Minnesota Sports Forum

rapsuperstar31 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 07, 2026 12:22 pm

FNG wrote: ↑Sat Feb 07, 2026 12:03 pm

Coolbreeze44 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 07, 2026 11:46 am

Not one complaint about Ju Fungo?

Cool, I can't speak to his offense (although 24-8-7 with no turnovers is pretty good) because I was mostly fast forwarding our offensive possessions until the end, but I actually thought his defense was passable. And his 3 offensive rebounds in the final minutes of the game gave us a chance. I saw the negative comments about Ju and Jaden in the GDT but I thought both were fine. This loss in on Ant's terrible defense and poor shooting mostly from Donte and Naz.

He shot a bunch of poor threes that are basically turnovers that lead to long rebounds and fast breaks. Several of those misses his guy streaked down the court for easy layups. He was really poor defending his man driving to the basket, and fouled/bailed out players on their drives.

Yeah, I saw the 0 for 5 in the box, and saw a couple of the misses. But I thought he was terrific around the basket. But I did see some indifferent defense by him, but to me, not nearly as frustrating as Ant's.

KiwiMatt wrote: ↑Sat Feb 07, 2026 12:30 pm If this team can get Julius Randle to defend at the level we know he can (like against Wemby) then we are a legit contender.

If he continues not to give a dam that end and fold our defense most possessions then we won’t make it out the first round.

It’s all about effort with him. He needs a mental skills coach (yes it is a thing).

that's never gonna go away with him.

The difference is that NY would be on his back about it but here, Finch coddles him.

Catching up on the replay now, Wolves up 70 to 56 at the half! Guessing I can just wrap it up now cause I'm sure nothing eventful happens after this right?

Coolbreeze44 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 07, 2026 11:46 am

FNG wrote: ↑Sat Feb 07, 2026 11:40 am Ju with three big offensive rebounds in crunch time to set up shots that Ant will normally make...he's been terrific in the clutch all year and on offense all game so not going to fault him for these misses.

Okay, guys I'm done...I apologize for my crabbiness and repetitiveness...a little hungover today. Glad I watched this though...focusing on our defense made it crystal clear why we lost this game, and helped me understand Rudy's remarks. Now let's see if it does any good.

Not one complaint about Ju Fungo?

I still haven’t watched the game but I noticed a number of complaints about Ju’s effort in this thread.

My take away from the score and box score is this. When you are as talented as the Wolves and you lose at home to a team as bad as the Pelicans after having an 18 points lead, the problem is clearly a lack of effort/intensity and that falls on every single player who played significant minutes. If we’re looking to allocate responsibility among players for last night’s loss, I think the lion’s share of responsibility should fall on Anthony Edwards in part because he’s our star and also based on the box score which shows him at a -12 in 37 minutes. A significant share of the blame should go to Jaden. He took himself out of the game with fouls and I view fouls as a sign of laziness. Then in his 22 minutes he had only 1 rebound, zero blocks and zero steals. Those are the effort stats and they don’t show up next to his name in the box score. Ju has to share a large part of the blame as well. He was a -3 in 37 minutes but I’m also factoring in comments in this thread about his demeanor and lack of defensive effort, which we’ve all seen countless times before.

I’ve just named our three best players, and as our three best, they should be held particularly accountable for last night’s shameful loss. But others like Naz and Donte bear some responsibility as well.

The only player who gets a pass from me is Rudy. He filled up the hustle stats with 16 rebounds, 3 steals and 2 blocks. Finch seemed disappointed in his rim protection but when your perimeter defenders give opposing players lots of runway to attack the rim, even the best rim protectors can’t do a whole lot. Jim Peterson has made that point repeatedly over the years.

Eventually, I’ll watch the replay and I might come away with a slightly different perspective, but I think the numbers speak for themselves.

I just watched Rudy’s post-game comments and took notes. If you listen closely you can learn a lot about what’s wrong with this team. He referred to the team as having “no sense of urgency; no accountability.” That’s pretty damning. Here are some more of the most telling quotes about last night’s game but more importantly about the team generally:

- “The effort [from the Wolves] for a team that wants to play for a championship is unacceptable.” He wasn’t just talking about last night’s game.

- “Offense to me is just sharing the ball, which we don’t do very well.” I thought this was a really telling comment. He was talking about the importance of defense and lack of defensive effort from the team. But in the process of making that point, he couldn’t help but express his frustration with this team’s lack of ball movement. I think all of us on this Board share his frustration in that regard. To me that was a serious and appropriate indictment of Ant, Randle and our coaching staff. Rudy, Naz and Jaden are really good about moving the ball. But we have a serious sticky hands problem on this team that starts with Ant and Randle.

- “If we want to be a championship team, we need to be selfless.” This comment is telling and applies to both sides of the ball. I think it especially relates to the iso ball tendencies of this team - especially Ant and Randle.

- Referring specifically to Zion, Rudy said: “We can’t give them an extra step by not putting the effort in.” This comment squares with Finchy’s comment that we were giving Zion too much runway to the rim. Of course, that’s been a major problem with our perimeter defense this season and in prior seasons. Rudy can only do so much and when he’s not on the floor our defensive stats understandably crater because we don’t have another elite rim protector to cover for our poor perimeter defense. Rudy’s point, and he’s right, is that perimeter defense is largely about effort. Get up on the guy with the ball and stay in front of him. Hound him and make him uncomfortable.

- “If you’re tired you should ask for a sub. If you’re not, you should have the energy to put in the effort.” He must have had a player or two in mind with this comment. Maybe Ant?

- “Accountability starts with ourselves but it seems we don’t have that, so it has to come from the coaches.” That’s a pretty serious indictment of our players but also our coaching staff. He went on to say the coaches should take out any player, including himself, who’s not putting in the effort. Again, a powerful indictment of our coaching staff.

Rudy’s far from perfect. In fact, Rudy said exactly that in this interview. But I think he’s the closet thing we have to a true team leader. And after watching this interview I understand better why TC was so intent on trading for him. We’ll see if Rudy’s comments light a fire under his teammates going forward. I’m not banking on it but we can hope. In the meantime, I remain convinced we should fire Finch and replace him with Malone.

Chris Finch on Rudy Gobert's comments (1/2): "Anybody who knows how we do things knows there's a high degree of accountability. Secondly, I handle all my conversations with ourselves in house. Disappointing he felt the need to go outside. Nonetheless, that's been addressed ...

Finch (2/2): "... already today. There's never been a team that's won anything meaningful that has substituted their way there."

Not to make excuses, but I wonder how much the 3-point revolution has made "bad losses" and "freak wins" more likely? By definition, 3-pointers have more variability due to the distance from the hoop. We shot 34% last night and they shot 44%, including some makes by guys we'd WANT to take those shots like Derick Queen. Part of a good defense is getting guys like Derick Queen (or Jaylen Clark for our opponents) to end up with the open shot. Then you live with the results.

We tend to underestimate how much random variability can play into this stuff, but obviously our own eyes largely validate what Rudy said....but it doesn't explain 100% of these bad outcomes.

Lipoli390 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 07, 2026 1:54 pm

Coolbreeze44 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 07, 2026 11:46 am

FNG wrote: ↑Sat Feb 07, 2026 11:40 am Ju with three big offensive rebounds in crunch time to set up shots that Ant will normally make...he's been terrific in the clutch all year and on offense all game so not going to fault him for these misses.

Okay, guys I'm done...I apologize for my crabbiness and repetitiveness...a little hungover today. Glad I watched this though...focusing on our defense made it crystal clear why we lost this game, and helped me understand Rudy's remarks. Now let's see if it does any good.

Not one complaint about Ju Fungo?

I still haven’t watched the game but I noticed a number of complaints about Ju’s effort in this thread.

My take away from the score and box score is this. When you are as talented as the Wolves and you lose at home to a team as bad as the Pelicans after having an 18 points lead, the problem is clearly a lack of effort/intensity and that falls on every single player who played significant minutes. If we’re looking to allocate responsibility among players for last night’s loss, I think the lion’s share of responsibility should fall on Anthony Edwards in part because he’s our star and also based on the box score which shows him at a -12 in 37 minutes. A significant share of the blame should go to Jaden. He took himself out of the game with fouls and I view fouls as a sign of laziness. Then in his 22 minutes he had only 1 rebound, zero blocks and zero steals. Those are the effort stats and they don’t show up next to his name in the box score. Ju has to share a large part of the blame as well. He was a -3 in 37 minutes but I’m also factoring in comments in this thread about his demeanor and lack of defensive effort, which we’ve all seen countless times before.

I’ve just named our three best players, and as our three best, they should be held particularly accountable for last night’s shameful loss. But others like Naz and Donte bear some responsibility as well.

The only player who gets a pass from me is Rudy. He filled up the hustle stats with 16 rebounds, 3 steals and 2 blocks. Finch seemed disappointed in his rim protection but when your perimeter defenders give opposing players lots of runway to attack the rim, even the best rim protectors can’t do a whole lot. Jim Peterson has made that point repeatedly over the years.

Eventually, I’ll watch the replay and I might come away with a slightly different perspective, but I think the numbers speak for themselves.

Yes, as painful as it is to watch the Wolves lose to the Pelicans, you should watch this one, Lip...for a few reasons. On the positive side, with the exception of Ju's 0 for 5 on threes, I thought he and Ant were both very effective scoring the ball (Yeah, I know...that's a little like "other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"). I also thought several Wolves played hard...specifically Rudy, Donte, Hyland, Clark, Juzang and Naz. And contrary to a couple opinions here, I thought Jaden worked hard on defense. But as you can probably tell by my stream of consciousness posting in this thread, I was furious at Ant's defense...he had absolutely no interest in closing out on the perimeter, except for one time that he bit on a fake by some guy I had never heard of who then blew by him and scored in the paint. The only times I thought he cared on defense were the times he got matched up on Zion and one very good block...he was quite impressive. But we need Ant to be a perimeter defender more than a paint defender, and that requires effort...something Ant saves for the offensive end of the floor. We still could have won if Jaden, Donte and Naz had shot better, but above all, this loss was due to Ant's defense. With as brilliant an offensive game as he had (and he was spectacular until a couple clutch misses late) you have to be a disaster on defense to end up a -12...and he was a disaster.

On-off differentials in this 15 game swoon:

Naz: +12.9
Bones: +6.0
Ant: +0.5
Jaden: +0.2
Rudy: +0.1
Donte: -0.6
Mike: -4.6
Randle: -10.0

kekgeek wrote: ↑Sat Feb 07, 2026 3:37 pm On-off differentials in this 15 game swoon:

Naz: +12.9
Bones: +6.0
Ant: +0.5
Jaden: +0.2
Rudy: +0.1
Donte: -0.6
Mike: -4.6
Randle: -10.0

This reminds me of the old meme out there when Kurt Rambis was coach with Kevin Love on the team. I can't remember it exactly, but it was basically a flow chart or matrix with a host of adverse situations the team could theoretically encounter and the answer always being "bench Kevin Love".

I feel like we can create a new one for us fans with "trade Julius Randle" always being the one and only correct answer!

Poor Julius....got off to such a damn good start this season.