Minnesota Sports Forum

longstrangetrip wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

lipoli390 wrote:Thanks for posting, Long. That article nails it. The advanced stats tell the take. And It will be fun to watch what he does for this team now that he's surrounded by more talent than he's played with before as a T-Wolf. Moreover, it's complementary talent i.e., scorers/shooters like Wiggins, LaVine and Shabazz. And we now have Kander to keep Ricky healthy. :).

...not sure the talent level exceeds what he had two years ago with a healthy Love, Pekovic, and Martin in the starting lineup. I do think he has more potential surrounding him than ever before. Perhaps that's what you meant.

I gotta side with Lip here on comparing this year's roster with that of two years ago:

2013-4 2015-6
Pek Pek
Dieng Dieng
Turiaf Towns
Love KG
Cunningham Bjelica
Williams Bennett
Mbah a Moute Payne
Brewer Wiggins
Muhammad Muhammad
Budinger Prince
Martin Martin
Shved LaVine
Rubio Rubio
Barea Miller
Price Jones



I think this year's team destroys the 2013-4 team...so much deeper and experienced. As I look at the matchups, the only ones that the 2013-4 team win are Love over KG and possibly Pek over Pek (although Pek only played 54 games that year). While Love is a much more productive offensive player than KG, KG is a far better defender and teammate and a proven winner. And the other matchups are clearly in favor of this year's roster, especially when you consider that the more seasoned 2015-6 versions of Rubio, Dieng and Muhammad will be far superior to their 2013-4 versions, when Dieng and Muhammad were rookies. I'm taking this year's roster all day.

khans2k5 wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

lipoli390 wrote:Thanks for posting, Long. That article nails it. The advanced stats tell the take. And It will be fun to watch what he does for this team now that he's surrounded by more talent than he's played with before as a T-Wolf. Moreover, it's complementary talent i.e., scorers/shooters like Wiggins, LaVine and Shabazz. And we now have Kander to keep Ricky healthy. :).

...not sure the talent level exceeds what he had two years ago with a healthy Love, Pekovic, and Martin in the starting lineup. I do think he has more potential surrounding him than ever before. Perhaps that's what you meant.

I gotta side with Lip here on comparing this year's roster with that of two years ago:

2013-4 2015-6
Pek Pek
Dieng Dieng
Turiaf Towns
Love KG
Cunningham Bjelica
Williams Bennett
Mbah a Moute Payne
Brewer Wiggins
Muhammad Muhammad
Budinger Prince
Martin Martin
Shved LaVine
Rubio Rubio
Barea Miller
Price Jones



I think this year's team destroys the 2013-4 team...so much deeper and experienced. As I look at the matchups, the only ones that the 2013-4 team win are Love over KG and possibly Pek over Pek (although Pek only played 54 games that year). While Love is a much more productive offensive player than KG, KG is a far better defender and teammate and a proven winner. And the other matchups are clearly in favor of this year's roster, especially when you consider that the more seasoned 2015-6 versions of Rubio, Dieng and Muhammad will be far superior to their 2013-4 versions, when Dieng and Muhammad were rookies. I'm taking this year's roster all day.

The '13-'14 team was regularly building 20 point leads on good NBA teams. Again people seem to discredit how good Kevin Love was for us. If the two teams faced off, '13-'14 would crush the current team just in transition alone given we had/have no transition defense and '13-'14 had one of the best offensive transition combo's in the league in recent years. If Love regularly took Ibaka to the woodshed, why would KG at this point in his career be able to do anything to stop him? We're a deeper team now, but '13-'14's starting 5 was top 5 in the entire league. This year's top 5 isn't even in the top half of the league. None of our young guys are there yet to already say outside of the Love matchup this team is better. They aren't there yet.

Q12543 wrote:LST, I think you are setting yourself up for significant disappointment if you think this year's team is going to win more games, much less "crush", the team we had two seasons ago. We don't have anyone on the squad as good as Kevin Love was in that particular year and your're fooling yourself if you think the Wolves get 50+ games of a healthy and peak performing Pekovic this season.

I certainly like our potential longer term, but this team will have a tough time winning 30 games, much less more than 40.

longstrangetrip wrote:

khans2k5 wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

lipoli390 wrote:Thanks for posting, Long. That article nails it. The advanced stats tell the take. And It will be fun to watch what he does for this team now that he's surrounded by more talent than he's played with before as a T-Wolf. Moreover, it's complementary talent i.e., scorers/shooters like Wiggins, LaVine and Shabazz. And we now have Kander to keep Ricky healthy. :).

...not sure the talent level exceeds what he had two years ago with a healthy Love, Pekovic, and Martin in the starting lineup. I do think he has more potential surrounding him than ever before. Perhaps that's what you meant.

I gotta side with Lip here on comparing this year's roster with that of two years ago:

2013-4 2015-6
Pek Pek
Dieng Dieng
Turiaf Towns
Love KG
Cunningham Bjelica
Williams Bennett
Mbah a Moute Payne
Brewer Wiggins
Muhammad Muhammad
Budinger Prince
Martin Martin
Shved LaVine
Rubio Rubio
Barea Miller
Price Jones



I think this year's team destroys the 2013-4 team...so much deeper and experienced. As I look at the matchups, the only ones that the 2013-4 team win are Love over KG and possibly Pek over Pek (although Pek only played 54 games that year). While Love is a much more productive offensive player than KG, KG is a far better defender and teammate and a proven winner. And the other matchups are clearly in favor of this year's roster, especially when you consider that the more seasoned 2015-6 versions of Rubio, Dieng and Muhammad will be far superior to their 2013-4 versions, when Dieng and Muhammad were rookies. I'm taking this year's roster all day.

The '13-'14 team was regularly building 20 point leads on good NBA teams. Again people seem to discredit how good Kevin Love was for us. If the two teams faced off, '13-'14 would crush the current team just in transition alone given we had/have no transition defense and '13-'14 had one of the best offensive transition combo's in the league in recent years. If Love regularly took Ibaka to the woodshed, why would KG at this point in his career be able to do anything to stop him? We're a deeper team now, but '13-'14's starting 5 was top 5 in the entire league. This year's top 5 isn't even in the top half of the league. None of our young guys are there yet to already say outside of the Love matchup this team is better. They aren't there yet.

Ah, if only games were only 1 quarter long...the Wolves would have had a terrific 2013-14 season and we all could have gotten to bed earlier!

But unfortunately, Stern's conspiracy against the Wolves forced them to play 4 quarters, and the fact of the matter is that squad just wasn't very good after the first quarter, and was especially terrible at the end of games. I don't disagree that the starting five from two years ago was better out of the gate than this year's edition is likely to be, even with Wiggins replacing Brewer. But the rest of the 10 players on the roster is a mismatch in favor of 2015-6... and as the 13-14 guys proved so well, you need more than a quick start to win basketball games. Top to bottom, I see much more talent this year.

bleedspeed177 wrote:

Q12543 wrote:LST, I think you are setting yourself up for significant disappointment if you think this year's team is going to win more games, much less "crush", the team we had two seasons ago. We don't have anyone on the squad as good as Kevin Love was in that particular year and your're fooling yourself if you think the Wolves get 50+ games of a healthy and peak performing Pekovic this season.

I certainly like our potential longer term, but this team will have a tough time winning 30 games, much less more than 40.

I am with you Q.

longstrangetrip wrote:Of course we will never know who would win between the two Wolves' squads, but it's a fun debate nevertheless. It's interesting to me that the positive comments about the 2013-4 team only talk about their offensive productivity, ignoring the fact that they were a very poor defensive team. While I enjoyed watching that team in the first quarter, they were painful to watch when the reserves came in, and even the starters were ineffective at the end of games. I like the depth of this year's team much better, and also think they will be a far superior defensive team. I'll take depth and defense over offensive productivity.

The only thing we know right now is that the 2013-4 team couldn't win...it remains to be seen how good this year's team will be.