Minnesota Sports Forum

lipoli390 wrote:Yes, the schedule has been tough. But consider this.

1. Portland beat a great Indiana Pacer team tonight the day after beating the Lakers in LA. The Blazers beat the Bulls at home on Nov. 22 and the next night beat a very good Golden State team on the road by 12 points. The Blazers opened the season beating Denver on the road and the next night Portland beat the Spurs.

2. The Warriors are ahead of the Wolves in spite of losing a key starter, Iggy.

3. The Nuggets are ahead of the Wolves even though their best shooter is still out with an ACL injury, while at the same time they lost both Iggy and their head coach George Karl over the summer.

4. The Wolves have lost to both the Wizards and Cavs.

I'm not ready to sound any alarm bells yet. But there is definitely cause for concern. Watching the Wolves closely over the first month of the season, it just seems to me something important is missing. It's not just the bench; it's the starters too. This team just doesn't seem built to be a playoff team in the West. We're a plodding, jump-shooting team without a top rotation player who can create his own shot off the dribble. That's not going to get it done in the West. That's a prescription for a lottery pick in the West. Golden State is largely a jump-shooting team, but they are great from behind the arc while the Wolves are not. And GS is also better defensively than the Wolves.

We'll see. When the schedule eases up, the Wolves may make up a lot of lost ground and get on track for that 6th-8th seed most of us were pretty sure they'd get. But it's troubling to see how deficient this team is.

Q12543 wrote:Being in the West continues to be a curse. Last night New Orleans beats Chicago in triple OT, Portland beats Indiana, and San Antonio beats Atlanta. We get absolutely zero help from Eastern Conference teams. Right now Washington is the 3rd seed in the East with a 9-9 record. I've never seen the imbalance this bad.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Q12543 wrote:Being in the West continues to be a curse. Last night New Orleans beats Chicago in triple OT, Portland beats Indiana, and San Antonio beats Atlanta. We get absolutely zero help from Eastern Conference teams. Right now Washington is the 3rd seed in the East with a 9-9 record. I've never seen the imbalance this bad.

Terribly imbalanced. But, give those West teams a bit of credit. Portland and New Orleans won on the back-end of back-to-backs after traveling the night before.

By the way, the Wolves won 44 games in 2005 and missed the playoffs. The #3 seed in the East had 45 wins. The #4 seed in the West had 58 wins.

lipoli390 wrote:Kahn failed miserably compared to other Western Conference teams when it comes to accumulating talent. The spotlight has now turned to Flip and Adelman. They inherited enough to build on and work with in my view. So far, neither looks very impressive. We'll see over the next 9 months whether Flip and Adelman can perform on par with their counterparts in the West. So far, neither one has been particularly impressive.

sjm34 wrote:Lip, why are you separating Adelman from Kahn. He was present for half of Kahn's tenure with the wolves. I was excited when Adelman signed on, and still remember the press conference when he said he would mold his system around our talent. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Instead we have been trying to completely remake our team, and usually at the cost of the future.