around Rudy and relied heavily on Slo Mo but didn’t really establish an alternative identify. We’ll have to see how things develop this season.

Again, it’s just one game. So my two concerns aren’t alarm bells in my head. They’re just a couple of things need to be worked out in the next few weeks.