Minnesota Sports Forum

Honestly? If Ricky goes down I want to see Zach play as many minutes at the 1 as possible. I know it's not the ideal situation, but he is better than any option I've heard.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:Honestly? If Ricky goes down I want to see Zach play as many minutes at the 1 as possible. I know it's not the ideal situation, but he is better than any option I've heard.

The reality is if Ricky goes down either Tyus or Zach should be getting a bunch of minutes and Brown can play too assuming he is on the roster. Nobody available at this point would be good enough to save the season might as well go to developmental mode. If Flip was fine with Lavine playing big minutes (I realize there were limited options but yeah) Tyus and Brown should be given a similar opportunity.

Pablo has been waived. We'll know within 48 hours...

If you told we acquired one of last years Knicks PGs, my first guess would have been Calderon. Second guess would have been Felton (and not happy about it!). Maybe it will be Pablo.

If Flip takes the long view for the Wolves as a rebuilding team, he'll refrain from adding any older vet PGs in their 30s. However, if he wants to give this team its best shot at making the playoffs with insurance against an extended injury to Ricky, then he'll need to add a vet PG. But there are no free agent PGs worth signing.

A trade with the Knicks for Calderon might make sense. We shouldn't have to give up much. Perhaps Bennett in exchange for Calderon and a future lottery protected 1st round pick. Calderon would give us some shooting and solid offensive play behind Ricky at the PG position. I think being around Ricky might reinvigorate him.

Otherwise, perhaps a deal with Boston for one of their guards. Boston is way overstocked in the back court and might like to take a flyer on Bennett's upside up front. Perhaps Bennett for Avery Bradley. Not sure I'd want the 3 years left on Bradley's contract, but he'd be a really nice back up and insurance policy behind Ricky. I'd prefer Bennett for Isaiah Thomas, but I don't see the Celtics doing that deal. Bennett or Payne for Evan Turner seems like a possibility. Evan can play PG as well as SG. He's fallen way short of his promise as a high lottery pick, but he's settled in as a solid rotation player.

I wouldn't mind dealing for Kirk Hinrich. Bennett for Hinrich? Would the Bulls do that deal? Should the Wolves do that deal? Hmmm.

just for the record, it seems weird that we all bashed Adelman for not playing rookies, but are all about finding a backup point guard to take away time from Tyus. Is it really make or break a season decision to let Tyus be the backup?

The thing is, you bring in a Calderon, Heinrich or someone of that ilk, you are essentially stifling Jones and I just can't get on board with that. We spent 3 2nd round picks on this guy to be the backup PG. Maybe he's not ready today, maybe he is. If he's not you have Zach and someone like Brown who can be a short term fix.

Here's the real truth, if Ricky goes down our chances of making the playoffs pretty much die with his injury. I don't see Ricky as injury prone yet. Both of his major injuries were at least somewhat flukey. I say we bank on Ricky staying healthy this year, and if he doesn't we have to re-examine the PG position next offseason. In my opinion it's overkill to try and guard against the potential loss of Ricky. It's not like we don't have some options already.

Lavine will be starting at SG. He is good but he shouldn't be asked to play two positions.

alexftbl8181 wrote:just for the record, it seems weird that we all bashed Adelman for not playing rookies, but are all about finding a backup point guard to take away time from Tyus. Is it really make or break a season decision to let Tyus be the backup?

I think they are different situations, Alex. Shabazz was a lottery pick and had an NBA body, and showed us enough in his few minutes to earn more playing time than Adelman gave him. Tyus, on the other hand, was a late first rounder who is likely less NBA-ready than Shabazz.

Having said that, I'm still not in favor of Flip bringing in a veteran PG to take minutes away from Tyus. I would prefer to keep Brown and let him and Tyus fight it out for backup PG minutes...my sense is that both will be adequate but not spectacular. And if one of our PGs got hurt, I have no problems with Zach taking some minutes at backup PG. That would allow Wiggins to get some minutes at SG, and increase Muhammad's time on the court. I'm not wishing for any PG injuries, but a backup lineup of Zach, Wiggins, Shabazz, Towns and Dieng would be a lot of fun to watch.

I prefer to do as the Spurs do and they consistently had 3 PG's while they developed Corey Joseph. Then when Parker would inevitably miss games they would start Joseph and keep the backup in his normal role like we did with Mo and Zach last year initially. Then if Jones doesn't have it you can have him come off the bench and let the vet backup play with the starting unit. Joseph was brought along slowly, but still got playing time to develop whenever Parker wouldn't play. What if Ricky only misses 20 games? We shouldn't mail in a season playing Tyus and Lavine at PG in those 20 games. The PG stirs the drink so relying on guys who aren't ready affects everyone, not just that player.

I think the wolves need to actually have a blueprint and stick to it for more than one season. I think it starts with drafting young talent for our core, and we now have that (hopefully). Second it requires filling in some vets like KG, Martin etc, to help steer the young guys in the right direction, check. Third we need to understand how to move forward, and that requires winning BB games, which isn't going to have any chance of happening with the current roster if Ricky goes down.

I think the Tyus pick was a waste of time, mainly because I don't believe it should be part of our blueprint. I think we need to understand that our picks should fill one of two needs at this point. The first is adding to the core which means the player should have significant upside, and the second is a "ready to play" back up player. That means in most cases a guy that has played in college for 3-4 seasons and developed his game already, or a Euro type guy that is a little older. We already have plenty of young guys to develop for our core at this point.

Since we didn't fill out our back up PG role correctly, I believe we need grab someone like Chalmers. We have a TE that I believe would accommodate his salary, and we may be able to grab a second rounder as well for our trouble. It has been rumored that Riley is looking to unload him.