Kekgeek grades G21 vs Clippers

[davemang]

I tend to be a little more Pollyannish about the wolves than the typical poster here, but I'm going to depart from my normal glass half full perspective to provide a little reality check. We all love 3 game winning streaks, including two blowouts. But who did we beat? We barely beat a Clippers team that, despite playing hard, was missing its two best players on our home court. Then we beat an aging Lakers team missing one starter that arrived in minny at 3am after playing in Utah...they looked awful. And last night we beat a Clippers team missing several players that appeared to have no interest in competing. On the positive side, we played hard in all three games. But again...the competition, or lack thereof.

So now we get another break playing a Warriors team that's lost 4 in a row, has three starters banged up, and will have played the night before. A loss would make all of us question where this Wolves team is going, but I expect a win. The real test will be Sunday. If we can beat the Warriors twice in a row and come home to face the Lakers again riding a 5-game win streak, I'll feel really good that we have turned the corner.

On the contrary, just like a struggling shooter getting some easy transition buckets to get on track, maybe a stretch of easy wins in fortunate circumstances can right some of the team chemistry and propel them to start winning against the tougher matchups. The wolves surely wouldn't be getting my hopes up just to crush them right?

[DNatagal]

Luckily, wins are not weighted for how good or bad the other team is. They lost to a Portland team that is barely better than a G league team.

[Q-is-here]

This is a defense first team when they are winning. Effort is a base element to playing defense. Defense and rebounding can hide a lot of warts on a bad offense.
The Wolves have had the right combination the past few games.
Just want to point out that the offense has been bad, but they have won by almost 50 points total the last 2 games. When the Wolves were barely winning close games at the beginning of the season, the offense was league average with a poor defense.

Which way do you think this team becomes a top 4 team this season in the West?

Not sure if this is a rhetorical question, but yeah, defense has to be the identity. But the offense has to be better and I'm concerned that it simply isn't capable of being Top 10 given the personnel mix that we have. Sure, incremental improvements can be made in terms of schemes and personnel groupings, but it's just hard to see it getting to Top 10.

The limited ceiling on offense makes me question how far this team can go this year (but don't look at what I predicted in the Wins Prediction thread!).

[DNatagal]

Last year the Wolves had the best defensive rating at 108.4 and are 108.6 so far this year. Of course the last 2 games really helped.