Minnesota Sports Forum

kekgeek1 wrote:Terrible loss with the grizzlies missing 3 of their top 7 players. Blowing a 17 pt lead

Very disheartening. It's not as though the Griz just outplayed them, the Wolves played like utter crap outside of a couple runs. Thibs has a lot of work to do.

It is just one game and I am not in any way going to panic but it would have been nice to beat a team that we are going to compete for a playoff spot with and they were short handed.

kekgeek1 wrote:It is just one game and I am not in any way going to panic but it would have been nice to beat a team that we are going to compete for a playoff spot with and they were short handed.

Yeah, Conley and Gasol executed to perfection late in the game and we just didn't execute. A couple of forced shots by Towns; two missed FTs by Wiggins; a foul by LaVine on the perimeter to give them 2 FTs, etc. It was just panic vs. calm execution.

Hopefully our guys settle the hell down and come back strong Saturday.

Q12543 wrote:

kekgeek1 wrote:It is just one game and I am not in any way going to panic but it would have been nice to beat a team that we are going to compete for a playoff spot with and they were short handed.

Yeah, Conley and Gasol executed to perfection late in the game and we just didn't execute. A couple of forced shots by Towns; two missed FTs by Wiggins; a foul by LaVine on the perimeter to give them 2 FTs, etc. It was just panic vs. calm execution.

Hopefully our guys settle the hell down and come back strong Saturday.

Agreed. I said they will split with the grizz

Love to beat a dead horse, but one of these things is not like the others:

21/4/5
25/7
12/14/2
19/5/3
4/8/4 (0pts, 2 assists in the 4th quarter)

...and yes our bench sucked and we missed FT's, but it just can't be a coincidence our ineptitude to start the 3rd and down the stretch with a primary ball handler who doesn't score. 1-5, 0-1, 2-5 for Ricky. I'll step back and soak in the criticism now.

I'm out of town so I wasn't able to watch the game. Sounds like I was lucky to miss this one. Based on what I've read from you guys, this was definitely a game we should have won -- Memphis playing short-handed, the Wolves leaving 9 points at the line and blowing a 17 point lead. So yes, Thibs apparently has a lot of work to do. One thing he can't do is turn Wiggins into a clutch player. But he shouldn't have to. Towns and LaVine should be clutch players. They both have the mentality. KAT's numbers in the box score aren't very impressive. Don't know the story behind that.

Anyway, it's important that the Wolves win their next game on the road against the Kings. Then they should have a great shot at winning their first two home games next week against Memphis and the Nuggets. So this disappointing opening loss wouldn't look so bad a week from now if its part of a 3-1 record. At worst I see the Wolves 2-2 after their first 4 games.

I think tonight's loss may have been a good thing because Thibs can use it to remind them of how much work they have to do. Perhaps some of our guys were starting to believe the preseason hype about them. Now they know they're going to have to gut it out and focus on every play, every shot, every single game.

Also Towns played too perimeter focused tonight for me. Bang in the post a little more, hit some easy pick n pop mid-range shots and just in general move towards the rim more off PnR. He took some ill advised step back 3's and didn't look like he had his legs under him for a decent amount of his long range jumpers as the game went on.

As to your towns point Lip, i believe he had 16 pts, 2 rebs, and 2 assists in the first 14 minutes. Hung around the perimeter a bit too much after that and looked to be forcing things.

Rubio was allowing far too much penetration by Conley. On offense, he still hasnt figured out what arc means. Im surprised he even makes FTs.

Dieng was quietly impressive. Still gets out of position on D though.

FTs, 3s, and stupid fouls were the reason for the loss. Though the grizz missed 8 FTs as well.

33.3% on 3s isn't going to cut it against good teams.

Looking at the game stats, it just looks like the Griz shot the ball better. We were even on the boards and actually had two fewer turnovers than Memphis. We got to the line more and missed 9 compared to them missing 8. We also scored more points in the paint. But the Griz shot significantly better than we did. The Griz shot 45% compared to our 42% from the field. Moreover, they took 6 more three-pointers than we did and hit a much higher percentage from behind the arc. In addition, our bench seemed to contribute almost nothing. Belly looks like he didn't produce and Rush didn't hit any of the few threes he took. In fact, the game stats from tonight's game look a lot like last season -- less accurate shooting overall, taking significantly fewer threes, hitting a much lower percentage of threes and poor bench play.

Am I missing something?

lipoli390 wrote:Looking at the game stats, it just looks like the Griz shot the ball better. We were even on the boards and actually had two fewer turnovers than Memphis. We got to the line more and missed 9 compared to them missing 8. We also scored more points in the paint. But the Griz shot significantly better than we did. The Griz shot 45% compared to our 42% from the field. Moreover, they took 6 more three-pointers than we did and hit a much higher percentage from behind the arc. In addition, our bench seemed to contribute almost nothing. Belly looks like he didn't produce and Rush didn't hit any of the few threes he took. In fact, the game stats from tonight's game look a lot like last season -- less accurate shooting overall, taking significantly fewer threes, hitting a much lower percentage of threes and poor bench play.

Am I missing something?

Not really. The only bench players who did anything were dunn and Aldrich. Dunn made a few bonehead plays, but I thought he showed some good things. Shabazz was invisible. Rush and Bjelicia the same.