Ant post game comments

[BloopOracle]

Kept speaking about turnovers, and specifically mentioned "Without a designated point guard I got to be the one to bring the ball up" the look on his face when he said this tells you all you need to know

[FNG]

I didn't see him say this, Bloop, but I'm calling BS on Ant. Mike and Rob are traditional PGs, and even though one is past his prime and the other struggles to make a shot, they are both true PGs. And yet when Ant is on the court with them, he still wants to be the guy bringing the ball up. And his deliberate style allows the defense to get set up and almost forces us into one on one basketball. If Ant is saying Finchy is coaching him to bring the ball up even when a true PG is out there with him, then I double down on my call to move on from our coach. But I think this one is on Ant...he demands the ball, and doesn't let our PGs originate the offense.

[rapsuperstar31]

I didn't see him say this, Bloop, but I'm calling BS on Ant. Mike and Rob are traditional PGs, and even though one is past his prime and the other struggles to make a shot, they are both true PGs. And yet when Ant is on the court with them, he still wants to be the guy bringing the ball up. And his deliberate style allows the defense to get set up and almost forces us into one on one basketball. If Ant is saying Finchy is coaching him to bring the ball up even when a true PG is out there with him, then I double down on my call to move on from our coach. But I think this one is on Ant...he demands the ball, and doesn't let our PGs originate the offense.

He's basically taking responsibility for Donte's turnover, by not coming up to get the ball. Say's he needs to have the ball in his hands so the team doesn't turn it over.

https://x.com/ChristopherHine/status/19 ... _&ref_url=

[60WinTim]

I didn't see him say this, Bloop, but I'm calling BS on Ant. Mike and Rob are traditional PGs, and even though one is past his prime and the other struggles to make a shot, they are both true PGs. And yet when Ant is on the court with them, he still wants to be the guy bringing the ball up. And his deliberate style allows the defense to get set up and almost forces us into one on one basketball. If Ant is saying Finchy is coaching him to bring the ball up even when a true PG is out there with him, then I double down on my call to move on from our coach. But I think this one is on Ant...he demands the ball, and doesn't let our PGs originate the offense.

You are taking ANT's comments out of context. He is referring to clutch-time minutes when neither Mike nor Dilly are on the floor. And I really think this conversation goes to Finch.

We heard before the start of the season that Finch wanted Mike to bring up the ball (am I dreaming that, or do you guys remember it as well?). And then he switched to have Donte be ANT's backcourt mate. And more recently he has anointed ANT as the "lead guard". Finch is trying to turn ANT into THE PG. Will it work out? I don't know. But expect a bumpy transition ride, and we'll see where we wind up heading into the trade deadline when Finch and TC can decide if the path is worth pursing.

Here is Jonny K's article on the topic today (it's long):

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/684060 ... oint-guard


OKLAHOMA CITY — Before a Western Conference finals rematch against the Thunder, Minnesota Timberwolves coach Chris Finch was asked about how the offense has evolved since he inserted Donte DiVincenzo in the starting lineup at point guard at the beginning of the season.

His answer explains just how different the team is this season despite so much familiarity on the roster.

“Anthony’s probably more of our point guard than Donte is our point guard,” Finch said, referring to star scorer Anthony Edwards. “He has the ball. He is our lead guard in that regard.”

For much of their time together as coach and prodigy, Finch has been reluctant to build the kind of heliocentric offense with Edwards that is seemingly becoming all the rage across the league. He wanted Edwards to spend his younger days learning the game, unburdened by the responsibility of running the offense along with developing his own game.

Now in year six, and with no other real options for the position, Finch and Edwards are adapting with the rest of the league, which is moving away from the traditional point guard. Chris Paul is retiring at the end of the season. Mike Conley may not be far behind him. In their wake, a new kind of point guard is taking over, one that scores like a 2-guard but has the ball in his hands as much as any of the floor generals about whom your father waxes philosophic.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in Oklahoma City, Stephen Curry in Golden State, Luka Dončić with the Los Angeles Lakers, James Harden with the Clippers, Cade Cunningham in Detroit. The list goes on and on, and now includes Edwards.

It is a new role that Edwards is still trying to get comfortable in, like a stiff new pair of shoes that need breaking in. He had 31 points, eight rebounds and a team-leading five assists in a 111-105 loss to the Thunder on Wednesday night, and after the game spoke about how he is still learning to think about the game differently from his new spot.

“I just got to get used to being a point guard, going to get the rock at the end of the game, bringing it up, even though they pressure,” Edwards said.

Much like the previous two games, the Timberwolves were in position to pull off a win on the road against the defending champions only to kick it away in the final two minutes. The game was tied, 101-101, after a 3-pointer from DiVincenzo, and the Wolves had the ball with three minutes to go.

DiVincenzo brought the ball across halfcourt and was waiting for Edwards to get over the stripe. But Edwards was not aggressive in making himself available. Gilgeous-Alexander poked the ball away from DiVincenzo and converted the go-ahead bucket, and the Thunder never looked back.

“Sometimes I’m thinking, let somebody bring it up and then come get it,” Edwards said. “Just to take the pressure off my teammates, I just got to bring the ball up the court and get us into an action.”

The Wolves couldn’t get back into the game because of some familiar bugaboos. Jaden McDaniels made an ill-advised pass for a turnover. Rudy Gobert missed a pair of free throws — the Wolves missed 15 of them — and Julius Randle took a five-second call on an inbounds pass when the Wolves were down five points with 27 seconds to play.

“As I was going through my progressions, they did a good job of covering everything,” Randle said. “I didn’t want to give them a live-ball turnover. Tough one.”

Randle played a very good game on defense, but he was 2 for 13 from the field, 4 for 7 at the free throw line and had three turnovers. Terrence Shannon Jr. had his best game since returning from a foot injury, scoring 18 points on 7-for-7 shooting to give the Wolves some pop off the bench that they have sorely lacked.

Edwards started the game 1 for 5, but scored 14 points in the fourth quarter to rally Minnesota from a 10-point deficit against a team with an average margin of victory of 17 points this season.

When Conley first arrived in a trade from Utah three years ago, he was the one who thought the game for the rest of the Wolves, bailing them out of bad spots and helping them avoid trouble when the going got tough. But at 38 years old, he is no longer capable of carrying a load that heavy. He was 1 for 4 on Wednesday night against the young, fast and strong Thunder, and the Wolves were outscored by 17 points in his 12:32 on the court.

Rob Dillingham may have played his best game of what has been a rough second season so far, putting up six points, two assists and no turnovers in 12 minutes. But at 20 years old, he is nowhere near ready yet to fill the point guard role for big minutes on a team pushing for a fifth straight playoff berth.

DiVincenzo is a shooting guard. Breaking a defense down off the dribble, getting into the paint and creating for himself or his teammates is not his strong suit.

That leaves it up to Edwards, one of the best young scorers in the league, to take his role to a higher level. He has not yet shown that he thinks three steps ahead of the defense like Dončić or Harden does, but his vision, passing and understanding of how to attack when the opponent is sending doubles his way have all increased noticeably this season.

The Timberwolves are their most dangerous when the ball is in Edwards’ hands, so that is where it will stay. There will be times when he struggles to get the offense moving, when he over-dribbles in isolation and takes a tough, contested midrange jumper. There will be times he turns it over trying to dribble through traffic, as he did down the stretch against Phoenix last week. But there are also times when he is down right frightening as an offensive engine, hitting step-back 3s from difficult angles, knifing through double teams to get to the rim and drawing three in the paint and kicking out to open shooters.

What Edwards needs is reps in high-leverage situations. He has scored 41, 43 and 31 points in the last three games. He went 5-for-10 from deep against the Thunder, and is starting to shift his mentality away from just looking to score every time he touches it to running the show and filling a gaping hole in the Wolves’ roster.

“With no designated point guard, I think I got to be the one to bring the ball up,” Edwards said. “It’s just that simple, so we don’t turn it over, get us into action, get my teammates shots. We’ll be all right.”

He is a veteran in this league now, but still has so much to learn. He has to develop a plan in his head for what he wants to get to in clutch moments, rather than simply reacting to what the defense shows him at the last second. He has to continue to show patience when teams double him as aggressively as they have been, making quick reads to get off the ball and put his team in 4-on-3 advantages.

“He still continues to see two defenders at one of the highest rates in the league,” Finch said. “He’s embraced that a little bit more. At times last year I thought he would fight it. This year he’s finding guys and that is leading to some good offense for his teammates.

“We have to do a better job figuring out how to balance that and free him up so he’s not seeing that look all the time, maybe moving him off the ball a little bit more.”

No one was willing to take a moral victory for taking an 18-1 team down the wire. But not all losses are created equal. The Kings and Suns losses were so embarrassing that Conley scheduled a team dinner to try to reset things.

The group gathered on Tuesday night at Mahogany Prime Steakhouse, a famous setting for team functions in Oklahoma City. It was less an urgent, come-to-Jesus meeting than a chance to reconnect. The connotations that normally come with the dreaded “players-only meeting” did not ripple through the room. Yes, those two losses should not have happened. But they also were not reason to panic.

“It’s the perfect time to bring it all back together, perspective, who we want to be, what we want to accomplish on the court, how we can be better as a team, as players,” Conley said. “But also, it’s OK to eat, enjoy each other and watch other basketball games and talk basketball and not be all about business all the time. Sometimes you need that.”

They didn’t need to clear the air. They needed some fellowship. Finch told the team after the Sacramento loss that they were “lifeless” and Randle said he could feel that they were not on the same page.

“Just get that connectivity back,” he said. “I think we’ve been missing that on this trip. It’s not like us.”

The Wolves followed that up by slugging it out with the mighty Thunder, playing a hard-nosed brand of defense and refusing to give in even as the shots were not falling and OKC built a double-digit lead in the second half. The fact that they weren’t satisfied could indicate they are closer to getting things going than it may seem.

“I’m not a moral victory type of guy. Nah,” Edwards said. “We lost. Got our ass kicked, again, by them. I hate it. I’m just ready to play them again.”

[60WinTim]

And Shannon did say he was playing through the pain to start the season...

https://x.com/ChristopherHine/status/19 ... 8182877621

Hopefully he is back and can give this team a boost. The bench needs a boost badly...

[FNG]

Yeah, I did take his comments out of context, and thanks to Rap for posting. I just watched the Donte turnover, and was completely disgusted. They were coming out of a timeout, so I can only assume this is what Finchy told them:

"Let's get the ball into Donte, and have all our bigs race down the court and stand motionless next to your defender so nobody can pass to you. Ant, I want you to lollygag down the court so you're not across the line and available for a pass either when Donte gets doubled by SGA. And Donte, you're on your own...good luck."

Seriously, go back and watch the play...there's absolutely nothing Donte could have done other than try to dribble out of the double team, and we knew that wasn't going to work. What do we think Finchy told them during the time out, and why didn't they execute? And WTF was Ant thinking hanging around in the backcourt with an inevitable double team about to happen? His basketball IQ is off the charts, but not in the right direction. Such a critical moment of the game, and not one teammate was available to help Donte...disgraceful.

[AussieWolf3]

WTF was Ant thinking hanging around in the backcourt with an inevitable double team about to happen? His basketball IQ is off the charts, but not in the right direction. Such a critical moment of the game, and not one teammate was available to help Donte...disgraceful.

Not to keeping pushing back and seeming obstinate, but this just another one of things I struggle with relating to.

Does Ant have the bb supercomputer in his head the like of Doncic or Jokic? Absolutely not, and likely never will and that's ok. But again he's still a young person, I know he's been in the league for 6 years, but Euro basketball player development is light years above the US so Ant started with a losing hand in that department (hard to feel too bad for him since he still has four aces in every other department).

My point is this- bbIQ is such vacant analysis that completely flattens everything and offer nothing useful as an observation. Ant, as Jon K said, can't think three steps ahead like those guys, but he clearly understand more and more how to collapse a defense and handle double teams to create shots for his teammates and he is light-years better at this then even last year in my opinion (his assist are down for now but I'm very very confident they'll trend up over the year). He operates instinctively, and sometimes isn't always fully processing everything in front of him when he's off the ball- he has to figure this out he really does, but I think it's notable that he is acknowledging that he fucked up here.

Ant has a history of learning through these mistakes. That learning also oscillates and is non linear. It would have been more encouraging if those lesson were already manifested in this game in the result of an amazing upset, but it is encouraging how vociferous in is self accountability about this issue.

I hope he can learn and grow from this, and I would bet on it

[Wolvesfan21]

It all comes down to clutch time, and the turnovers. I'm not sure Conley is the answer or not, but thats what I've been wanting. Someone with tons of experience whos played 1000 games in clutch time. He's been there done that.

He's not going to make nearly as many of the bad mistakes Ant, DDV and even Ju are making. Just one vet who could make a difference.

I get it, Conley is old and well past his prime and likely not here past this season. So long term can we make Ant, DDV, Jaden and Ju handle and pass the ball with full court pressure and just live with the mistakes? None of these guys are really great ball handlers and passers, Ant is the closest, but it's one more thing put on his plate to carry the team.

How much is too much? He's not LeBron in his prime yet. If he were then we'd be fine.

I'm not sure what the best route is long term? We can band aid it with Conley, Dilly is still a bit erratic (not really the answer yet), trade for another band aid PG, or even trade for a upper tier PG but then you lose Naz or DDV/Ju. IDK.

[FNG]

I think we're cutting Ant way too much slack for his role in the critical Donte turnover. Physical mistakes will happen, and I generally am fairly forgiving about them. But mistakes in crunch time that reflect either a lack of hustle or a lack of concentration are inexcusable. I'll accept the "he's still young and learning" excuse in some situations. But a 6th year pro has to know that he needs to get across the mid court line before his teammate gets trapped! I'm trying to imagine how my high school coach would have reacted if I had done what Ant did...I might still be running laps!

[AussieWolf3]

I think we're cutting Ant way too much slack for his role in the critical Donte turnover. Physical mistakes will happen, and I generally am fairly forgiving about them. But mistakes in crunch time that reflect either a lack of hustle or a lack of concentration are inexcusable. I'll accept the "he's still young and learning" excuse in some situations. But a 6th year pro has to know that he needs to get across the mid court line before his teammate gets trapped! I'm trying to imagine how my high school coach would have reacted if I had done what Ant did...I might still be running laps!

I completely agree, but I'm not his coach so there is nothing I can do about it but try to understand it in its context and analyze it from there. The latter I really only do for my own benefits and joy (I like deconstructing things to analyze them)

So I'm not cutting him slack or jumping all over his back, I'm trying to understand why it happened, and "he's just dumb" doesn't cut it for me, because he has clearly demonstrated a high level of intelligence in some areas and not so much in others

Also, even if your coach would have had you running laps and even if that's the appropriate response- a good coach is still also going to try and decipher why a player is encountering the same problems over and over again and come up with solutions to the problem