Pels at Wolves GDT

[Lipoli390]

We’re a good team. Our record is better than we actually are. Ultimately we are the 4th or 5th best team in the West with the ability to punch way above our weight when everything aligns. As far as I can tell that is pretty much where most of us thought we would be. Were a few moves away and still another Edwards/McDaniels bump from us being great. Ill enjoy any noise we can make this year. More playoff reps for Edwards and McDaniels (if he can stay on the court) is a good thing.

Doper, I'm probably as frustrated with the last 5 games as anyone here, but I still think we are a great team rather than a good team. Any team that leads (or is close to leading the Association) in defense most of the year, has 2 20 point scorers in the starting lineup and a potential 6th man of the year candidate in Reid, ranks 5th in the league in 3-point percentage and 7th in overall shooting, and has steady veteran leadership at PG, is great in my opinion...especially when you add they have led the West most of the season despite a difficult first third of the season schedule. But we have not played like a great team the past five games...far from it. But I think the issues are fixable, or not as bad as they looked last night. Take rebounding for instance. We were pathetic on the boards last night, but rebounding has actually been a strength this season...we have the 6th best rebound differential.

But Finchie nailed the most important area that needs to be fixed in his post gamer last night...moving and protecting the ball. We rank 26th in assist to turnover ratio, and three of the four teams behind us suck...Memphis, Portland and Detroit. I'm not absolving Finchie of some of the blame here...I think he needs to do more than just talk about fixing this issue, he needs to do something. Benching a player after a careless or stupid play sends more of a message than lamenting turnovers in a post game presser. I need Finchie to be tougher, and I'm still wondering if he is the right guy to be coaching this club. I suspect that new ownership is going through the same evaluation.

I have absolutely nothing against Finch, but it isn't unusual at all for teams on the ascendant to make a coaching change and subsequently go from "great team" to "NBA Champion" within a season or two after the change:

Early 80s Boston Celtics - Bill Fitch to KC Jones
Early 80s Lakers - Paul Westhead to Pat Riley
Late 80s/Early 90s Bulls - Doug Collins to Phil Jackson
Late 90s Spurs - Bob Hill to Greg Popovich
Early 2000s Lakers - Del Harris to Phil Jackson
2010s Warriors - Mark Jackson to Steve Kerr

In all of these cases, the stars of the team were mostly in place and they were really good before the coaching change.

The bottom line is that sometimes a good team gets sort of stuck or stagnant and a coaching change is one of the easiest levers for the front office to pull. With the exception of us getting to the Finals this year, it wouldn't surprise me at all if we made a change this offseason now that ARod and Lore are majority owners.

Again, it's not about Finch being bad. It just might mean he took us from Point A to Point B. We may need a jolt of new thinking and style to help us take the next step.

A different coach isn’t going to get us from point A to point B. Too many have overrated our personnel based on the team playing over it’s head for the first six weeks of the season. When you look at box scores around the league, you see the good teams typically with at least 4 players, often 5 or 6 with double-digit scoring totals. We typically have three — Ant, KAT and either Rudy or sometimes Naz, NAW or Jaden. We have the fourth worst PPG average in the Western Conference. We actually have only three good scorers on the entire 14-man roster - Ant, KAT and Naz. I like NAW (love his defense), but he’s higher in the rotation than he should be given his talent. We’re not nearly deep enough - especially offensively. Our best player is barely 22 years old and has a lot to learn. He’s progressing, but he’s very young. Jaden isn’t progressing and that’s a big deal. KAT has improved defensively, but his basketball IQ is still subpar (bad fouls and dumb passes continue), and you can’t optimize his offense in a two-big lineup with Rudy. Rudy has terrible hands and an uniquely limited game in today’s NBA. He’s a true dinosaur.

If you take a step back and look at our roster soberly and objectively, it’s really not that impressive. It just isn’t. As Doper noted, we’re certainly a playoff team and should finish no worse than 5th or 6th. I can see us finishing 4th. But don’t know how we can look at this roster and conclude that it’s a great team. We’re a good team, perhaps a very good team. But we’re not a championship contender this season and no coaching change or minor personnel tweaks will change that. If Ant continues to develop year to hear as he has been, Jaden suddenly takes a big step forward (which I’m beginning to think will never happen), and we upgrade the bench beyond Naz, then perhaps this team will become a contender. The Bulls made the Eastern Conference finals before they replaced Collins with Phil Jackson. That’s the point when you know you have the personnel but just need another coach to get you over the hump. We’re nowhere near that point. This last stretch of five games reflects our flawed personnel, not our head coach.

[FNG]

Lip, Lip, Lip. You mention that we are not a high-scoring team, and you are correct. But there are two ways to win basketball games...either by scoring more points than the other team (the Milwaukee Bucks strategy) or by limiting the other team to fewer points than you score. The latter is this team's identity, and we are doing a good job of it. You correctly say that we have the 4th lowest PPG in the Western Conference, but you neglect to say that we give up the fewest points in the entire Association...almost 2 PPG fewer than any other team!

It might be more fun to go to games if we played more like Indiana, scoring 127 PPG while largely ignoring the other end of the court...I admit it might be more entertaining. But I prefer our identity to the Pacers', and I would argue it is a more sustainable identity in the playoffs. I'll point out last year's Heat as a good example. They finished dead last in the Association in PPG, scoring a full 3 points fewer per game than our Wolves are scoring this season! But because of a gritty defense, they made it to the NBA finals, dispatching high-scoring Milwaukee and Boston along the way.

All that said, I admit that we may not be as good as our gaudy 24-9 record might indicate, because we have had an enormous amount of good fortune this season with being relatively healthy while our opponents have not been. Several here talk about the glorious 2021-2 season when we won 46 games. But I have pointed out a number of times how misleading that record was. I believe we only had 5 wins that season against teams with winning records not missing it's best player or players. I argued that we were really more like a 38-win team that year, and to be intellectually honest, we are probably more of a 21-12 team this season...we've had a lot of luck. But still, any team that both protects the rim and aggressively defends the perimeter is going to find itself somewhere near the top of the Association.

But I want more from this team. We have not played well in the past five games, but as others have pointed out, all teams go through a stretch where they are not playing their best basketball. It was disgraceful to get so badly outrebounded by the Pelicans this week, especially considering we have been a good rebounding all season (6th best rebounding differential). But let's not forget that we are getting toward the end of a brutal stretch of games that we were all dreading as we looked ahead to it, and we have handled it with a winning record. It's not surprising to me that the team is worn out after playing such a grueling stretch of games. We looked tired Wednesday night, and that has really impacted our turnovers and poor rebounding. I think we are the team that was dominant the first 28 games of the season, not the team that has struggled while going 2-3 the past week and a half. But of course I don't know. I want to see a much better effort tonight against Houston.

But Lip...don't expect is to score a lot of points tonight. Houston gives up the second fewest points in the league this season!

Go Wolves!

[thedoper]

We’re a good team. Our record is better than we actually are. Ultimately we are the 4th or 5th best team in the West with the ability to punch way above our weight when everything aligns. As far as I can tell that is pretty much where most of us thought we would be. Were a few moves away and still another Edwards/McDaniels bump from us being great. Ill enjoy any noise we can make this year. More playoff reps for Edwards and McDaniels (if he can stay on the court) is a good thing.

Doper, I'm probably as frustrated with the last 5 games as anyone here, but I still think we are a great team rather than a good team. Any team that leads (or is close to leading the Association) in defense most of the year, has 2 20 point scorers in the starting lineup and a potential 6th man of the year candidate in Reid, ranks 5th in the league in 3-point percentage and 7th in overall shooting, and has steady veteran leadership at PG, is great in my opinion...especially when you add they have led the West most of the season despite a difficult first third of the season schedule. But we have not played like a great team the past five games...far from it. But I think the issues are fixable, or not as bad as they looked last night. Take rebounding for instance. We were pathetic on the boards last night, but rebounding has actually been a strength this season...we have the 6th best rebound differential.

But Finchie nailed the most important area that needs to be fixed in his post gamer last night...moving and protecting the ball. We rank 26th in assist to turnover ratio, and three of the four teams behind us suck...Memphis, Portland and Detroit. I'm not absolving Finchie of some of the blame here...I think he needs to do more than just talk about fixing this issue, he needs to do something. Benching a player after a careless or stupid play sends more of a message than lamenting turnovers in a post game presser. I need Finchie to be tougher, and I'm still wondering if he is the right guy to be coaching this club. I suspect that new ownership is going through the same evaluation.

I like that you think we are great but Im not so sure. I want to believe it but in spite of our promising D, our offense is below average. I think the turnovers are key to that too. Also, we haven't led the league in defense most of the year yet, we aren't even halfway. We have been really good in a third of the season though. I dont know if that was we came out as front runners who were actually playing D early or if we have a sustainable, great defense. We will see but there has been a dip for sure.

[60WinTim]

What's encouraging is the Wolves strength of schedule ranks #2 going into tonight (Sagarin ranks it at #4). And we have the 2nd best record in the league right now?!? I'll take that. Because conversely, our remaining schedule is the #2 softest! Of course, that doesn't seem to apply to our next 4 games...