khans2k5 wrote: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.
He's a unique player, that's for sure and will defer to the talent around him at the end of games.
Between February and April - when the current starting 5 was coming together last year - this crew went 6-2 in close games, meaning games that went to OT or were decided by 4 points or less. Funny how that never seemed to get brought up by the likes of you, Duke, or Pork at the time. Rubio was our starting PG then too.
It was, however, good to see Wiggins pull down 6 rebounds. I noticed Zach had 5 boards and seemed to shoot well from behind the arc. Gorgui's rebounding stats were impressive. I'm surprised we scored more points in the paint than the Griz and we did get to the line more than they did. So it looks like there were some positives.
khans2k5 wrote: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.
I agree that he took a couple of ill-advised shots, but I suppose he was trying to draw Gasol outside and get him out of the paint. That dude is huge and really knows how to wall up in the paint.
This loss should be a good lesson and hopefully a motivation.
All the negative nancys and " I told you so" trolls should log off and go to bed. This team will figure it out.
Only the bench that I'm worried about.
On the Rubio issue, I'll just refer to Q's last post and add that we have shooters on this team. Tonight they didn't hit enough shots. Maybe they took too many bad shots, but I didn't watch the game so I have no way of knowing. But I suspect that Wiggins and KAT both missed shots in the 4th quarter that they should have made. Rush didn't hit a single three. And shooting under 70% from the free throw line isn't acceptable. So from the box score, I think it's simple. We have shooters but they missed too many shots. Whether it's KAT, Wiggins, LaVine, Belly, Bazz or Rush -- those guys are paid to take shots and score. They need to perform better.
khans2k5 wrote: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.
He's a unique player, that's for sure and will defer to the talent around him at the end of games.
Between February and April - when the current starting 5 was coming together last year - this crew went 6-2 in close games, meaning games that went to OT or were decided by 4 points or less. Funny how that never seemed to get brought up by the likes of you, Duke, or Pork at the time. Rubio was our starting PG then too.
Maybe because we could just defer to the year we blew every close game when he was playing with Love and Pek and we were inept offensively closing out games.
lipoli390 wrote:It was, however, good to see Wiggins pull down 6 rebounds. I noticed Zach had 5 boards and seemed to shoot well from behind the arc. Gorgui's rebounding stats were impressive. I'm surprised we scored more points in the paint than the Griz and we did get to the line more than they did. So it looks like there were some positives.
Dunn made some nice slashing plays in the paint. And after he takes a few laps around the league, he will be an absolute beast defensively. He might already be our best perimeter player at fighting over screens, something a lot of our guys seem to struggle with (including Rubio at times).
