Q-is-here wrote: ↑Wed Oct 29, 2025 11:27 pm
While I'm personally the most disappointed in Shannon so far this season, the guy that we should be truly distraught about is Reid given his contract. It takes me back to the emotion I felt after the OKC series and I wanted to see us jettison Randle AND Reid.
There isn't much Dillingham can do about his defensive deficiencies (guessing that's why he got the mediocre grade), but at least he showed some legit PG chops tonight.
I share your disappointment in Shannon so far. I worry that he’s lost confidence or something. He was pretty thoroughly tested last season and he proved to be too good for too many minutes last season to be this bad. I suspect Finchy’s quick hook might have something to do with Shannon’s problems. I like holding players accountable but I think we’re seeing that Finch is not a good coach for younger or less experienced players.
Dilly can definitely improve defensively through experience. Much of defense in the NBA is mental - knowing where to be and what to do and knowing your opponents. It has to become instinctive and that takes time. Further, while he can’t great taller, he can definitely get stronger. Peak male strength typically occurs between ages 25-30. Of course I don’t envision him becoming a great defender, but he can become good enough. I still see him becoming a very good offensive PG with his combination of elite ball-handling, passing and shooting skills.
Even the best teams rarely have 5 or even 4 really good defenders in their starting lineups. Part of our problem defensively is that Rudy isn’t the defender he used to be. I don’t think Jaden’s as good as he should be. And Ant is great defensively only when he wants to be. We miss NAW, which tells me that Clark needs more minutes consistently once he’s recovered from his calf injury. Although like most of us, I wish we had a reliable defensive big off the bench, but I think our main defensive deficiency is on the perimeter. We don’t stop offensive players at the point of attack the way we need to and we allow shooters to get their feet set WAY too often. I don’t think even Jaden is at his best defensively guarding the perimeter. Rudy can’t guard outside the paint at all. Ant doesn’t provide the consistent perimeter defense we need from him and that he’s fully capable of providing. As Jim Peterson once said, even the greatest defensive bigs can’t stop NBA players coming at them with a full head of steam. Defenders need to stop or at least substantially slow offensive players at the point of attach. I’ll add that even good closeouts are remarkably ineffective against good shooters once those shooters get their feet set.
The Bulls won three championships as a GREAT defensive team with Luc Longley as their center and Steve Kerr as their PG. I can’t come up with two worse defenders that those two. But the Bulls had three great defenders in Rodman, MJ and Pippen. All three defended at an elite level consistently everywhere on the court. I’ve never liked having a defense, especially in today’s NBA, that’s built around a pure paint defender like Rudy. It’s especially problematic for the Wolves now as Rudy’s skills are declining. I continue to believe our team needs to be reformulated around highly athletic, mobile, aggressive defenders with an offense that moves the ball and runs. We have a core group of talented players as our foundation for that sort of team - Ant, Jaden, Clark, Beringer and Shannnon. A gifted offensive player like Dilly can work well with enough good defenders around him. Even Dilly can use his quickness to jump passing lanes and get steals.
I should also note that we’ve been terrible offensively this season as well. Only 4 teams in the West are averaging fewer points per game than the Wolves so far this season and 3 of those 4 are below us in the standings. That’s a telling stat.
I don’t think we need to jettison Naz, Randle and Rudy. I just don’t think we can succeed with all three. It seems to me that one or maybe two of them need to go for the right price in return. And I’m no longer sold on Finch as the right head coach for this team. I’m not yet in the dump Finch camp but I’m seriously questioning whether we’ll need to make a change at some point this season or next summer.
The good news is that we’re only five games into the season. More good news is that Ant will return at some point not too far down the road. Finally, we have our first round pick next summer so this is the season to take a step back if that’s what happens. In the meantime, I want to see Shannon, Clark and Dilly get lots of consistent playing time. We’re going to need those three over the long haul beyond this season. They need to play and Finch needs to allow them to play through failure because that’s how they’ll learn.
