Minnesota Sports Forum

If only we all had a leader like Ricky Rubio to look up to. :)

I missed the game tonight and just looked at the score. Unless it was a misprint or an LSD flashback hallucination, it would appear that that Wolves lost by 22 points to the Houston Rockets. But I don't think it could be a misprint and I've never ingested LSD. So I think it's real. I'm not going to watch the recording. I mean, why would I. I'm curious though to get some thoughts and observations from those of you who watched. Edwards looks good in the box score. Was he as good as his box score suggests? How was McDaniels? Was our defense as bad as the box score suggests or were the Rockets that good? Were Hakeem and Clyde Drexler playing?

lipoli390 wrote:I missed the game tonight and just looked at the score. Unless it was a misprint or an LSD flashback hallucination, it would appear that that Wolves lost by 22 points to the Houston Rockets. But I don't think it could be a misprint and I've never ingested LSD. So I think it's real. I'm not going to watch the recording. I mean, why would I. I'm curious though to get some thoughts and observations from those of you who watched. Edwards looks good in the box score. Was he as good as his box score suggests? How was McDaniels? Was our defense as bad as the box score suggests or were the Rockets that good. We're Hakeem and Clyde Drexler playing?

Edwards channeled his inner Kirk cousins again tonight

lipoli390 wrote:I missed the game tonight and just looked at the score. Unless it was a misprint or an LSD flashback hallucination, it would appear that that Wolves lost by 22 points to the Houston Rockets. But I don't think it could be a misprint and I've never ingested LSD. So I think it's real. I'm not going to watch the recording. I mean, why would I. I'm curious though to get some thoughts and observations from those of you who watched. Edwards looks good in the box score. Was he as good as his box score suggests? How was McDaniels? Was our defense as bad as the box score suggests or were the Rockets that good. We're Hakeem and Clyde Drexler playing?

The defense was pathetic from the jump as you can imagine. We made the crappy Rockets look like the 73 win Warriors. Easy layups and open 3's most of the game. It was the first game I turned off all year. I couldn't watch anymore.

Not gonna watch this one. But I had to look...

Edwards 6 - 9 fg... 15 points in the 4th quarter after the Wolves were already down 20. He was 5 - 9 for 18 points in the 4th quarter two games ago down 20 vs. Dallas.

Nobody... NOBODY has better 4th quarter stats down 20 than Edwards this season. He's done it several times. I might have to do a little research on this one...



[Note: I just realized... the Rockets "best" player didn't even play. Fuck this team.]

BloopOracle wrote:

lipoli390 wrote:I missed the game tonight and just looked at the score. Unless it was a misprint or an LSD flashback hallucination, it would appear that that Wolves lost by 22 points to the Houston Rockets. But I don't think it could be a misprint and I've never ingested LSD. So I think it's real. I'm not going to watch the recording. I mean, why would I. I'm curious though to get some thoughts and observations from those of you who watched. Edwards looks good in the box score. Was he as good as his box score suggests? How was McDaniels? Was our defense as bad as the box score suggests or were the Rockets that good. We're Hakeem and Clyde Drexler playing?

Edwards channeled his inner Kirk cousins again tonight

Ha, very true Bloop. Ant's line doesn't look too bad, but it's mostly ROY race padding. Delete your recording and don't even think about watching, Lip...you don't want to wreck your weekend. Here are the highlights:

1) It was a defensive disaster. Finch started Beasley and Ant at the wings, and that's just not going to work if we want to win basketball games. The 30th ranked offense put up 74 points on us in the first half! Thank god we have DLO coming back soon to stop the defensive bleeding.

2) As much as I worry about imminent first quarter defensive debacles with DLO/Beas/Ant "defending" the perimeter, PG play tonight was terrible. Ricky had 10 assists and only 2 TOs, but shot poorly again like the previous night. And J-Mac was worse. Maybe he's still getting himself back into shape after his Covid break, but I'm pretty sure I could have put up 30 on him tonight and put a little pressure on Ant for the garbage ROY award ;-)

3) Any bright spots? Sure. I liked KAT, Jaden and Juancho, but I also can find fault with all three. KAT had an efficient 27/15/4 with 2 blocks. He needs to protect the ball better though...averaging close to 4 TOs per game his past 10 games. I gave Jaden and Juancho my game balls Friday, and they were both good again Saturday. Juancho continues to look like the efficient 16/9 per 36 guy he was last season and seems to have Finch's confidence, but he will never be a defender. Jaden looked very good tonight on both sides of the ball...nice basket cuts and good form on his jumper, and he continued to flash moments of brilliance on defense. But he was as poor as everyone tonight on rotations and defending the perimeter (Houston made 18 out of 39 threes), and 2 rebounds in 36 minutes just isn't going to cut it for a starting PF.

That's all I have...dreadful 2-game series against a terrible Houston team.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:Not gonna watch this one. But I had to look...

Edwards 6 - 9 fg... 15 points in the 4th quarter after the Wolves were already down 20. He was 5 - 9 for 18 points in the 4th quarter two games ago down 20 vs. Dallas.

Nobody... NOBODY has better 4th quarter stats down 20 than Edwards this season. He's done it several times. I might have to do a little research on this one...



[Note: I just realized... the Rockets "best" player didn't even play. Fuck this team.]

4th quarter garbage time ROY and it's not even close

Thanks for the reports, guys. I'll definitely follow FNG's advice and delete the recording. I noticed that Culver barely got any playing time again. At this point in the season, that makes no sense. Sounds like we could have used more defense last night and Culver, if nothing else, seems to be one of our better perimeter defenders. Moreover, we absolutely need to give Culver a final chance yet this season to show what he can do and hopefully increase his trade value. I just can't understand this organization.

As for Beasley, I guess we can forgive his horrible shooting last night after a fairly long layoff. But it sounds like his defense was horrible and that's nothing new for him. So I go back to the trade deadline a little over a year ago. Rosas made three signature acquisitions in two trades back then -- DLO, Beasley and Juancho. We can have varying opinions on all three and the trades that brought them here, but what do all three have in common? Answer: All of them are really bad defenders and always have been. And they were acquired to form the team's nucleus with Karl Anthony Towns, another notoriously poor defender.

Therein lies the rub. We can debate, individually, merits of each trade that brought those three players here and reasonably reach different conclusions. But when evaluating what Rosas did at last year's trade deadline, we have to view both trades and all three players as a single package. And when we do, we see just how bad Rosas is at his job and how last year's trade deadline was a colossal failure, not the exciting breakthrough some believed it was at the time. All three players were obviously acquired to be part of the Wolves starting lineup, ensuring that 3/5 of our starting lineup would be comprised of really bad defenders. That might have been defensible or at least understandable if Joel Embiid had been our starting center. But with KAT as our center and solitary star, Gersson's acquisitions, by design, meant a starting lineup consisting of at least 4 notoriously bad defenders. That's simply not defensible in any way, shape or form.

Looking back yet another year, Gersson's decision to draft Culver is worse when you consider the broader context. There's the fact that Gersson first traded up for another guy without knowing for sure whether he could get the other guy before drafting Culver. Rosas then compounded his initial mistake by taking Culver, a guy with a broken perimeter shot, for a team Gersson intended to build around 3-point shooting. Fast-forwarding this this past offseason, Gersson decided to trade for a player who can't shoot as our $17M per year backup PG.

I suppose this post should go in a separate thread devoted to evaluating Rosas. And I know I'm not offering anything new or profound. But it seems appropriate to offer these thoughts here after a 23-point loss to a horrible team even with Beasley back and Juancho doing the things he was expected to do when Rosas traded for him. DLO will be returning to the court soon and I do think it will make this team better than it was these past two nights. But how much better? My answer is, not much and certainly not enough for a team that gave up nearly 130 points to perhaps the worst offensive team in the League.

The bottom line is that the totality of Gersson's player-personnel moves has been worse than the sum of his individual moves. KAT is a great player. I'm intrigued by the talent of Ant and McDaniels. Nowell strikes me as a very nice 2nd-round pick and I like Naz Reid a lot as an undrafted free-agent signing. Nevertheless, I still see this team as a train wreck in the making. We can all see it coming, but we can't do anything to stop it. Eventually Rosas, along with his entire front-office team and hand-picked head coach will be gone. KAT will likely move on as well and another rebuilding project will be underway. It might happen in Minnesota or perhaps in Seattle, but it will happen starting some time next season. Glen Taylor may or may not be the team's owner. The reality is that this current iteration of the Timberwolves won't end well and we'll look back to see that Gersson Rosas finished what David Kahn started.

Lip, you make a great point about Rosas largely ignoring defense in his drafts and free agent signings. I would add Reid and J-Mac to the free agent list...two guys who have impressed me with their offense, but have very poor defensive metrics. And I would add Nowell to the draft list. His defense was not rated highly at draft time, but I was pleasantly surprised earlier in the season...but my eye test tells me his defense as fallen off a cliff, and the metrics support this assessment. I would argue only Culver was regarded as a good defender in college and has performed well on defense with the Wolves, but his offensive flaws far more than offset his modest defensive success. McDaniels has proven to be a good, and potentially great, defender...but since his defensive reputation was not good in college (except for weakside blocks), I would label Rosas more lucky than good with that pick.

Rosas's lack of emphasis on bringing in solid defenders has put this team in a big hole, and is one of the reasons I was hoping for a DLO/Collins deal. There's no question in my mind that this roster is going to have to be significantly retooled in the off-season to get us back to being even an average defensive team. Until then, fasten your seat belts and get ready for more 74 point defensive first halves.

Edit: I forgot about Rubio. While Ricky has been a plus defender his entire career and despite always going all out on the defensive end, he has not been as effective on defense this year as others. And since I really don't think Rosas considers defense much at all in personnel decisions, I would guess that he didn't bring Ricky in because of his previous defensive success, but rather as a veteran presence on a young team.