Minnesota Sports Forum

Duke13 wrote:Rubio played well but was still exploited quite a bit on offense. Mcbuckets has never guarded a PG in his life especially in down the stretch of a close game. They werent guarding him, but he played well for his low standards. I seriously think Lavine could be our PG of the future. Somebody said it earlier, he's our leader no question.

bleedspeed177 wrote:

Duke13 wrote:Rubio played well but was still exploited quite a bit on offense. Mcbuckets has never guarded a PG in his life especially in down the stretch of a close game. They werent guarding him, but he played well for his low standards. I seriously think Lavine could be our PG of the future. Somebody said it earlier, he's our leader no question.

I think he might be a better PG then Dunn and is younger to boot. How many minutes have Dunn and LaVine played together?

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:

Camden wrote:

kekgeek1 wrote:Hey towns gave thibs a big hug after the win. Apparently wiggins had a huge smile on his face taking about thibs on the radio. Hope we can build on this.

Best defense all year

Noticed Jimmy Butler also walked over to Thibs after the game and gave him a hug. Butler and Gibson walked over to him pre-game too. You see those efforts, you read about Noah saying he missed him and all that, you hear Rose talk about going to dinner with him and how often he stuck up for him, and you just see that Thibs does connect with players despite what some articles say about him.

Camden wrote:

kekgeek1 wrote:Hey towns gave thibs a big hug after the win. Apparently wiggins had a huge smile on his face taking about thibs on the radio. Hope we can build on this.

Best defense all year

Noticed Jimmy Butler also walked over to Thibs after the game and gave him a hug. Butler and Gibson walked over to him pre-game too. You see those efforts, you read about Noah saying he missed him and all that, you hear Rose talk about going to dinner with him and how often he stuck up for him, and you just see that Thibs does connect with players despite what some articles say about him.

I think any objective viewpoint would conclude the news is mixed on players' thoughts about playing for Thibs, Cam. Players giving their ex-coach a hug is commonplace, at least for every coach not named Carlissimo, and means about as much to me as the platitudes players say publicly about their coach. More meaningful to me are the comments Noah made about the impact of Thibs' intense practices during the season, or the fact that none of the stars he coached in Chicago ended up here (I recognize a lot of that is financial, but I suspect not all).

I also chuckled when I read Noah's comments about missing Thibs...you know, the one about missing him after he's gone. I've had a lot of girlfriends that I missed after I was gone, but I was miserable when we were together...I read some of that into Noah's comments also!

We've always spun stats to create our own narratives. Now, we're spinning hugs and quotes to do the same.

Not a direct knock on you long. Just amusing that different people can get such different takes on such benign things... and how each of those takes directly supports the opinions each of you already had.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Camden wrote:Ricky wasn't the singular reason we won tonight, but we don't win that game without him. Saying he hurt us on both ends of the floor just isn't true for this particular game.

Didn't watch. Wouldn't know... but was this the first game we can say that about Rubio this season?

No. He was absolutely huge in that Charlotte win just a few games ago. We don't win that game without him on the floor. And by the way, his biggest plays came in - gasp! - crunch time. He made a key jumper and made two huge defensive plays.

Maybe. But that's a just assuming nobody else would have made that one jumper or defensive plays. Could some other random PG around the league done the same thing?

He was still largely mediocre for a big chunk of that game, but ended up with a more traditional Rubio stat line.
Rubio: 2 - 7 fg / 9 points / 7 reb / 12 asts

And it came in a game where his backup played pretty well in less than 1/2 the minutes.
Dunn: 3 - 5 fg / 8 points / 2 reb / 6 asts

Q12543 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Camden wrote:Ricky wasn't the singular reason we won tonight, but we don't win that game without him. Saying he hurt us on both ends of the floor just isn't true for this particular game.

Didn't watch. Wouldn't know... but was this the first game we can say that about Rubio this season?

No. He was absolutely huge in that Charlotte win just a few games ago. We don't win that game without him on the floor. And by the way, his biggest plays came in - gasp! - crunch time. He made a key jumper and made two huge defensive plays.

Maybe. But that's a just assuming nobody else would have made that one jumper or defensive plays. Could some other random PG around the league done the same thing?

He was still largely mediocre for a big chunk of that game, but ended up with a more traditional Rubio stat line.
Rubio: 2 - 7 fg / 9 points / 7 reb / 12 asts

And it came in a game where his backup played pretty well in less than 1/2 the minutes.
Dunn: 3 - 5 fg / 8 points / 2 reb / 6 asts

Well, I went by what I observed in real life, not whether a theoretical scenario would have played out differently or the same. And no, not any replacement-level PG gets Kemba to step out of bounds on an in bounds play and then forces a tough shot that would have won the game had it gone in.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Camden wrote:Ricky wasn't the singular reason we won tonight, but we don't win that game without him. Saying he hurt us on both ends of the floor just isn't true for this particular game.

Didn't watch. Wouldn't know... but was this the first game we can say that about Rubio this season?

No. He was absolutely huge in that Charlotte win just a few games ago. We don't win that game without him on the floor. And by the way, his biggest plays came in - gasp! - crunch time. He made a key jumper and made two huge defensive plays.

Maybe. But that's a just assuming nobody else would have made that one jumper or defensive plays. Could some other random PG around the league done the same thing?

He was still largely mediocre for a big chunk of that game, but ended up with a more traditional Rubio stat line.
Rubio: 2 - 7 fg / 9 points / 7 reb / 12 asts

And it came in a game where his backup played pretty well in less than 1/2 the minutes.
Dunn: 3 - 5 fg / 8 points / 2 reb / 6 asts

Well, I went by what I observed in real life, not whether a theoretical scenario would have played out differently or the same. And no, not any replacement-level PG gets Kemba to step out of bounds on an in bounds play and then forces a tough shot that would have won the game had it gone in.

Fine. You win.

1 game + 3 plays in another game. That's still not enough.



[Note: That being said, I think Rubio starts doing more typical Rubio things more often sooner than later. And the team plays better. Nothing to substantiate this other than I think the team and Rubio have been dreadful thus far this season and it simply has to get better.]

Q12543 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Camden wrote:Ricky wasn't the singular reason we won tonight, but we don't win that game without him. Saying he hurt us on both ends of the floor just isn't true for this particular game.

Didn't watch. Wouldn't know... but was this the first game we can say that about Rubio this season?

No. He was absolutely huge in that Charlotte win just a few games ago. We don't win that game without him on the floor. And by the way, his biggest plays came in - gasp! - crunch time. He made a key jumper and made two huge defensive plays.

Maybe. But that's a just assuming nobody else would have made that one jumper or defensive plays. Could some other random PG around the league done the same thing?

He was still largely mediocre for a big chunk of that game, but ended up with a more traditional Rubio stat line.
Rubio: 2 - 7 fg / 9 points / 7 reb / 12 asts

And it came in a game where his backup played pretty well in less than 1/2 the minutes.
Dunn: 3 - 5 fg / 8 points / 2 reb / 6 asts

Well, I went by what I observed in real life, not whether a theoretical scenario would have played out differently or the same. And no, not any replacement-level PG gets Kemba to step out of bounds on an in bounds play and then forces a tough shot that would have won the game had it gone in.

Fine. You win.

1 game + 3 plays in another game. That's still not enough.



[Note: That being said, I think Rubio starts doing more typical Rubio things more often sooner than later. And the team plays better. Nothing to substantiate this other than I think the team and Rubio have been dreadful thus far this season and it simply has to get better.]

Of course it's not. I don't think anyone on here actually believes Ricky has been much of a help this year. I was just answering your initial question that yes, very recently he did help us win another game on both ends of the floor.

I think if Ricky simply played to his historical standards, we'd be in much better shape - still not great, but certainly better. We'll see if he regains some confidence here. Unfortunately, Dunn's progress has been too up and down to really feel confident that he could step in and do any better. I wish that wasn't the case.

Camden wrote:Towns is playing like an asshole.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

Camden wrote:Towns is playing like an asshole.

This comment made me laugh out loud.

Camden wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

Camden wrote:Towns is playing like an asshole.

This comment made me laugh out loud.

He had just caught the ball above the three-point line, pump faked, looked like he was gonna swing it to a guard and keep the ball movement going, and then he put up a contested three. If I was his teammate, I would have been all in his face during the next dead ball. It's inexcusable. And I had no other way to express how bad it was than to call him an asshole. Lol