Minnesota Sports Forum

longstrangetrip wrote:Man, he might have scored 38 if he hadn't broken his wrist.

Bizarre and brutal news. He played so well Wednesday, and I think he practiced yesterday. You gotta believe it's not too bad a break, and maybe he won't be out too long. Four starters out tonight now!

I still don't think this opens up time for GR3. After Thad is back the rotation should be:

Dieng, Ronny
Thad, Bennett
Drew, Bazz
Brew, Bud
Mo, Zach

with Robbie and Glen getting mop up time.

Last time he fractured his wrist he scored 48 and played in the next game then missed more than 2 months

kekgeek1 wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:Man, he might have scored 38 if he hadn't broken his wrist.

Bizarre and brutal news. He played so well Wednesday, and I think he practiced yesterday. You gotta believe it's not too bad a break, and maybe he won't be out too long. Four starters out tonight now!

I still don't think this opens up time for GR3. After Thad is back the rotation should be:

Dieng, Ronny
Thad, Bennett
Drew, Bazz
Brew, Bud
Mo, Zach

with Robbie and Glen getting mop up time.

Last time he fractured his wrist he scored 48 and played in the next game then missed more than 2 months

Ouch, so much for my "won't be out too long" comment. :X

Heh, this is going just according to script. Our two best scorers - Pek and Martin - out early with injuries. The Rubio injury was a major gut punch, but none of this other stuff is a surprise. It still sucks when it happens though....

Welp, that makes the logjam at wing easy to address now. Wiggins and Shabazz at SF and Brewer and Budinger at SG. Eventually one of those guys will get hurt (or traded perhaps, i.e. Brewer) and we can even get some GRIII in the rotation!

You are right Q Martin is a lock to miss around 20 games every year but this hurts right now. If he misses 2 months that's probably gonna be more than we both expected right? We all to a certain extent wanted some youth to get minutes but this is getting brutal. Maybe we can get healthy and finish the season strong and see what we have going into the offseason. No reason to rush Rubio or Pek back now.

monsterpile wrote:You are right Q Martin is a lock to miss around 20 games every year but this hurts right now. If he misses 2 months that's probably gonna be more than we both expected right? We all to a certain extent wanted some youth to get minutes but this is getting brutal. Maybe we can get healthy and finish the season strong and see what we have going into the offseason. No reason to rush Rubio or Pek back now.

Right, the goal was to integrate the youth gradually or side-by-side with vets. I whole-heartedly buy into that strategy. I don't think Wiggins, LaVine, Bennett, etc. are ready to take on major roles. Both Martin and Pek (when healthy), along with Young and Rubio, take a lot of pressure off these guys.

But like seemingly every damn year for the past decade, injuries have reared their ugly head and become a major factor for us. That's why I always give what some people believe to be a lowball estimate on win totals. You can't accurately project wins without factoring in realistic injury expectations. We all knew this was going to be an issue this year, and sure enough, it is.

Just incredibly bad luck. I wonder when was the last time a team had four starters unable to play at the same time. It will be interesting to see how the team plays without Martin, as he has been far and away our highest scoring option. On the other hand, most games he hurts us on defense (although not last game) so weathering his injury won't be nearly as difficult as the Rubio injury. But as for tonight, having our 4 veteran starters out against the best team in basketball is an absurd hardship. Maybe Pop will rest his Big 3 tonight since they have to play tomorrow against Brooklyn...it would make it a fairer game.

Q, I thought I did factor in reasonable injury expectations into my win total...but four starters out at the same time goes way beyond reasonable, even for the snakebit Wolves franchise. I expected Pek and Martin to miss significant amount of time, and frankly I wasn't overly concerned about that because of the depth at their positions. But I wasn't counting on Ricky and Ronny being out at the same time, or Thad missing two weeks of games with a death in the family.

I'm going to hope that Ricky and Martin are back in early January. If so, I'm staying with my prediction of .500 basketball the rest of the season after their return. But maybe we should take the Mark Cuban approach and tell Ricky and Martin to take the rest of this lost season off, and go into the lottery with the second-most ping pong balls. Just kidding...sort of.

I suspect Bud will get the start tonight...

And he'll continue to start until he gets injured in the next game or two! :-(

I don't consider this to be bad luck. Martin has always been fragile, and these things happen to him when he is playing significant minutes. Pek has a chronic ankle issue that isn't going to go away.

The week and a half layoff for Thad seems excessive, but definitely something the team could have weathered had they signed a C who could stay healthier.

Ricky is the big loss, and I doubt we would have gotten by without him. I do wonder how teams like the clips manage to keep winning when Paul misses a month, or SA when one of their top players is out. That is when you know they have a good coach I guess.

60WinTim wrote:I suspect Bud will get the start tonight...

And he'll continue to start until he gets injured in the next game or two! :-(

May be Bud will get going, but he can't create offense and draw fouls like Martin can. His defense is no less worse, so I guess we have that going for us.....

This puts a ton more pressure on Mo and Wiggins to create offense.