Jaden out multiple weeks

[Carlos Danger]

I'm going to catch some crap for this, but I'd say most replaceable starter is Towns. It sounds insane (I know), especially how well he's playing lately. But we didn't collapse last year without him. Naz and Garza are both offense first guys who can give us some of what we'd lose in Towns (but obviously neither is as good, so I'm not saying there won't be a drop off). If we had a solid backup at PG, I'd say Conley. But we don't. So I feel there would be a greater drop off with replacing Conley than Towns at this moment.

And Edwards has to be the guy that would hurt the most to lose. IMO he's the engine on this team. How you gonna replace 26 points/game? Your not.

[Lipoli390]

I'm going to catch some crap for this, but I'd say most replaceable starter is Towns. It sounds insane (I know), especially how well he's playing lately. But we didn't collapse last year without him. Naz and Garza are both offense first guys who can give us some of what we'd lose in Towns (but obviously neither is as good, so I'm not saying there won't be a drop off). If we had a solid backup at PG, I'd say Conley. But we don't. So I feel there would be a greater drop off with replacing Conley than Towns at this moment.

And Edwards has to be the guy that would hurt the most to lose. IMO he's the engine on this team. How you gonna replace 26 points/game? Your not.

Actually, we did collapse without Town last season, falling from 46 wins to 42 in spite of adding Slo Mo and Rudy along with having substantially improved versions of Ant and Jaden. If you look back at last season’s games down the stretch after Towns returned, it’s clear KAT was instrumental in winning those critical few games at the end to put us in the play-in tournament. KAT brings career numbers of 23 points, 11 rebounds,3 assists and 1.3 blocks to the table. And his scoring is highly efficient. That’s really hard to replace and as much as I love Naz, he can’t bring what KAT brings.

Added to all that this season is the fact that KAT is playing outstanding defense to go along with his elite scoring and high-level rebounding. Neither Naz nor Luka can come close to providing what KAT provides. There can be no doubt that the Wolves would have fewer than 10 wins if KAT wasn’t playing in all of the past five games.

No matter how you slice it, Ant and KAT remain the key pillars of this team as elite scorers who are playing terrific defense, rebounding the ball and facilitating for teammates. They are the team’s only two reliable elite scorers on a team that has been great defensively but struggling a bit offensively. KAT is particularly important because his efficient scoring complements Ant’s relative inefficient scoring. Naz can’t score as efficiently, rebound or pass as well as KAT.

I’ll add that I don’t even want to think about losing Conley or Rudy for an extended period. Both have been great. Hopefully Jaden will be back ASAP because we’ll need all of our five starters healthy to secure a top 4 seed in the West and advance in the playoffs.

If the choice is between losing KAT or losing Ant, I agree that losing Ant would be worse. But having both remains critical to this team’s success. Meanwhile the other three starters are also really important. I don’t want to trade any of them and I want them all healthy.

[Carlos Danger]

I'm going to catch some crap for this, but I'd say most replaceable starter is Towns. It sounds insane (I know), especially how well he's playing lately. But we didn't collapse last year without him. Naz and Garza are both offense first guys who can give us some of what we'd lose in Towns (but obviously neither is as good, so I'm not saying there won't be a drop off). If we had a solid backup at PG, I'd say Conley. But we don't. So I feel there would be a greater drop off with replacing Conley than Towns at this moment.

And Edwards has to be the guy that would hurt the most to lose. IMO he's the engine on this team. How you gonna replace 26 points/game? Your not.

Actually, we did collapse without Town last season, falling from 46 wins to 42 in spite of adding Slo Mo and Rudy along with having substantially improved versions of Ant and Jaden. If you look back at last season’s games down the stretch after Towns returned, it’s clear KAT was instrumental in winning those critical few games at the end to put us in the play-in tournament. KAT brings career numbers of 23 points, 11 rebounds,3 assists and 1.3 blocks to the table. And his scoring is highly efficient. That’s really hard to replace and as much as I love Naz, he can’t bring what KAT brings.

Added to all that this season is the fact that KAT is playing outstanding defense to go along with his elite scoring and high-level rebounding. Neither Naz nor Luka can come close to providing what KAT provides. There can be no doubt that the Wolves would have fewer than 10 wins if KAT wasn’t playing in all of the past five games.

No matter how you slice it, Ant and KAT remain the key pillars of this team as elite scorers who are playing terrific defense, rebounding the ball and facilitating for teammates. They are the team’s only two reliable elite scorers on a team that has been great defensively but struggling a bit offensively. KAT is particularly important because his efficient scoring complements Ant’s relative inefficient scoring. Naz can’t score as efficiently, rebound or pass as well as KAT.

I’ll add that I don’t even want to think about losing Conley or Rudy for an extended period. Both have been great. Hopefully Jaden will be back ASAP because we’ll need all of our five starters healthy to secure a top 4 seed in the West and advance in the playoffs.

If the choice is between losing KAT or losing Ant, I agree that losing Ant would be worse. But having both remains critical to this team’s success. Meanwhile the other three starters are also really important. I don’t want to trade any of them and I want them all healthy.

We have different definitions of the word "collapse". It was a 4 win difference between the two seasons - we held up fine without Towns IMO. Part of that was the depth at big which I referenced.

[Monster]

It sucks McDaniels is hurt. One of the games before he got hurt he was showing a little more O to his game which I like seeing. He is still fouling too much.

Troy Brown Jr is an obvious lesser version of what McDaniels brings to the team. He is a better rebounder. He has a lesser role so far but I think there is a chance he turns out to be a better FA signing than Shake…if Shake doesn’t figure things out. Brown played a solid role for the Lakers last year. It’s not a guarantee he is up for solid minutes but I like his chances. He doesn’t have to blow anyone away just be solid. I think he has a chance to become a really solid bench player someone that’s valuable like Prince was a guy that can give you good minutes as a rotation guy or even as a starter filling in for someone. Unfortunately it looks like he is gonna get some minute for a while so we will see.