15-4

[Carlos Danger]

We were 10-9 last year after 19 games. Pretty much same team except following swaps:

* Conley for DLO as starting PG
* NAW for Nowell
* Shake for Rivers

I'm thinking Meatloaf might have an opinion on those three swaps...

Two out of Three ain't bad?

[FNG]

We were 10-9 last year after 19 games. Pretty much same team except following swaps:

* Conley for DLO as starting PG
* NAW for Nowell
* Shake for Rivers

I'm thinking Meatloaf might have an opinion on those three swaps...

Two out of Three ain't bad?

Bingo!

Although I'm still in the camp that Milton is going to figure it out and will end up an upgrade over Rivers. So far not though.

[Carlos Danger]

I'm thinking Meatloaf might have an opinion on those three swaps...

Two out of Three ain't bad?

Bingo!

Although I'm still in the camp that Milton is going to figure it out and will end up an upgrade over Rivers. So far not though.

Cool. My second choice was "I'd do anything for love" but I figured it out FNG

[FNG]

Two out of Three ain't bad?

Bingo!

Although I'm still in the camp that Milton is going to figure it out and will end up an upgrade over Rivers. So far not though.

Cool. My second choice was "I'd do anything for love" but I figured it out FNG

That would have been a good guess too, Anthony. A lot of people don't remember the lyrics to one of the verses: "I would do anything for love, but I won't pass on Steph Curry twice in the first round of the draft".

[Coolbreeze44]

The Celtics go down, that makes a new team #1 in the association. The Celts are soooo yesterday's news.

[Monster]

https://theathletic.com/5106970/2023/12 ... ign=601983

Great article by Jon K that explains the identity of this Wolves team...they eschew load management and play if they are healthy. Specifically he mentions Rudy being put on the injury list the day of a game. Typically that signals that player needs a day off and isn't going to play that night, and that's what I assumed it meant here. But no, Rudy played, and we won the game because he played.

I still think Finchie leaves his players out on the court far too long when we have a double digit lead with not much time left, and I hope it doesn't end up hurting us at some point. But he may be using this technique to instill a toughness in the team that doesn't exist with other teams in this "load management era".

At 15-4, I'm going to conclude Finchie is right.

This franchise had a losing culture for the better part of it's 30+ years of existence. It takes time to rid itself of that culture. We are well on our way to a 3rd consecutive season of having a winning record, which hasn't happened since the 2003-2005 timeframe - almost 20 years!

Because of our past, I am mostly in agreement that we need to keep our foot on the pedal and maximize our regular season success. We can't consider ourselves contenders until we can prove we can win enough games in the regular season to at least get a top 4 playoff seeding.

However, assuming we keep up our winning ways, Finchie & Co. are going to need to turn their eyes toward the playoffs at some point. Mike Conley is by far the guy I'm worried about the most. If we are still on a path to a top 4 seed come January, they need to seriously consider sitting him selectively from that point forward. If not, he's bound to get hurt or simply have tired legs by the time the playoffs come around. And he's far too valuable to us for that to happen.

I will preface this by saying I have been watching games much later and sometimes multiple games in one day but I think at least a couple of games when the starters stayed in a game a little later than expected the Wolves had at least a couple days off coming up. It’s also still somewhat early in the season and Finch may want to get some more minutes in real game for the top guys all together.

I’ll add that a couple guys like Shake that could get minutes towards the end of a game don’t exactly inspire a great deal of confidence. The Wolves best 2 healthy PGs are starters in Conley and NAW and then you have Andersonbut he has been a mixed bag playmaker this year. Brown is already playing meaningful minutes and sometimes starting. I’d like to see some of the younger guys get in there but I’m not sure it’s a big deal for a minute or 2 more in a game.

As for Conley…it would help if McLaughlin was available to play. If he can return healthy and reasonably effective he could help keep Conley’s minutes down and give the Wolves another effective guard and one that would be good to play with those young less experienced players at the end of games. Right now the Wolves don’t really have a true PG to do that unless they throw Anderson out there but I’d be cool with keeping his minutes down too. Conley is averaging 29.5 minutes a game so it’s not like they are playing him a ton.