Minnesota Sports Forum

PorkChop wrote:How does a team have a terrible bench but great depth?

Porkchop - I think you nailed it.

We have a much better starting lineup because (1) we went from a perennial backup at PF to a superstar with Love's return; (2) we got our talented starting PG (Rubio) back healthy for a full season after a season in which he was recovering from surgery to repair two ligaments; and (3) we now have a SG (Martin) who can actual shoot. We a much better team this season because of the obvious improvements in our starting lineup. But our bench is horrible -- bottom 5 in the NBA. So although we're a much better team than last season, we are anything but deep and our bench has hurt rather than helped us.

As for replacing JJ with a facilitating PG, you have to ask yourself the following question: Who on this current roster will that new backup PG facilitate? JJ can be very frustrating, but unfortunately he generally has no one on the court with him who can score even when he does facilitate. Shved? Hummel? Luc? Dieng? Yuck!! JJ has actually set up Dante with a Lott of good looks this season, but as we all know it's hit or miss with Dante. And it's a sad situation when your best scorer off the bench is Dante Cunnungham.

Perhaps Shabazz will become the scoring threat we've needed off the bench all season.

Lip, it looks as though you misread the thread. This thread is concerning how the bench has stepped up since we had starters go down.

Since Martin went down our bench has averaged over 29 PPG, accounting for over 25% of the team's points.

It doesn't take too much to realize that is significant.

Plus, since Bud and Dante have stepped into the starting line up, both shot over an .500 eFG%. Obviously that is well above the team average.

I admire how you stick to the things that you were saying that the beginning of the season and to say that the our depth (bench plus the new starters (Bud and Dante)) has been anything short of impressive lately is pretty absurd.

Pretty easy to misread the thread when u say the depth is better "this year". I didnt read anything in there stating just the last 5-10 games.

Markkbu - Porkchop said all that needs to be said. Apparently you misread your own thread title. As for the comparison to last season and the recent play of Budinger and Dante, you might recall that we had both of those two guys last season. 50+ games tells us a lot more that 10 games and the Wolves stats over more than 50 games this season tells us that our bench has been terrible compared to the rest of the League. Compared to last season, we're better because Love and Rubio are back and healthy and because of the acquisition of Martin. I guess having these three guys playing and healthy makes us deeper, but given how our bench has performed this season, depth isn't a feature worth highlighting in my view. And any comparison to last season is bound to look good given the low bar bar that last season set. Take Love off this team this season and bring back last season's Ricky (missing two months and a step slower) and this team's record wouldn't be much better than last season.

Lip, where do you get 50 games from Bud last year? Dante sure did but Bud played 5, 10? Something like that at the beginning of last season. We've shown this year (ok the first 20-30 games) how we can dominate bad teams and compete with good teams with this roster. If our bench keeps showing improvement the rest of the year, why try and bring in someone else just for the sake of difference?

The play over the recent couple of games is 95% because Love is playing like the best player in the league, 4.5% because of Rubio finishing near the rim better, and .5% because of our depth

alexftbl8181 wrote:The play over the recent couple of games is 95% because Love is playing like the best player in the league, 4.5% because of Rubio finishing near the rim better, and .5% because of our depth

I certainly agree that Love's inspired play is the main reason we have won 4 out of our last five, but Love is almost always good, so you can't discount the improved contribution of the bench. 32.4 points per game over those 5 games would rank us 13th in the league in bench scoring, as opposed to close to the bottom where we have been much of the year.

I would say:

Love's play: 40%
Rubio's play 30%
Bench 30%

Depth and Bench are two different things in my opinion. On paper, we have some decent depth at Center, Small Forward, and even Power Forward, as I think Cunningham is a very solid low-mistake player. So our depth is pretty good.

The term "bench" to me is more of an applied term in how our depth is deployed in actual games. And in that case, our bench has been pretty crappy because it's generally been five guys that are terribly inefficient on offense. But if you plug Cunningham or Mbah Moute onto a 5-man unit where there are at least 2 or 3 good offensive weapons, suddenly their offensive limitations become a lot more muted.

All of that being said, the slowly-but-surely return of Budinger (he is getting better) and the signs of hope from Shabazz and Dieng point to a scenario where the solution to our bench may indeed come from the existing roster, as Fondey points out earlier in this thread. Other than swapping out one of our SFs for an upgrade at backup SG or PG, he might be right that we just need to stay pat for the most part.

Seems the last 5 games have put fans in better spirits. Ten more solids games of all around team play and I might start believing the sentiment shared in this thread.

Guys, here is the first sentence of of the post.

I am impressed that our team, this year, can withstand losing our 2nd and 3rd scoring option for our starters (not to mention our 2nd string C) and still put together a pretty impressive run over the past 5 games.

I not exactly sure how anyone (PorkChop or Lip) could confuse this, although I am not surprised considering the "we hate Flip no matter what the facts are" agenda that some pursue.

Excellent post Q, all the way through. Your first sentence is a very nice distinction between "bench play" and "depth".