Minnesota Sports Forum

KiwiMatt wrote:Every time I read these comparisons I get angry. The freak was there for the taking, but we took Muhammad.....

Anyways in terms of ranking who will have the best careers:

1 - KAT
2 - Greek Freak
3 - Wiggins
4 - Parker

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:I just wonder how quickly the wing defenders would improve if you had better protection at the rim. Defense works from the inside out. I'm not so sure one dominant interior defender wouldn't make all the parts look a lot better.

RPM supposedly accounts for team mates, but yeah, stick DeAndre Jordan or Rudy Gobert on our team and I'm sure things would be much better. They are truly dominant defensive Centers.

Still.....

- Cleveland has Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson as their two starting bigs - neither have great length or hops - yet here they are ranked 13th in defensive efficiency. Why? Because LeBron and JR Smith are pretty good defenders.

- Charlotte has the great Cody Zeller, who is no bigger than Towns by the way, starting at Center with Marvin Williams - a 'tweener SF/PF - at power forward. They are ranked 7th in defensive efficiency. Why? MKG and Batum know how to defend.

- Luc Longley played Center for those ferocious Bulls teams back in the day. It helped that Jordan and Pippen were both elite wing defenders.

Wings can absolutely be huge difference makers defensively without a ton of help from bigs. In our case, we don't have a single dominant defender at any position. But I would argue we are softest at SG, SF, and PF.

You bring up good examples, ableit extreme ones, but your first paragraph makes the most sense. Are you arguing my point about defense being played from the inside out?

Camden wrote:

KiwiMatt wrote:Every time I read these comparisons I get angry. The freak was there for the taking, but we took Muhammad.....

Anyways in terms of ranking who will have the best careers:

1 - KAT
2 - Greek Freak
3 - Wiggins
4 - Parker

I know how you feel, Kiwi. Antetokounmpo would be the No. 1 overall pick in that draft if we could go back knowing what we knew now. It's funny, but most of the best talents in that draft came outside of lottery!

As for your ranking of their careers, I'd expand it and say:

1. Towns*
2. Antetokounmpo
3. LaVine*
4. Parker
5. Wiggins*
6. Middleton
7. Dieng*
8. Dunn*

lipoli390 wrote:

Camden wrote:

KiwiMatt wrote:Every time I read these comparisons I get angry. The freak was there for the taking, but we took Muhammad.....

Anyways in terms of ranking who will have the best careers:

1 - KAT
2 - Greek Freak
3 - Wiggins
4 - Parker

I know how you feel, Kiwi. Antetokounmpo would be the No. 1 overall pick in that draft if we could go back knowing what we knew now. It's funny, but most of the best talents in that draft came outside of lottery!

As for your ranking of their careers, I'd expand it and say:

1. Towns*
2. Antetokounmpo
3. LaVine*
4. Parker
5. Wiggins*
6. Middleton
7. Dieng*
8. Dunn*

I concur with this expanded ranking, Cam - Although it's close for me between Towns and the Greek Freak. Middleton has a pretty serious injury he'll have to overcome. Given our limited sampling of Parker and especially Dunn at the NBA level, those two are a bit tougher to rank right now compared to the others. Having watched Dunn up close so far this season, I'm totally impressed by his defense and his overall intensity. His shot seems to be coming around and he appears to be a pretty good ballhandler. So I could see him climbing up in the ranking over the next couple years.

If the question is whether I'd rather have KAT and Wiggins or Greek Freak and Parker, I'd probably choose the latter. But I'd choose our roster over the Bucks roster because of the presence of Zach, Dieng, Dunn and Ricky.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:It's just an analytical based debate, and thankfully analytics are not guarantees of future performance. It's also nice that Zach isn't included in the discussion, for that would heavily tilt things in our favor. But at a minimum, it shows the improvements needed by both KAT and Wig.

TheFuture wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:It's just an analytical based debate, and thankfully analytics are not guarantees of future performance. It's also nice that Zach isn't included in the discussion, for that would heavily tilt things in our favor. But at a minimum, it shows the improvements needed by both KAT and Wig.

So after reading that can we talk about trading Wiggins without being met with so much angst?

Q12543 wrote:

TheFuture wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:It's just an analytical based debate, and thankfully analytics are not guarantees of future performance. It's also nice that Zach isn't included in the discussion, for that would heavily tilt things in our favor. But at a minimum, it shows the improvements needed by both KAT and Wig.

So after reading that can we talk about trading Wiggins without being met with so much angst?

Heh, and keep in mind we were talking about trading him for Jimmy Butler, as if that's some sort of insult to Wiggins! My goodness......

TheFuture wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

TheFuture wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:It's just an analytical based debate, and thankfully analytics are not guarantees of future performance. It's also nice that Zach isn't included in the discussion, for that would heavily tilt things in our favor. But at a minimum, it shows the improvements needed by both KAT and Wig.

So after reading that can we talk about trading Wiggins without being met with so much angst?

Heh, and keep in mind we were talking about trading him for Jimmy Butler, as if that's some sort of insult to Wiggins! My goodness......

Still would love that deal.

Personally I would prefer flipping Wiggins for a top 15 PG so we have great players at each level, point,wing,big.

Other rumblings around the league are Goran and Wall being moved. I'd also call up Boston.
Give me any of these deals ... Goran and Winslow, Wall and Oubre, or Thomas and Crowder for wiggins/rubio/rights to our pick this season.

Q12543 wrote:

TheFuture wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

TheFuture wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:It's just an analytical based debate, and thankfully analytics are not guarantees of future performance. It's also nice that Zach isn't included in the discussion, for that would heavily tilt things in our favor. But at a minimum, it shows the improvements needed by both KAT and Wig.

So after reading that can we talk about trading Wiggins without being met with so much angst?

Heh, and keep in mind we were talking about trading him for Jimmy Butler, as if that's some sort of insult to Wiggins! My goodness......

Still would love that deal.

Personally I would prefer flipping Wiggins for a top 15 PG so we have great players at each level, point,wing,big.

Other rumblings around the league are Goran and Wall being moved. I'd also call up Boston.
Give me any of these deals ... Goran and Winslow, Wall and Oubre, or Thomas and Crowder for wiggins/rubio/rights to our pick this season.

Uh, I'm not exactly a Wiggins superfan and I've always liked Rubio (although he's struggled this year), but none of these deals seem very fair to the Wolves! In fact, a few of these guys could be had for a much lower price than you are offering!

TheFuture wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:It's just an analytical based debate, and thankfully analytics are not guarantees of future performance. It's also nice that Zach isn't included in the discussion, for that would heavily tilt things in our favor. But at a minimum, it shows the improvements needed by both KAT and Wig.

So after reading that can we talk about trading Wiggins without being met with so much angst?