2024 Wolves Draft thread

[Q-is-here]

As I see it, the Wolves have three significant needs for next season:

1. Better outside shooting/scoring off the bench. This won’t come from within and the second apron leaves us only two options - the draft, and a vet minimum free agent signing. Neither option is particularly reliable.

2. Another high quality ball-handler who creates for himself and others to take some of that burden off Ant’s shoulders. I don’t see this coming from within either, except perhaps from a significantly improved Jaden.

3. More toughness. As good as we were defensively, I don’t think this team is mentally or physically tough enough to win an NBA championship. It’s telling that our two best defensive players, Rudy and Jaden, are not physically strong. Jaden will get physically stronger and seems to have a lot of fight in him. But Rudy is easily overpowered physically and that’s not going to change. There’s no toughness in him. This is something we could remedy with a vet minimum FA signing, although I don’t have anyone in mind at the moment.

Lip, don't you think almost every team out there wants more scoring/shooting off their benches? But here are the 3-point shooting stats for some of our bench players:

Naz: 41.4%
NAW: 39.1%
JMac: 47.2%
Morris: 42.4%

Granted the last two guys averaged fewer than one make per game. But I don't know that I can come up with any team that had 4 rotation reserves making more than 39.1% of their threes. Certainly not any of the three teams we faced in the playoffs, and not Boston either. We have guys who can make shots on our bench. The question is: is Finchie utilizing them properly?

As we've talked about before FNG, volume matters. All those guys you listed are reliable catch and shoot 3 pt shooters (well, at least in the regular season they were), but their defenders aren't desperately chasing them around and over the top of screens to contest their attempts, i.e. none of them are dangerous movement shooters. That matters to an offense because a lot of defenders lay off an extra step from a stationary shooter and provide gap help on drives while still being able to scramble back for a decent contest.

Boston and Dallas were #1 and #2 respectively during the regular season in terms of 3 point attempts. The Wolves were 23rd. And Kyle Anderson especially was an albatross that hung over the neck of our offense.

We can literally never have enough shooters on this team.

[FNG]

As I see it, the Wolves have three significant needs for next season:

1. Better outside shooting/scoring off the bench. This won’t come from within and the second apron leaves us only two options - the draft, and a vet minimum free agent signing. Neither option is particularly reliable.

2. Another high quality ball-handler who creates for himself and others to take some of that burden off Ant’s shoulders. I don’t see this coming from within either, except perhaps from a significantly improved Jaden.

3. More toughness. As good as we were defensively, I don’t think this team is mentally or physically tough enough to win an NBA championship. It’s telling that our two best defensive players, Rudy and Jaden, are not physically strong. Jaden will get physically stronger and seems to have a lot of fight in him. But Rudy is easily overpowered physically and that’s not going to change. There’s no toughness in him. This is something we could remedy with a vet minimum FA signing, although I don’t have anyone in mind at the moment.

Lip, don't you think almost every team out there wants more scoring/shooting off their benches? But here are the 3-point shooting stats for some of our bench players:

Naz: 41.4%
NAW: 39.1%
JMac: 47.2%
Morris: 42.4%

Granted the last two guys averaged fewer than one make per game. But I don't know that I can come up with any team that had 4 rotation reserves making more than 39.1% of their threes. Certainly not any of the three teams we faced in the playoffs, and not Boston either. We have guys who can make shots on our bench. The question is: is Finchie utilizing them properly?

As we've talked about before FNG, volume matters. All those guys you listed are reliable catch and shoot 3 pt shooters (well, at least in the regular season they were), but their defenders aren't desperately chasing them around and over the top of screens to contest their attempts, i.e. none of them are dangerous movement shooters. That matters to an offense because a lot of defenders lay off an extra step from a stationary shooter and provide gap help on drives while still being able to scramble back for a decent contest.

Boston and Dallas were #1 and #2 respectively during the regular season in terms of 3 point attempts. The Wolves were 23rd. And Kyle Anderson especially was an albatross that hung over the neck of our offense.

We can literally never have enough shooters on this team.

I get that volume matters, Q. But I was refuting Lip’s point that we need more scoring/shooting from our bench. I think we sometimes struggled to stop the other team from scoring, but I thought our bench offense was pretty good. You say that defenders weren’t desperately chasing our bench shooters around. But what bench players on Boston, Dallas, and Denver were defenses really focused on? Our bench’s points per minute ranks right up there with the teams that went deep in the playoffs, and our 3 point shooting percentage off our bench was excellent. My point was almost every team wants more scoring and shooting from their bench. But there’s a reason bench players aren’t starters! I just don’t see it as a major issue for our team compared to our competition.

[Q-is-here]

Lip, don't you think almost every team out there wants more scoring/shooting off their benches? But here are the 3-point shooting stats for some of our bench players:

Naz: 41.4%
NAW: 39.1%
JMac: 47.2%
Morris: 42.4%

Granted the last two guys averaged fewer than one make per game. But I don't know that I can come up with any team that had 4 rotation reserves making more than 39.1% of their threes. Certainly not any of the three teams we faced in the playoffs, and not Boston either. We have guys who can make shots on our bench. The question is: is Finchie utilizing them properly?

As we've talked about before FNG, volume matters. All those guys you listed are reliable catch and shoot 3 pt shooters (well, at least in the regular season they were), but their defenders aren't desperately chasing them around and over the top of screens to contest their attempts, i.e. none of them are dangerous movement shooters. That matters to an offense because a lot of defenders lay off an extra step from a stationary shooter and provide gap help on drives while still being able to scramble back for a decent contest.

Boston and Dallas were #1 and #2 respectively during the regular season in terms of 3 point attempts. The Wolves were 23rd. And Kyle Anderson especially was an albatross that hung over the neck of our offense.

We can literally never have enough shooters on this team.

I get that volume matters, Q. But I was refuting Lip’s point that we need more scoring/shooting from our bench. I think we sometimes struggled to stop the other team from scoring, but I thought our bench offense was pretty good. You say that defenders weren’t desperately chasing our bench shooters around. But what bench players on Boston, Dallas, and Denver were defenses really focused on? Our bench’s points per minute ranks right up there with the teams that went deep in the playoffs, and our 3 point shooting percentage off our bench was excellent. My point was almost every team wants more scoring and shooting from their bench. But there’s a reason bench players aren’t starters! I just don’t see it as a major issue for our team compared to our competition.

Assuming we are running it back with the existing starters, the bench is really the only lever Connelly has to improve our #17 offense through player personnel moves (versus schemes or organic development). I also think our best player in Ant benefits most by being surrounded by shooting. It's why I think there is a real opportunity with Kyle Anderson becoming a free agent.

[rapsuperstar31]

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/557973 ... ards-2024/


Good stuff from the athletic, I'll just post what they said about Shannon.

Terrence Shannon Jr. | 6-6 SG/SF | 23 years old | Illinois
Western Conference executive No. 1: Initially, a nice rotational piece every night in the regular season. He’s going to get buckets. There’s going to be some nights where you scratch your head and say ‘Did he just shoot that?’ And then there’s going to be other nights when he goes for 25, 28, and you’re like, wow. He’s a man. He should be able to step in next year, because he can compete athletically, he can compete physically. And, when he wants to defend, he can. Offensively, he can go get it. I truly believe he will be, at this time next year, in the conversation for First Team All-Rookie. At worst, second team. In most cases, he will be drafted by a pretty good team. I think he’s going to be late teens at best, 20s and worst. And those are playoff teams. They have guys that know how to play. Their roles are already defined.
Is it going to take a while? Yes. But he knows the landscape of what’s in front of him. He is not a consistent defender. His role at Illinois the past two years has been, it’s fallen on his shoulders to do so much scoring, and creating offensively. But when he wanted to lock in, he can get into guys. He can get into people. Is he a Herb Jones? No. Herb is an every possession guy. Terrence, there’s going to be some times when there’s some mental lapses. But then usually, he’s going to make it up for you and will get it back with a steal three or four possessions later.

College assistant coach No. 6 (his team played Illinois): He is a good player. Really good player. He’s the best player in college that I saw last year driving the ball in transition. It’s like LeBron in his heyday — those Miami days where he would just drive the ball as hard as he could, and run right into you. That’s what Shannon did. We’d have two guys standing there, locked arms, and he would run right into you. He’s a decent 3-point shooter. I question his character a little. They say he’s a hard worker, though. He prides himself, (Illinois coach) Brad Underwood swears he’s one of the best defenders in the country. But he played us and he could not wait for somebody to come up and set a screen so he could switch. But the kid is fearless. He’s got an incredible, athletic body. And he can run. He is a very, very talented player.

College Assistant coach No. 3 (his team played Illinois): Love him. He’s one of the guys that, he has gotten better since he’s transferred to Illinois from Texas Tech. He’s definitely been in the gym working on his game. Tough, competitor. Shot has gotten a lot better. Competes on both ends. Very fast with the ball. What it will look like at the next level, I’m not sure. He has good positional size, and he’s just tough and he competes. He’s a better player than (Cam) Christie, and I think he’ll be a better pro than Christie as well. … He’s a little older. I liked him as a kid. I didn’t see him as being a guy that was a locker room guy. From what I know, teammates, (and) our guys got along with him. Inner city Chicago. Always a tough kid. I don’t think he had any underlying issues, if that makes sense. I don’t see him as being that type of kid.

Eastern Conference executive No 2: He’s a damn good defender. Shooting is a little sporadic, but it’s gotten better. You talk about tough, now. He’s tough as s—. If he goes to a certain team, I could see him starting next year. He could start for us, probably.

Eastern Conference executive No. 5: As early as late lottery (post-dismissal). His age (23) may be a factor for rebuilding teams.
Top

[Lipoli390]

As we've talked about before FNG, volume matters. All those guys you listed are reliable catch and shoot 3 pt shooters (well, at least in the regular season they were), but their defenders aren't desperately chasing them around and over the top of screens to contest their attempts, i.e. none of them are dangerous movement shooters. That matters to an offense because a lot of defenders lay off an extra step from a stationary shooter and provide gap help on drives while still being able to scramble back for a decent contest.

Boston and Dallas were #1 and #2 respectively during the regular season in terms of 3 point attempts. The Wolves were 23rd. And Kyle Anderson especially was an albatross that hung over the neck of our offense.

We can literally never have enough shooters on this team.

I get that volume matters, Q. But I was refuting Lip’s point that we need more scoring/shooting from our bench. I think we sometimes struggled to stop the other team from scoring, but I thought our bench offense was pretty good. You say that defenders weren’t desperately chasing our bench shooters around. But what bench players on Boston, Dallas, and Denver were defenses really focused on? Our bench’s points per minute ranks right up there with the teams that went deep in the playoffs, and our 3 point shooting percentage off our bench was excellent. My point was almost every team wants more scoring and shooting from their bench. But there’s a reason bench players aren’t starters! I just don’t see it as a major issue for our team compared to our competition.

Assuming we are running it back with the existing starters, the bench is really the only lever Connelly has to improve our #17 offense through player personnel moves (versus schemes or organic development). I also think our best player in Ant benefits most by being surrounded by shooting. It's why I think there is a real opportunity with Kyle Anderson becoming a free agent.

I’ll stand behind Q’s responses - not in front of them.

We were knocked out fairly easily by Dallas in the Western Conference finals after finishing 3rd in the regular season. Meanwhile OKC has improved already through the trade for Caruso and they have lots of assets and transactional flexibility to improve even more. The Rockets are an up and coming team with the 3rd pick in the draft, which they could parley into a player or players who, combined with the natural improvement of their young guys, could vault them into contender status. Mavs will start the season as the team they were after the trade deadline this past season, which means they start the season as the team that made the NBA finals, not the team that finished 5th in the regular season. Denver will be just as good but better rested and probably hungrier. That’s a long way of saying Wolves have to improve simply to avoid slipping and certainly to have any chance of making the finals. When you then consider how great Boston is, the Wolves have to improve substantially to have a chance at winning a ring next year.

So how do we improve? We can’t expect to significantly improve our defense, which was already outstanding. Where we can improve, and absolutely have to improve, is on the offensive side of the ball. We had the 16th ranked offense last season. There’s simply no way we’ll make the NBA finals, much less beat Boston, with a mid-tier offense. The Celtics had the #1 ranked offense, the Thunder #3, the Nuggets #5, and Mavs #9. Those teams, except Dallas, also had great defenses. (Celtics #3, Thunder #4, Nuggets #8. Mavs ranked #18, but I suspect that ranking improved dramatically following their trade deadline deals or perhaps this just illustrates Q’s point in other posts that this is mainly an offensive League).

So how do we improve our offense from #16 to top 5 with the Thunder, Nuggets and Celtics or at least top 10 with the Mavs? If we’re going to “bring it back,” which means not trading any of our starters, then I can’t see how we improve significantly on offense without upgrading our rotation bench personnel. If we’re honest with ourselves we know that Naz was the only good shooter/scorer on our bench last season. If Morris could become the player he used to be before last season then he could give us some of the additional offensive firepower we need from our bench, but we can’t even count on him returning to the team as a FA much less improving significantly. And improvement from Morris alone, assuming he stays and improves, won’t be enough. Kyle Anderson’s free agency doesn’t really offer us any sort of opportunity because we can’t fill his salary slot. The best we can do is replace him with a vet minimum free agent. All this means we have two ways to substantially improve our offensive firepower off the bench: (1) minimum vet free agents, and (2) the draft. I don’t know how any of use can feel comfortable that we’ll get what we need in a vet minimum player or rookie drafted at #27 or 37.

Tim Connelly’s challenge this off season will be far greater than either of his prior two with the Wolves or any of his off seasons with the Nuggets. It’s time for him to show why he’s considered one of the best basketball executives in the NBA.

[Lipoli390]

Here’s my current, ever evolving, ranking of draft prospects I’d love to get for the Wolves. Note, I’m not ranking all the prospects, but only those I love and believe would be great for the Wolves. Note also, that getting many of these prospects on my list would require the Wolves to trade up although I don’t have any particular trades in mind. So here goes:

1. Reed Sheppard - Best PG in draft. The 2nd coming of John Stockton. Would be perfect fit with Ant.
2. Devin Carter - Great 2-way PG prospect who hit nearly 38% of his 3s and averaged 19 points & 8.4 rebounds.
3. Rob Dillingham - Hit 44.4% of his 3s as a fresh. Also terrific ball-handler who should become a very good PG.
4. Nikola Topic - Developed a man-crush watching his highlights. Looks like a potential star. Torn ACL is an issue.
5. Jared McCain - Hit 41.4% of his 3s. Known as a good playmaker, he seems like another terrific PG prospect.
6. Bub Carrington - Only hit 32% of his 3s, but I love his game. Reminds me of Maxey.
7. Tyler Kolek - Not quick or athletic, but his 5 boards per game suggests he more athletic than believed. He’s also probably best playmaker in draft who also hit 39% of his 3s.
8. KJ Simpson - Not highly ranked on most draft boards, but Draft Ringer has Wolves taking him at 27. Very impressive stats: 19.7 points, 5 assists, 6 rebounds and 43.4% from behind the arc.
9. Terrence Shannon - Fantastic athlete who averaged 23 points per game, hitting 36.2% of his threes.
10. Harrison Ingram - Described as a playmaking forward. He hit 38.5% of his threes. I love that he averaged nearly 9 rebounds per game, a stat that shows effort/intensity and generally translates to the NBA.
11. Baylor Scheierman - Very good college 3-point shooter at 38%. Rap on him is lack of athleticism, but he was an excellent rebounder (9 per game), which I also consider a huge positive with any college prospect.

Those are my top 11 players. I’ll be very disappointed if we don’t end up with at least one of them but I’m afraid it’s unlikely we’ll end up with any of them without trading up at least a few slots. Trading up for Sheppard is highly unlikely and would require a package including KAT, Rudy or Naz. Trading up for Carter would also be challenging. But perhaps we can package our two picks, Miller and Clark to move up as needed to get Bub Carrington or McCain.

[Lipoli390]

If we trade Rudy this summer then I’d be interested in some other prospects like Kel’el Ware and Donovan Clingan.

[Lipoli390]

The case for drafting KJ Simpson. Will he be available at 27? Highly likely. At 37? Maybe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_WoAkiyivU

[Q-is-here]

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/557973 ... ards-2024/


Good stuff from the athletic, I'll just post what they said about Shannon.

Terrence Shannon Jr. | 6-6 SG/SF | 23 years old | Illinois
Western Conference executive No. 1: Initially, a nice rotational piece every night in the regular season. He’s going to get buckets. There’s going to be some nights where you scratch your head and say ‘Did he just shoot that?’ And then there’s going to be other nights when he goes for 25, 28, and you’re like, wow. He’s a man. He should be able to step in next year, because he can compete athletically, he can compete physically. And, when he wants to defend, he can. Offensively, he can go get it. I truly believe he will be, at this time next year, in the conversation for First Team All-Rookie. At worst, second team. In most cases, he will be drafted by a pretty good team. I think he’s going to be late teens at best, 20s and worst. And those are playoff teams. They have guys that know how to play. Their roles are already defined.
Is it going to take a while? Yes. But he knows the landscape of what’s in front of him. He is not a consistent defender. His role at Illinois the past two years has been, it’s fallen on his shoulders to do so much scoring, and creating offensively. But when he wanted to lock in, he can get into guys. He can get into people. Is he a Herb Jones? No. Herb is an every possession guy. Terrence, there’s going to be some times when there’s some mental lapses. But then usually, he’s going to make it up for you and will get it back with a steal three or four possessions later.

College assistant coach No. 6 (his team played Illinois): He is a good player. Really good player. He’s the best player in college that I saw last year driving the ball in transition. It’s like LeBron in his heyday — those Miami days where he would just drive the ball as hard as he could, and run right into you. That’s what Shannon did. We’d have two guys standing there, locked arms, and he would run right into you. He’s a decent 3-point shooter. I question his character a little. They say he’s a hard worker, though. He prides himself, (Illinois coach) Brad Underwood swears he’s one of the best defenders in the country. But he played us and he could not wait for somebody to come up and set a screen so he could switch. But the kid is fearless. He’s got an incredible, athletic body. And he can run. He is a very, very talented player.

College Assistant coach No. 3 (his team played Illinois): Love him. He’s one of the guys that, he has gotten better since he’s transferred to Illinois from Texas Tech. He’s definitely been in the gym working on his game. Tough, competitor. Shot has gotten a lot better. Competes on both ends. Very fast with the ball. What it will look like at the next level, I’m not sure. He has good positional size, and he’s just tough and he competes. He’s a better player than (Cam) Christie, and I think he’ll be a better pro than Christie as well. … He’s a little older. I liked him as a kid. I didn’t see him as being a guy that was a locker room guy. From what I know, teammates, (and) our guys got along with him. Inner city Chicago. Always a tough kid. I don’t think he had any underlying issues, if that makes sense. I don’t see him as being that type of kid.

Eastern Conference executive No 2: He’s a damn good defender. Shooting is a little sporadic, but it’s gotten better. You talk about tough, now. He’s tough as s—. If he goes to a certain team, I could see him starting next year. He could start for us, probably.

Eastern Conference executive No. 5: As early as late lottery (post-dismissal). His age (23) may be a factor for rebuilding teams.
Top

Seems like he has that classic scorer's mentality and can create his own shot. Love how high of a percentage he hit on his 2 pt shots. His 3's were OK-ish, but my guess a lot of those were highly contested, so he may be a lot better on open catch and shoot 3s.

He was just found not guilty on a sexual assault charge, which may have been weighing a bit on his draft stock. My guess is he goes before we can snag him.

[Q-is-here]

The case for drafting KJ Simpson. Will he be available at 27? Highly likely. At 37? Maybe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_WoAkiyivU

A little on the small side and only started shooting well this season. Not sure what changes he made last offseason to his shot, but they worked! I have Kolek ranked above him in terms of being an "ready now" backup PG.