Minnesota Sports Forum

I am aboard the Tolliver train! Glad to have him back. I am with monster and prefer Tolliver over Belly. Belly seemed to hesitate too often, and has had a mysterious foot injury in each of the last two years.

Terrific signing and compliment to this roster.

his one-year deal with the Pistons last year was ~ $3.3 million

60WinTim wrote:I am aboard the Tolliver train! Glad to have him back. I am with monster and prefer Tolliver over Belly. Belly seemed to hesitate too often, and has had a mysterious foot injury in each of the last two years.

Terrific signing and compliment to this roster.

Tim alluded to this already but Tolliver is 3 years older but has played more games than Belly. Availability has value.

The other thing to like about Tolliver is he doesn't just hit his 3's from the corners. He takes a lot of them all Over the court. This tweet from Wolfson has his shot chart from last year...you will see something interesting inside the 3 point line also. Lol

https://twitter.com/dwolfsonkstp/status/1013876355774205960?s=21

I'm on board with this one. FINALLY a legit volume 3-point shooter that also hustles his ass off defensively He has limitations, don't get me wrong, but he works hard and is an established vet. Also, he is much less likely to get screwed by the officials than Bjelly, who always seemed to be on the wrong end of 50/50 calls.

Sundog wrote:his one-year deal with the Pistons last year was ~ $3.3 million

Thanks, Sundog. You are a reliable fountain of information. :)

Hard not to like this deal for all the reasons mentioned by Monster and Q. We now have a true stretch 4 who takes and makes a relatively high volume of threes, but who also plays defense and stays healthy.

The one downside is we don't have anyone other than our two rookies who can fill in for Wiggins or Butler at either wing position. Belly could do that as he showed last season when Butler went down. Tolliver can't do that. Looking at our salary situation, I think we can only fill one more position at the vet minimum. I'm betting it will be the best older veteran wing available who's willing to sign here for the vet minimum. Then we're done. Not a bad offseason and possibly a very good one depending on how our two rookies pan out.

I'm with Q in liking the fact we finally addressed our need for shooting. But for me this move overall is a big yawn. Sorry to be such a downer lately, but I can't see a pathway for this franchise to contend. As hard as it may be to accept, we need big changes, again.

lipoli390 wrote:Hard not to like this deal for all the reasons mentioned by Monster and Q. We now have a true stretch 4 who takes and makes a relatively high volume of threes, but who also plays defense and stays healthy.

The one downside is we don't have anyone other than our two rookies who can fill in for Wiggins or Butler at either wing position. Belly could do that as he showed last season when Butler went down. Tolliver can't do that. Looking at our salary situation, I think we can only fill one more position at the vet minimum. I'm betting it will be the best older veteran wing available who's willing to sign here for the vet minimum. Then we're done. Not a bad offseason and possibly a very good one depending on how our two rookies pan out.

Yeah, Rose and one of the rookies is going to be our backup 2 and 3. That is really iffy.

Tolliver certainly fits a big functional need (3-point shooting), but unfortunately he can really only play the 4.

We are going to bring in at least one, if not two, more player(s). I am not sure I would start fretting about our depth just, yet... :-)

60WinTim wrote:We are going to bring in at least one, if not two, more player(s). I am not sure I would start fretting about our depth just, yet... :-)

What does depth even matter if Thibs doesn't use it?

I like what I've seen enough from Okogie and KBD. I liked MGH's defense last year, and thought he fit better with Butler and Towns and Teague, because those guys should be shooting more. Kind of a Trenton Hassell-type. Thibs needs to trust his bench so much more. I just don't get it.

I always liked Tolliver, and he's even better than when we had him before. He can actually put it on the deck a little bit, but even without that, he's smart enough to swing the ball when he's not open. That's more of what we need. I'm sick of seeing guys catch the ball, iso a while, and only pass when the defense has (predictably) shut them down. Belly is skilled in multiple ways, but he tended to fit into that pattern too much. Now we got a catch and shoot guy who also swings the ball, so that should help us manage the shot clock better--a key way to improve in my opinion. Plus, I expect he'll be a better defender than Belly, although I did like Belly's rebounding.