Minnesota Sports Forum

I hate the signing. Thibs just blew the rest of our cap space on a backup PF on the backside of his career who can't stretch the floor. With our cap space gone we haven't improve our 3-point shooting at all.

Love the defense, rebounding, toughness, hustle, and efficiency. Especially with Rubio out, getting another guy who works his ass off is great. He and Butler should both help us out there.

But man, I wish we had landed a top-flight 3 point shooter this offseason.

How do we add 3 point shooting on the cheap at this point?

lipoli390 wrote:I hate the signing. Thibs just blew the rest of our cap space on a backup PF on the backside of his career who can't stretch the floor. With our cap space gone we haven't improve our 3-point shooting at all.

He just brought in a guy who allows us to have 5 guys all defend past the 3 point range. I don't see this being bad cause we can't as a group shoot threes, I see it as guarding three better then any 5 if Wiggins and KAT get on board and is destroying teams offensively in the paint

Gibson has always been a bench-caliber player. But watching him last year. he's not even the player he once was.

Have to say goodbye to Bazz and Aldritch (and probably the 2018 1st) to clear enough cap space for 3pt shooting.

lipoli390 wrote:I hate the signing. Thibs just blew the rest of our cap space on a backup PF on the backside of his career who can't stretch the floor. With our cap space gone we haven't improve our 3-point shooting at all.

Yeah, don't necessarily hate the player, but i'm not thrilled with the signing. At least these are short term deals we're adding.

There's more than one way to play basketball people. We've built a grindhouse style team and hopefully the offensive skill we have creates wide open 3's so our league average shooters can work just fine. If Wiggins and Towns don't get toughened up now with Butler and Gibson on the team then there was no hope for them anyway. This is enough to make the playoffs and then we can use our resources that open up next summer to fix the shooting issues (we vet our exceptions back). Teams don't get fully built in one offseason. This year's version will focus on defense and toughness and then next year we can add some more outside skill. It's a clear plan that fits the style of our head coach. We'll just have to wait and see how viable it still is in today's game, but all I know is it's gonna be a pain in the ass to play us next year during the regular season like Memphis.

lipoli390 wrote:Gibson has always been a bench-caliber player. But watching him last year. he's not even the player he once was.

I wish we had used the space on a 3 point shooter (I think a guy like Ilyasova would have made more sense in terms of fit), and I wish we had paid him less, but Taj is still a pretty good player. He was averaging almost 12 and 7 last year on 52% shooting (he's always super efficient, near 50% from the field--which is at least 5 or 6% higher than Paul Millsap) and he's still a good defender even though he's not as quick as he was in his early 20s.

He should fit what we're doing too because he doesn't need a lot of touches offensively. His defense would also allow us to move Gorgui to the bench, where his offense could really thrive. Having Gorgui and Taj as your 5th and 6th best players is not bad. And his history with Thibs and Butler should make the transition pretty seamless. He's further evidence that Thibs is reshaping this roster to his liking, a tough, defensive team that works hard at all times, and it's always a good thing when the coach and his team are on the same page.

Now we NEED to get as many shooters around these guys as possible.

Khans - it's gonna be a pain in the ass to play us next year during the regular season like Memphis.

Good point. We look like Memphis now don't we? That's a damn site better than we were. Possible irony - we end up in the playoffs against the Jazz somehow, with Ricky running their point

Bazz is looking better and better as this goes along. And i didn't think that was even a possibility at the start of the offseason.