Minnesota Sports Forum

Carlos Danger wrote:I just went through our drafts since 2008 and it's really not as awful as I think some feel.

2008 - Kevin Love (5x All Star)
2009 - Rubio - not an All Star, but he's been a starter in NBA for 10+ years
2010 - Swing and a miss on Wes
2011 - Swing and a miss on Derrick Williams
2012 - No 1st round pick (anyone recall what happened to that one?)
2013 - Gorgui Dieng - solid depth piece for 10 years
2014 - Wiggins (1x All Star) and Lavine (2x All Star)
2015 - Towns (3x All Star) and Tyus Jones - solid depth piece
2016 - Swing and a miss on Dunn
2017 - Swing and a miss on Patton
2018 - Swing and a miss on Okogie
2019 - Swing and a miss on Culver
2020 - Edwards and McDaniels - both starting for us now.
2021 - No pick (I believe this was the pick we sent with Wiggins to GS for DLO)
2022 - Wendell Moore - TBD

So...15 years of drafts:
4 All Stars (Love, Wiggins, LaVine, Towns)
3 Starters (Rubio, Edwards, McDaniels)
2 Depth pieces (Dieng and Tyus)
1 TBD (Moore)

Let's call it 10 pieces out of 15 years. Not great. But is it awful? 2016 to 2019 was terrible. I believe those were all under Thibodeaux. One more reason to hate that guy.

Edit: I only looked at round 1. Nowell was a great find in second round.

Carlos, I look at that list and.......it's really bad. The reason I say that is because of the draft position we were in most of those years. And look at all of the swings and misses! Yes, every franchise misses on draft picks occasionally, but we do it a SHIT TON!

And to your final point, we've had terrible luck unearthing rotation players from later in the draft or via undrafted free agents. It wasn't until Gersson Rosas's first year that we FINALLY found some decent value in the Nowell, Naz, and JMac trifecta.

Q-was-here wrote:
Carlos, I look at that list and.......it's really bad. The reason I say that is because of the draft position we were in most of those years. And look at all of the swings and misses! Yes, every franchise misses on draft picks occasionally, but we do it a SHIT TON!

And to your final point, we've had terrible luck unearthing rotation players from later in the draft or via undrafted free agents. It wasn't until Gersson Rosas's first year that we FINALLY found some decent value in the Nowell, Naz, and JMac trifecta.

HA! OK - fair enough. Full disclosure, I tried to capture the "high points" of those drafts (players that turned out). There were other swing and misses within some of those years (like Shabazz Mohamad in the Gorgie Dieng draft).

Well, in case anyone hasn't figured it out yet - I am a firm believer in the draft/develop model. As a fan, I get more satisfaction out of seeing "our" players grow, get better and hopefully succeed. That's what made the KG years fun for me. I'm also hopeful from the Edwards/McDaniels/Nowell picks. I recall reading some buzz over the off season that teams were interested in McDaniels, so that tells me something. Anyway - all water under the bridge. Let's play the hand we have now. All aboard the Rudy and company train, woot-woot!

Q-was-here wrote:

Carlos Danger wrote:I just went through our drafts since 2008 and it's really not as awful as I think some feel.

2008 - Kevin Love (5x All Star)
2009 - Rubio - not an All Star, but he's been a starter in NBA for 10+ years
2010 - Swing and a miss on Wes
2011 - Swing and a miss on Derrick Williams
2012 - No 1st round pick (anyone recall what happened to that one?)
2013 - Gorgui Dieng - solid depth piece for 10 years
2014 - Wiggins (1x All Star) and Lavine (2x All Star)
2015 - Towns (3x All Star) and Tyus Jones - solid depth piece
2016 - Swing and a miss on Dunn
2017 - Swing and a miss on Patton
2018 - Swing and a miss on Okogie
2019 - Swing and a miss on Culver
2020 - Edwards and McDaniels - both starting for us now.
2021 - No pick (I believe this was the pick we sent with Wiggins to GS for DLO)
2022 - Wendell Moore - TBD

So...15 years of drafts:
4 All Stars (Love, Wiggins, LaVine, Towns)
3 Starters (Rubio, Edwards, McDaniels)
2 Depth pieces (Dieng and Tyus)
1 TBD (Moore)

Let's call it 10 pieces out of 15 years. Not great. But is it awful? 2016 to 2019 was terrible. I believe those were all under Thibodeaux. One more reason to hate that guy.

Edit: I only looked at round 1. Nowell was a great find in second round.

Carlos, I look at that list and.......it's really bad. The reason I say that is because of the draft position we were in most of those years. And look at all of the swings and misses! Yes, every franchise misses on draft picks occasionally, but we do it a SHIT TON!

And to your final point, we've had terrible luck unearthing rotation players from later in the draft or via undrafted free agents. It wasn't until Gersson Rosas's first year that we FINALLY found some decent value in the Nowell, Naz, and JMac trifecta.

A team's draft history will reflect the quality of the team's front office during the historical period.

The Wolves made 18 1st-round picks during time 2008-2020 time frame. Five of those picks were made by David Kahn and three of them were Thibodeau picks. So nearly half of of the 18 picks before Connelly were make by either David Kahn, a sports writer who had no business heading up an NBA front office, or Tom Thibodeau, a head coach with absolutely no experience in an NBA front office. Kahn drafted one starter, Rubio, with his five picks and completely whiffed on three of them (Williams, Johnson and Flynn). Meanwhile, Thibodeau whiffed on all three of his picks.

Things were much better under Flip Saunders, even though he was rightly never considered one of the better NBA basketball execs. Flip made six picks. Three of his six picks (KAT, LaVine, Wiggins) have been all-stars. Two of the other three (Tyus Jones and Gorgui Dieng) have been solid rotation players for many years. His only total whiff was Bazz. In baseball parlance, half of Flip's picks were extra base hits (one of them a home run) and two of them were solid singles. Yet, Flip was never considered one of the best NBA basketball execs and many of us thought at the time that he made a huge mistake taking Bazz instead of Giannis and selling the 27th pick instead of using hit to draft Gobert. McHale hit a home run with his one 1st-round pick, Kevin Love, during this period.

Rosas made four first-round picks while here. He hit on two of those four with Edwards and McDaniels. The Edwards pick was a home run and the McDaniels pick at least a double and maybe better when we look back two years from now. He hit another extra base hit with Nowell in the 2nd round. He whiffed on only one first-round pick with Culver and I think it's too soon to judge the Bolmaro pick.

Added together, McHale, Flip and Rosas made 11 first-round picks and whiffed on at most three of them (Bazz, Culver and maybe Bolmaro) in the period from 2008 to 2020. In other words, they hit on 8 of their 11 first-round picks and 6 of those were extra base hits. That's a really good track record. So when you exclude the two former Wolves execs who never should have been (and never again will be) head basketball execs, the last 12 years of Wolves draft history suggests that first-round picks have a lot of value. And note that Connelly is supposed to be an elite basketball executive who was worthy of an equity stake in the franchise.

Keita Bates-Diop with 15 points last night. I had totally forgot about that guy. Hasn't done enough yet to be considered a valuable pick/player. But maybe he's going to be a late bloomer? I think for second round picks, if you are still in the NBA after 5 years, it probably qualifies you as a decent pick.

The trade has been terrible. Rudy has been the Wolves best player and they are 4-2.

Just horrible.

We are ranked #5 in defensive rating right now. Rudy leads the team in Win Shares. Anyone that is watching and not biased can plainly see that he is absolutely holding up his end of the bargain. He is as advertised!

The offense isn't clicking yet. We know that last year the offense started out really slow too and then just got better and better as the season wore on.

Q-was-here wrote:We are ranked #5 in defensive rating right now. Rudy leads the team in Win Shares. Anyone that is watching and not biased can plainly see that he is absolutely holding up his end of the bargain. He is as advertised!

The offense isn't clicking yet. We know that last year the offense started out really slow too and then just got better and better as the season wore on.

Agree, he is a unique force on the defensive end. Whether we paid too much is a fair talker (I say no) and will be analyzed as the years go by. But you can't argue with his play and impact so far.

WolvesFan21 wrote:The trade has been terrible. Rudy has been the Wolves best player and they are 4-2.

Just horrible.

Sure Rudy is good. Nobody ever argued that he was a really good player. The argument (at least from me) is about fit (playoffs, not so much regular season) and opportunity cost. I fully expected us to be 6-0 with several convincing wins so far, considering that starting schedule. The fact that we're 4-2 (and probably deserve to be worse) only makes my argument stronger. If we didn't have Kat, I'd be all for acquiring Gobert. I literally sit here and lol at you all for thinking this 6 game start has been a feather in your cap. Look at Atlanta... they actually did it right. They gave up a bunch of picks (still less than us) for a premier guard in a guards league. They acquired a guard who fits their timeline, compliments their star player perfectly and is on a very reasonable contract. That was a great trade for them. This is the trade we should have made. Murray and Ant, with Dlo or Nowell as the 6th man would be great. We'd still have Kessler in this scenario and we could have easily signed another solid defensive big. But instead we're paying super max contracts to two centers... that's why this trade was 100% a bet on Ant being great right now... because if he isn't, we're totally screwed. But hey, I'm glad you all think the trade was so great. Ever since I've started reading this board, I've thought that lip was one of the best posters (along with cool and a couple others), so I'll take being in agreement with him on this trade.

D-Mac wrote:

WolvesFan21 wrote:The trade has been terrible. Rudy has been the Wolves best player and they are 4-2.

Just horrible.

Sure Rudy is good. Nobody ever argued that he was a really good player. The argument (at least from me) is about fit (playoffs, not so much regular season) and opportunity cost. I fully expected us to be 6-0 with several convincing wins so far, considering that starting schedule. The fact that we're 4-2 (and probably deserve to be worse) only makes my argument stronger. If we didn't have Kat, I'd be all for acquiring Gobert. I literally sit here and lol at you all for thinking this 6 game start has been a feather in your cap. Look at Atlanta... they actually did it right. They gave up a bunch of picks (still less than us) for a premier guard in a guards league. They acquired a guard who fits their timeline, compliments their star player perfectly and is on a very reasonable contract. That was a great trade for them. This is the trade we should have made. Murray and Ant, with Dlo or Nowell as the 6th man would be great. We'd still have Kessler in this scenario and we could have easily signed another solid defensive big. But instead we're paying super max contracts to two centers... that's why this trade was 100% a bet on Ant being great right now... because if he isn't, we're totally screwed. But hey, I'm glad you all think the trade was so great. Ever since I've started reading this board, I've thought that lip was one of the best posters (along with cool and a couple others), so I'll take being in agreement with him on this trade.

So just go 82-0 and win the NBA Championship this year right?

In the predictions thread I was being extremely optimistic in saying 61 wins. That would assume everyone stays healthy and everyone plays well all year. Vegas is likely much closer to what will happen. 47-50 wins.

Getting a playoff series win would be a success for this franchise. It has happened in nearly 20 years. At least we are relevant. I think without the trade we would be in jeopardy of getting passed up by other Western teams.

There is now a slight chance the Wolves could even win a Championship in the next few years, no one could say that before the trade. I think as a fan that is all you can ask. Have a chance.

As far as a 4-2 record goes. That is a pace for 55 wins. Not bad considering how really poor the offense has been at times. Saying that, It's basketball, guys get hot and cold shooting. Anyone can win any night during the regular season.

Even the best Bulls and GSW teams lost what 9-10 games in a year. That is the best teams we have ever seen. I just think expecting a team to go 6-0 is unrealistic. You are going to lose games no matter who you are. Sure it's possible to start 6-0, but it's just very low on the probability scale.