Minnesota Sports Forum

Cool - Your analysis is spot on and I agree completely. Like you, I've gone from pessimistic to hopeful and it's based on exactly what you identified - Edwards, McDaniels, Naz, Nowell and Chris Finch.

Q12543 wrote:Generally agree with your assessment Kek, although I think you are being a bit generous with DLO.

Naz has to be a more effective defensive presence for him to break out of being just a decent rotation big, so I agree with you there. The one thing he has going for him is he's still only 21. But right now he is a scorer that doesn't offer much resistance on the other end.

I think Naz is a better defender than you give him credit for. One question about him was whether or not his athletic ability was going to hold him back. I don't see that. These stats obviously don't make him a good defender but 2 blocks and a steal per 36 from a true big are nice things to build on.

The thing with Naz is the number Q mentioned - 21. He's so young, and sure he is far from a finished product. But he's gone from being a curiosity to a hard to stop, true big with plenty of upside. What if we started KAT, Reid, McDaniels, Ant, and DLO? It wouldn't be a great defensive lineup but would be explosive and long.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:The thing with Naz is the number Q mentioned - 21. He's so young, and sure he is far from a finished product. But he's gone from being a curiosity to a hard to stop, true big with plenty of upside. What if we started KAT, Reid, McDaniels, Ant, and DLO? It wouldn't be a great defensive lineup but would be explosive and long.

I haven't watched a lot of games with Finch but it seems like he is more willing to play guys that help in terms of gaining some sort of advantage than Saunders did. Like the Bulls game Chicago was playing Thies at PF so playing Naz made a ton of sense there. I don't know why exactly I get this vibe or even if it's even right but Finch seems to be more of a McHale type that tries to find ways to get his team and his players advantages rather than sticking to some specific system.

monsterpile wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:The thing with Naz is the number Q mentioned - 21. He's so young, and sure he is far from a finished product. But he's gone from being a curiosity to a hard to stop, true big with plenty of upside. What if we started KAT, Reid, McDaniels, Ant, and DLO? It wouldn't be a great defensive lineup but would be explosive and long.

I haven't watched a lot of games with Finch but it seems like he is more willing to play guys that help in terms of gaining some sort of advantage than Saunders did. Like the Bulls game Chicago was playing Thies at PF so playing Naz made a ton of sense there. I don't know why exactly I get this vibe or even if it's even right but Finch seems to be more of a McHale type that tries to find ways to get his team and his players advantages rather than sticking to some specific system.

I think you're right, Monster. I'd just say that Finch does what good coaches do. He adjusts. Ryan Saunders was in way over his head. So it's faint praise to say that Finch is better than Ryan. I think Finch is a darn good head coach and I'm looking forward to the development of this young team under his leadership.

Good writeup cool.

Regarding Finch, I echo others here who like his willingness to try any lineup as long as it gains us an advantage.

It is making ryan look really bad with how Finch uses the players compared to ryan. Ryan seems to think that playing fast means playing small only. Finch plays as fast of a pace but he usually plays two bigs and we have seen towns/reid/mcdaniels lineups from him and he sometimes play juancho at the 3 as well. We dont lose the rebounding battle automatically and dont have to play okogie/culver/layman at the 4.

Finch may not be a tier 1 coach but he knows what he is doing and is an nba level coach.

Very good writeup, Cool. Focusing on your comment on our defensive issues, I couldn't agree more. I would add blocking out on defensive rebounds as a third reason for our defensive struggles...too many second chance opportunities, especially when Naz is out there. But transition defense and defending the perimeter are the two most frustrating areas for me. Your point that a team can have three very good defenders on the court and still struggle defensively is right on. Successful half court defenses are beautiful to watch, with every defender knowing his role and where he needs to be in each situation. But the Wolves often fail in the half court primarily because one guy doesn't get it yet (Edwards) and one guy is just tragically bad on defense (Dlo). We need both of their scoring so they are goinig to play significant minutes, and we can still hope that the light bulb will turn on for Ant. But we need to face the facts that it's going to be difficult to outscore opponents when Ant and Dlo are getting big minutes.