"Holy Shit, this is very bad" mode - Wolves at Pelicans GDT

[Q-is-here]

Ant 2nd in total clutch points scored league wide behind Joker. And he could have had many more.

He's gone back to what he does best lately, which is scoring the damn ball. His play making and assists will come off of first and foremost being a scorer. He needs to deal better with the gravity he creates and make faster decisions, but still, it's good to see him back to his old self.

What's both amazing and pathetic is that Ant - already by far our best downhill player - is now by far our best 3-point shooter too. I mean, did literally EVERYONE other than Ant (and I guess NAW to start the season ) have to regress as shooters??? Pisses me off, as the offense would be a lot different if Naz, Conley, and DDV shot it like they did last year.

[Phenom]

Ant 2nd in total clutch points scored league wide behind Joker. And he could have had many more.

He's gone back to what he does best lately, which is scoring the damn ball. His play making and assists will come off of first and foremost being a scorer. He needs to deal better with the gravity he creates and make faster decisions, but still, it's good to see him back to his old self.

What's both amazing and pathetic is that Ant - already by far our best downhill player - is now by far our best 3-point shooter too. I mean, did literally EVERYONE other than Ant (and I guess NAW to start the season ) have to regress as shooters??? Pisses me off, as the offense would be a lot different if Naz, Conley, and DDV shot it like they did last year.

There seems to be an uptick in shooting percentage for both Donte and Conley behind the arc lately. Wolves are just a couple games out of 4th place. A fat win streak would be nice about now.

[Lipoli390]

Ant 2nd in total clutch points scored league wide behind Joker. And he could have had many more.

He's gone back to what he does best lately, which is scoring the damn ball. His play making and assists will come off of first and foremost being a scorer. He needs to deal better with the gravity he creates and make faster decisions, but still, it's good to see him back to his old self.

What's both amazing and pathetic is that Ant - already by far our best downhill player - is now by far our best 3-point shooter too. I mean, did literally EVERYONE other than Ant (and I guess NAW to start the season ) have to regress as shooters??? Pisses me off, as the offense would be a lot different if Naz, Conley, and DDV shot it like they did last year.

There seems to be an uptick in shooting percentage for both Donte and Conley behind the arc lately. Wolves are just a couple games out of 4th place. A fat win streak would be nice about now.

Unfortunately, Conley’s issue is age so I don’t expect to see his shooting or any other part of his game turn around going forward. In contrast, I think we’ll see better shooting from Donte the last half of this season. He’s not an elite three-point shooter, but he’s a good one and a very good overall player. It makes a positive difference having him in our starting lineup. The problem is that, with the exception of Ant, we just don’t have any proven consistent elite three-point shooters on this team and we don’t have enough good ones at Donte’s level either. As Q pointed out, that means our one elite three-point shooter is also our best dribble-drive scorer. Ant is elite in both categories but we don’t have any other player I’d even call very good in either category except perhaps for Donte.

I’m glad we got the in tonight. But once again, our offensive output was poor. We won scoring only 104 points that’s to our defense but also thanks to the fact we were playing a bad team with one of their best players (CJ) still playing himself back into shape after a long layoff. I think CJ was 1-14 from the field today. If he had been in top form, the Wolves probably would have lost. Meanwhile the other winning teams so far tonight scored between 112 and 124 points.

It was great to see Naz nab 12 rebounds. As I look ahead to Wolves 2.0, it’s important to see guys like Naz and Jaden rebound well. We can’t just depend on Rudy for rebounds and I don’t see Randle being part of the next iteration of this team. Also nice to see Rudy get 6 blocks. He needs to dominate and intimidate defensively every game for this team to have a chance.

[60WinTim]

Suns, Lakers, Nuggets and Warriors all lose tonight. Nice!

[AbeVigodaLive]

As good as ANT was earlier, he’s been bad in crunchtime.

Another win. 14 rebounds and 6 blocks for Gobert. Reid and Divincenzo and NAW work pretty damn hard out there sometimes. And Conley remains cooking on the 2nd unit.

It's an interesting choice to do this when a guy goes for 32 and 9 with 7 three pointers... but...

I thought he played a terrible game beyond the first 5 or 6 minutes. He's had some incredibly bad stinkers late in games, from the first Toronto game to the GSW game to others. Tonight was another awful game for him for most of it, despite the stats.

I assume it's a lack of focus. He certainly didn't seem focused tonight. Every time the Wolves went up a few buckets, Ant went into selfish clowning mode. Time and time again. Right to the end. I love that he's a shot maker and starting 5 - 5 with 4 three pointers is awesome. But my gawd, the rest of it was just lazy basketball. And bad basketball.

Aside from the laziness. And the carelessness. There was one play that seemed telling in the moment. I know, I know... it's only one play. The guy scored 32 points. Everyone makes mistakes. Yeah yeah... you're gonna read about it anyway, damn it!

Edwards has the ball on the wing... dribbling and dribbling. Gobert has 5-foot-nothing Jose Aldorado on him. Gobert's feet are in the restricted area for chrissakes. Edwards looks him off. He drives instead. Aldorado leaves Gobert to stop Edward's drive... Gobert's hands go up. He's literally standing in front of the rim only now with nobody around him. Whether a lob or a basic pass, it's an easy dunk even for Gobert.

Nope. Still no pass. Edwards tries a bank shot (which doesn't have the same flair, fun or effectiveness as last season).

Gobert drops his head as he heads down court... where he blocked the next Pelicans shot.



[Note: We know a couple of truths. Edwards does not pass the ball to Gobert often. Edwards is the future of this team. I don't know what kind of trade could even happen... but it's sorta starting to feel like Edwards' willingness to play with Gobert has a shelf life.]

[FNG]

A win is a win, right? Not so sure what to make of this one. I could give a good and bad review to almost every T-Wolf

Donte: Only shot 4 for 12 and 2 for 8 on threes...his poor shooting has too often been a barometer for a loss. We need more from him when we play good teams. But he also had 7 assists and was the primary defender on CJ who went 1 for 14. I think Donte's hustling defense had a lot to do with his +18.

Naz: His rebounding has been a disappointment most of his career, but tonight he had 12 including 6 offensive boards! But he only made 1 of his 5 wide open 3-pointers.

Ant: His shooting early in the game was breath-taking...truly Steph-like. He was playing within himself during those early minutes, and playing brilliantly. And he added 9 rebounds. I also felt like his decision making was mostly quicker than what he showed us before his infamous "nothing I can do" speech. But then...well, what Abe said.

Julius: Okay, he made 6 of 11 shots and was a team-leading +21. But he turned the ball over 3 times and looked on the verge of turning it over several more times with his sloppy handle. Perhaps the most misleading +/- example of the entire season...he was not good after the first 3 minutes.

And I could do this with almost every one of our guys. Bottom line is we won, and many of the teams we are battling in the standings didn't. And even better, the next 4 games are against either bad or wounded teams. We need to play better than we did tonight, but we'll be favored in our next 4 games, and there's a decent chance we will be 23-17 and sitting in 4th place a week from today.

[Wolvesfan21]

A win is a win, right? Not so sure what to make of this one. I could give a good and bad review to almost every T-Wolf

Donte: Only shot 4 for 12 and 2 for 8 on threes...his poor shooting has too often been a barometer for a loss. We need more from him when we play good teams. But he also had 7 assists and was the primary defender on CJ who went 1 for 14. I think Donte's hustling defense had a lot to do with his +18.

Naz: His rebounding has been a disappointment most of his career, but tonight he had 12 including 6 offensive boards! But he only made 1 of his 5 wide open 3-pointers.

Ant: His shooting early in the game was breath-taking...truly Steph-like. He was playing within himself during those early minutes, and playing brilliantly. And he added 9 rebounds. I also felt like his decision making was mostly quicker than what he showed us before his infamous "nothing I can do" speech. But then...well, what Abe said.

Julius: Okay, he made 6 of 11 shots and was a team-leading +21. But he turned the ball over 3 times and looked on the verge of turning it over several more times with his sloppy handle. Perhaps the most misleading +/- example of the entire season...he was not good after the first 3 minutes.

And I could do this with almost every one of our guys. Bottom line is we won, and many of the teams we are battling in the standings didn't. And even better, the next 4 games are against either bad or wounded teams. We need to play better than we did tonight, but we'll be favored in our next 4 games, and there's a decent chance we will be 23-17 and sitting in 4th place a week from today.

Ant unleashed himself. There were things he could do. Get going before the double gets there for one, he's doing that, like why wait for defense to set up? No rule says you have to go slow. Passing out of doubles quickly but safely. Make the easy pass out and maybe get the ball back too. It's really hard for teams to double and re double, they'll make a bad read or be too slow on a scramble.

Jadens been upping his 3P percentage I think over the last month or so along with DDV. Both make doubling Ant a bad decision.

Most points in 3 games in Wolves history. Pretty good for a 23 year old. I would say one thing that could even be more unlocked is seeing Ant push the ball more in transition. Especially when he gets the board he can go down hill and even get to the rim quick before the defense sets up. I always remember Giannis doing that against us and other teams, same with SImmons in his prime (yeah I know his career is a joke now but at one time he was legit). They just got downhill quick and the defense seemed to have no chance at that point.