Minnesota Sports Forum

Take away Ricky and Mitchell from Utah and you have what we had to deal with tonight. Sorry, but it's just not reasonable to expect us to win that game much less be in it against a red hot team when we are missing two starters, one of them being our best player. Towns and Wiggins just aren't there in terms of being able to elevate the play of their teammates to overcome 2 of our better players being out. We've got a couple days to get ready to play Denver. We need to win that game. Hopefully Jimmy is back by then. If we can get him back I think we close out with 4 wins and hope OKC and Utah lose one of their remaining games so we sneek into the 5 seed with the tiebreakers.

The three point shot has become one of the most signature shots in basketball. After several seasons of this trend ramping up... and after 70+ games... it might be time for the Wolves to realize it.

For the season, the NBA averages 10.5 makes per game at a 36% clip. Here's how the Wolves have defended the shot recently in their playoff run:

39% (11 - 28 fg)
39% (11 - 28)
48% (13 - 27)
48% (15 - 31)
35% (13 - 37)
43% (12 - 28)
33% (8 - 24)
46% (16 - 35)

Total: 12.4 / 29.8 (41.5%). Those makes + percentage would be league-worst marks. Only once in the past 8 games has the team defended the three pointer "better than average."

Look at the teams worst at defending the three point shot (season percentage):

- Sacramento
- Denver
- Atlanta
- Charlotte
- Phoenix
- Milwaukee
- Brooklyn
- New York

6 of them are outside the playoffs. 5 are outright terrible. And all 8 are considered disappointments to varying degrees. Heck, Milwaukee's coach was fired in part for his over-aggressive defensive strategy that conceded three point shots. The Wolves, despite playing for their playoff lives, have been even worse recently vs. three pointers.

This is not about teams getting hot only against the Wolves. Last night was a glaring example of how the percentages add up when one team is moving the ball and getting open looks vs. a team that is struggling to get open looks. It's simply not sustainable to win if you're the team taking the more difficult shots game after game.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:The three point shot has become one of the most signature shots in basketball. After several seasons of this trend ramping up... and after 70+ games... it might be time for the Wolves to realize it.

For the season, the NBA averages 10.5 makes per game at a 36% clip. Here's how the Wolves have defended the shot recently in their playoff run:

39% (11 - 28 fg)
39% (11 - 28)
48% (13 - 27)
48% (15 - 31)
35% (13 - 37)
43% (12 - 28)
33% (8 - 24)
46% (16 - 35)

Total: 12.4 / 29.8 (41.5%). Those makes + percentage would be league-worst marks. Only once in the past 8 games has the team defended the three pointer "better than average."

Look at the teams worst at defending the three point shot (season percentage):

- Sacramento
- Denver
- Atlanta
- Charlotte
- Phoenix
- Milwaukee
- Brooklyn
- New York

6 of them are outside the playoffs. 5 are outright terrible. And all 8 are considered disappointments to varying degrees. Heck, Milwaukee's coach was fired in part for his over-aggressive defensive strategy that conceded three point shots. The Wolves, despite playing for their playoff lives, have been even worse recently vs. three pointers.

This is not about teams getting hot only against the Wolves. Last night was a glaring example of how the percentages add up when one team is moving the ball and getting open looks vs. a team that is struggling to get open looks. It's simply not sustainable to win if you're the team taking the more difficult shots game after game.

It has been sad and pathetic watching the atrocious Wolves defense. Not all of it can be contributed to missing Butler either, because with Butler the defense was amongst the worst too.

Thibs isn't working out with these players. He has to go. To think otherwise is insane. We needed to see a step up defensively this season, we saw just the opposite. With Thibs next year, UNLESS he changed his coaching style (very slim chance) this team will still struggle on defense.

I wonder if instead of a firing Thibs will take a demotion to be GM? Offer him firing or force him to hire a Headcoach.

With Teague out and the Jazz full strength this was a fairly predictable outcome but it was hard to dial it back to that because obviously this was an easy game to hype. A couple random thoughts I had watching this one.

Did the Wolves play well? No. Was their defense good? No. Did the Jazz make a bunch of shots sometimes ones they don't usually make? Yes. Did the Wolves have balls bounce the other way? Yep. Towns was chucking the ball into the stands for no reason. Crawford tried to get fancy for no reason. It was a bad night for the Wolves everything got compounded.

It's a shame Tyus has to benefit from injury to get onnthe floor more. He was pretty aggressive looking for his shot tonight with mixed results. His thievery kept this game from being more comically out of hand. He should be getting more run at times maybe not every game (sometimes Teague really is just rolling so play him) but he should be playing more minutes.

Aaron Brooks gave max effort out there and yeah he jacked up some bad shots the guy was getting up and into people. Based on the last couple games he has played he certainly has made a case he is capable of doing something worthwhile if called on like if Thins just wanted to send a message by benching a bunch of people Pop style.

Jerebko playing Dieng off the floor. It was pretty sad.

Wiggins had trouble with Mitchell. I don't think smaller quick guards are a good matchup for him.

MGH gets up into people. I'd like to see more of that.

Patton was intruiging in his minutes.

As for defense I'd like to see the Wolves switch more. What makes Houston work is they can and do switch everything. Boston I think switches everything which helps Kyrie because he doesn't like attempting to get over screens anyway.

Rubio went bonkers on us. Yey for him. If we can actually draft someone worthwhile with that first round pick we will look smart. If that guy isn't good...that's less good for this franchise in quite a few ways.

Something to remember is the Jazz record without Gobert in comparison to the Wolves without Butler. Basically both teams struggled overall without their best player.

monsterpile wrote:With Teague out and the Jazz full strength this was a fairly predictable outcome but it was hard to dial it back to that because obviously this was an easy game to hype. A couple random thoughts I had watching this one.

Did the Wolves play well? No. Was their defense good? No. Did the Jazz make a bunch of shots sometimes ones they don't usually make? Yes. Did the Wolves have balls bounce the other way? Yep. Towns was chucking the ball into the stands for no reason. Crawford tried to get fancy for no reason. It was a bad night for the Wolves everything got compounded.

It's a shame Tyus has to benefit from injury to get onnthe floor more. He was pretty aggressive looking for his shot tonight with mixed results. His thievery kept this game from being more comically out of hand. He should be getting more run at times maybe not every game (sometimes Teague really is just rolling so play him) but he should be playing more minutes.

Aaron Brooks gave max effort out there and yeah he jacked up some bad shots the guy was getting up and into people. Based on the last couple games he has played he certainly has made a case he is capable of doing something worthwhile if called on like if Thins just wanted to send a message by benching a bunch of people Pop style.

Jerebko playing Dieng off the floor. It was pretty sad.

Wiggins had trouble with Mitchell. I don't think smaller quick guards are a good matchup for him.

MGH gets up into people. I'd like to see more of that.

Patton was intruiging in his minutes.

As for defense I'd like to see the Wolves switch more. What makes Houston work is they can and do switch everything. Boston I think switches everything which helps Kyrie because he doesn't like attempting to get over screens anyway.

Rubio went bonkers on us. Yey for him. If we can actually draft someone worthwhile with that first round pick we will look smart. If that guy isn't good...that's less good for this franchise in quite a few ways.

Something to remember is the Jazz record without Gobert in comparison to the Wolves without Butler. Basically both teams struggled overall without their best player.

Maybe. Sorta. Except the Jazz with Gobert have become one of the better teams in the entire NBA. Remember, they're on a 25 - 5 run right now. The Wolves have had a winning stretch like that only once in its 29 year history. They also went 25 - 5 in Dec/Jan of the 2004 season.

The Jazz do one thing better than most everybody. Play defense.

We saw why that is last night. They're tough and reliable and play together. Their vice is supposed to be offense. They shot 60+%... and it's become all-too-common for teams, even those trying to lose, to shoot high percentages against the Wolves.

WolvesFan21 wrote:
I wonder if instead of a firing Thibs will take a demotion to be GM? Offer him firing or force him to hire a Headcoach.

Pretty sure we don't want Thibs as our GM. He came in and gave Gorgui a 4yr/64 mil deal and offered Shabazz a 4yr/40 mil deal. Good teams don't give out 4yr deals to role players during the rebuilding stage. They don't offer deals a year early to role players (G). He traded a solid defensive PG who knew how to run an offense for a late 1st round pick and then offered up a 3yr/57 mil deal to Teague. He signed Cole to a 3 yr deal and won't even play him. The only acceptable deals were for Butler and Taj, and neither are considered to be steals.

We went from being the brightest young core in the league to an average team with no real assets and in cap hell, which is about to get significantly worse over the next two years.

sjm34 wrote:

WolvesFan21 wrote:
I wonder if instead of a firing Thibs will take a demotion to be GM? Offer him firing or force him to hire a Headcoach.

Pretty sure we don't want Thibs as our GM. He came in and gave Gorgui a 4yr/64 mil deal and offered Shabazz a 4yr/40 mil deal. Good teams don't give out 4yr deals to role players during the rebuilding stage. They don't offer deals a year early to role players (G). He traded a solid defensive PG who knew how to run an offense for a late 1st round pick and then offered up a 3yr/57 mil deal to Teague. He signed Cole to a 3 yr deal and won't even play him. The only acceptable deals were for Butler and Taj, and neither are considered to be steals.

We went from being the brightest young core in the league to an average team with no real assets and in cap hell, which is about to get significantly worse over the next two years.

To be fair... there might be some revisionist history here. Virtually the entire league has regrets from the 2016 (and even 2017) offseason. At the time, I remember many posts about how the Wolves did not do anything as egregious as signing Mozgov for $64M. Or Evan Turner for $75M. Or Luol Deng for $90M. Or Chandler Parsons for $96M. These guys are littered all over the league.

I believe many called Aldrich's $21M reasonable. Dieng was an overpay, especially in hindsight. His apparent downfall could be from dumb Wolves planning/analysis. Or, it could be something else... maybe Dieng is a contract player and is skating? I dunno. And I dunno how teams can always know these things. The other angle is that the league has also changed on the court, rendering a guy like Aldrich mostly moot. I'm not giving Thibodeau a pass for his GM work... but I think Thibodeau should be judged even worse on his coaching and keeping up with the times on the court.

And if we're giving Thibs a knock for Muhammad... does he get any credit for actually signing him for a HUGE discount... 1/2 of what he made on his rookie deal?

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

sjm34 wrote:

WolvesFan21 wrote:
I wonder if instead of a firing Thibs will take a demotion to be GM? Offer him firing or force him to hire a Headcoach.

Pretty sure we don't want Thibs as our GM. He came in and gave Gorgui a 4yr/64 mil deal and offered Shabazz a 4yr/40 mil deal. Good teams don't give out 4yr deals to role players during the rebuilding stage. They don't offer deals a year early to role players (G). He traded a solid defensive PG who knew how to run an offense for a late 1st round pick and then offered up a 3yr/57 mil deal to Teague. He signed Cole to a 3 yr deal and won't even play him. The only acceptable deals were for Butler and Taj, and neither are considered to be steals.

We went from being the brightest young core in the league to an average team with no real assets and in cap hell, which is about to get significantly worse over the next two years.

To be fair... there might be some revisionist history here. Virtually the entire league has regrets from the 2016 (and even 2017) offseason. At the time, I remember many posts about how the Wolves did not do anything as egregious as signing Mozgov for $64M. Or Evan Turner for $75M. Or Luol Deng for $90M. Or Chandler Parsons for $96M. These guys are littered all over the league.

I believe many called Aldrich's $21M reasonable. Dieng was an overpay, especially in hindsight. His apparent downfall could be from dumb Wolves planning/analysis. Or, it could be something else... maybe Dieng is a contract player and is skating? I dunno. And I dunno how teams can always know these things. The other angle is that the league has also changed on the court, rendering a guy like Aldrich mostly moot. I'm not giving Thibodeau a pass for his GM work... but I think Thibodeau should be judged even worse on his coaching and keeping up with the times on the court.

And if we're giving Thibs a knock for Muhammad... does he get any credit for actually signing him for a HUGE discount... 1/2 of what he made on his rookie deal?

It might be revisionist history for you, but I called him out on it at the time. Just because other teams made bad deals as well, doesn't excuse it. Did the warriors make a bad deal, the Spurs....

Thibs got Shabazz at the minimum because the offers dried up. That, in know way diminishes the bad call he made the year before. This shows poor talent evaluation on Thibs part. I don't have an issue with Cole's contract. I have an issue with giving it to him, and then never playing him. Why not have a minimum level talent on the bench instead. So in your mind, Cole became useless in one off season. He filled a nice role for the Clippers the season before we got him.

You also need to consider that guys like Turner and Parsons are considered starting level talent, while Thibs himself said he considered G a bench player. So he was willing to pay two bench players 26 mil a year. What successful team does that Abe?

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

sjm34 wrote:

WolvesFan21 wrote:
I wonder if instead of a firing Thibs will take a demotion to be GM? Offer him firing or force him to hire a Headcoach.

Pretty sure we don't want Thibs as our GM. He came in and gave Gorgui a 4yr/64 mil deal and offered Shabazz a 4yr/40 mil deal. Good teams don't give out 4yr deals to role players during the rebuilding stage. They don't offer deals a year early to role players (G). He traded a solid defensive PG who knew how to run an offense for a late 1st round pick and then offered up a 3yr/57 mil deal to Teague. He signed Cole to a 3 yr deal and won't even play him. The only acceptable deals were for Butler and Taj, and neither are considered to be steals.

We went from being the brightest young core in the league to an average team with no real assets and in cap hell, which is about to get significantly worse over the next two years.

To be fair... there might be some revisionist history here. Virtually the entire league has regrets from the 2016 (and even 2017) offseason. At the time, I remember many posts about how the Wolves did not do anything as egregious as signing Mozgov for $64M. Or Evan Turner for $75M. Or Luol Deng for $90M. Or Chandler Parsons for $96M. These guys are littered all over the league.

I believe many called Aldrich's $21M reasonable. Dieng was an overpay, especially in hindsight. His apparent downfall could be from dumb Wolves planning/analysis. Or, it could be something else... maybe Dieng is a contract player and is skating? I dunno. And I dunno how teams can always know these things. The other angle is that the league has also changed on the court, rendering a guy like Aldrich mostly moot. I'm not giving Thibodeau a pass for his GM work... but I think Thibodeau should be judged even worse on his coaching and keeping up with the times on the court.

And if we're giving Thibs a knock for Muhammad... does he get any credit for actually signing him for a HUGE discount... 1/2 of what he made on his rookie deal?

At a season ticket holder meeting I attended last summer, Thibs referred to Gorgui as the Wolves' most improved player over the course of last season. Gorgui already had his contract, so it doesn't sound like Gorgui was skating - at least in Thibs' mind. Interesting that Thibs considered Gorgui the team's most improved player after already considering him good enough before the season to give him a lucrative contract. I've always liked Gorgui, but the problem with the contract is that Gorgui doesn't have a modern NBA PF game and has never been enough of a defender or rim protector to justify such a contract. Those are things Thibs should have known when he signed him.

I agree that Thibs has been worse as a head coach than as PBO. But he's been unimpressive to say the least in his management role. I hold Thibs to a higher standard than not signing egregious contracts. Note that the Lakers' GM who signed Deng and Mozgov has been fired. Note also that it was Bazz who saved Thibs from signing what would have been an egregious contract last summer.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

sjm34 wrote:

WolvesFan21 wrote:
I wonder if instead of a firing Thibs will take a demotion to be GM? Offer him firing or force him to hire a Headcoach.

Pretty sure we don't want Thibs as our GM. He came in and gave Gorgui a 4yr/64 mil deal and offered Shabazz a 4yr/40 mil deal. Good teams don't give out 4yr deals to role players during the rebuilding stage. They don't offer deals a year early to role players (G). He traded a solid defensive PG who knew how to run an offense for a late 1st round pick and then offered up a 3yr/57 mil deal to Teague. He signed Cole to a 3 yr deal and won't even play him. The only acceptable deals were for Butler and Taj, and neither are considered to be steals.

We went from being the brightest young core in the league to an average team with no real assets and in cap hell, which is about to get significantly worse over the next two years.

To be fair... there might be some revisionist history here. Virtually the entire league has regrets from the 2016 (and even 2017) offseason. At the time, I remember many posts about how the Wolves did not do anything as egregious as signing Mozgov for $64M. Or Evan Turner for $75M. Or Luol Deng for $90M. Or Chandler Parsons for $96M. These guys are littered all over the league.

I believe many called Aldrich's $21M reasonable. Dieng was an overpay, especially in hindsight. His apparent downfall could be from dumb Wolves planning/analysis. Or, it could be something else... maybe Dieng is a contract player and is skating? I dunno. And I dunno how teams can always know these things. The other angle is that the league has also changed on the court, rendering a guy like Aldrich mostly moot. I'm not giving Thibodeau a pass for his GM work... but I think Thibodeau should be judged even worse on his coaching and keeping up with the times on the court.

And if we're giving Thibs a knock for Muhammad... does he get any credit for actually signing him for a HUGE discount... 1/2 of what he made on his rookie deal?

The consensus on this board of pretty smart basketball fans going into last season was this team needed some size and help rebounding. Thibs and Layden ended up with 2 bigs that projected to help in Aldrich 3 years 21 million and Jordon Hill (turned out to be just a 1 year deal). Many people thought that Aldrich deal was a pretty good value and it didn't come out till much later that last year wasn't fully guaranteed which quite frankly saves that deal from being kinda bad in hindsight. Look at some salaries for teams and they are paying guys millions of bucks for nothing or playing on other teams because of deals they gave guys. It could have been much worse. I don't think many people thought the league would change quiteas drastically as it did. I think people thought it was moving away from bigs but yikes. Brandon Rush was a solid signing.

So we have 2 off seasons for Thibs. 1st offseason he and Layden miscalculated and added too many bigs. This offseason their miscalculation was going all in on Bazz as a young player they thought could help the team this year and beyond. It hurt the team's depth this year as they could have likely had some worthwhile vet options. Dante Cunningham wanting out of NO is interesting and he signed with the Nets and is shooting much better there. So this upcoming offseason Thibs has seen the roster he has put together. He can see what players to add and what moves to make. He has had plenty of spots where he has been able to hold out for what he wants or not spend crazy money for guys. Keep in mind he got a 1st round pick for Rubio. I'm curious what he can do this offseason which could be a great one for someone making patient calculating moves in FA with not a whole lot of money to go around. He needs to find some guys that fit though. He also needs to find a hidden gem type player and also needs to be willing to play them.