Q12543 wrote:Not really surprised by anything anymore with these guys. It's a collective choke job every time. But here is where Thibs deserves some blame. With 53 seconds left he takes a timeout after a Utah basket. We get to inbound on our side with a 24-second shot clock. Why on earth is Ricky and Gorgui in the game there!? Put Bjelly and Rush in and spread it out! Let KAT and Wiggins play a two man game and if they collapse you have shooters at the other three positions.
Later, and this really baffled me, he actually does sub in Bjelly for Dieng, but leaves Rubio in. Why!? We don't need a point guard in these set end-of-game situations.
Not that it would have made a difference anyway.....these guys just collectively have zero nerve at the end of games.
I said it at the beginning of the season. I'll say it again. It's the culture of losing that this team has perfected for 13 years. Turns out making losers out of this team is a lot easier than trying to make the playoffs. They're turning Thibs into a clueless loser too. I think whoever can rescue this team has to be a little bit crazy because I don't think a sane person would take on this challenge.
I will put some blame on Thibs for the inbounds play near the end there where we needed another timeout because he ran action for only Ricky who proceeded to not get open and nobody else was moving and we could have used that timeout at the end of the game. Who the hell designs an inbound play around 1 motion? Otherwise I think Towns deserve a lot of criticism for this loss. He was lost defensively allowing Favors to hit some buckets off basic PnR action to get the game within reach and then he is caught ball watching giving up inside position to Gobert for the game winning putback. There's not a winning bone in anyone's body on this team. Ricky has a horrible turnover instead of taking an easy runner. Then he commits the boneheaded foul on Hill to put him at the line to tie the game. G and Wiggins both missed wide open 15 footers. Zach has a mental lapse and has to chuck up a bad shot from 30ft and then he only gets a contested long two as the last shot of the game with Ingles guarding him while we are down 2. It's frankly unbelievable how hard this team folds when the game is on the line. Can't even trust them to run a play right because they'll make a stupid play. How do all 5 guys fuck up with the game on the line? Unbelievable.
Q12543 wrote:Not really surprised by anything anymore with these guys. It's a collective choke job every time. But here is where Thibs deserves some blame. With 53 seconds left he takes a timeout after a Utah basket. We get to inbound on our side with a 24-second shot clock. Why on earth is Ricky and Gorgui in the game there!? Put Bjelly and Rush in and spread it out! Let KAT and Wiggins play a two man game and if they collapse you have shooters at the other three positions.
Later, and this really baffled me, he actually does sub in Bjelly for Dieng, but leaves Rubio in. Why!? We don't need a point guard in these set end-of-game situations.
Not that it would have made a difference anyway.....these guys just collectively have zero nerve at the end of games.
I said it at the beginning of the season. I'll say it again. It's the culture of losing that this team has perfected for 13 years. Turns out making losers out of this team is a lot easier than trying to make the playoffs. They're turning Thibs into a clueless loser too. I think whoever can rescue this team has to be a little bit crazy because I don't think a sane person would take on this challenge.
I'm beginning to believe you Wildwolf. It is truly breath taking how this team collectively folds time and again.
Ya know, they used to say the Cubs were cursed. But hey, after a century or so, they ended up OK, right?
As hard as it is to believe, there is still a thin line between winning and losing these games. The lapse doesn't always come in the 4th quarter, but it always comes. And that is the difference.
A skeptic would say Thibs isn't as good as we thought he was, and our best players aren't as good as we hoped they would be. But I can't go there yet. They just need to play 48. I wish I knew how to turn the corner. It's almost fascinating to watch.
CoolBreeze44 wrote:As hard as it is to believe, there is still a thin line between winning and losing these games. The lapse doesn't always come in the 4th quarter, but it always comes. And that is the difference.
A skeptic would say Thibs isn't as good as we thought he was, and our best players aren't as good as we hoped they would be. But I can't go there yet. They just need to play 48. I wish I knew how to turn the corner. It's almost fascinating to watch.
They play 48. They don't play them very well. Nobody plays 48 minutes of perfect basketball. They're simply not as good of a team as everyone thought.
How can anyone even muster up any confidence for the future? They're gonna tell you stuff like "they can only get better" when they've proven that's a load of crap.
I'm not going to bother with a game report for this one. So I'll just chime in on this thread.
We can point to individual mistakes by everyone on the team tonight. Mistakes are part of the game, especially with young players. But at the end of the day you have to hit shots, hit your free throws and not turn the ball over. And you need your best players to those three things consistently. Now look at Wiggins' stat line -- 6-19 from the field (31.5%), 3-7 from the line (43%) and 5 turnovers. Add 4 fouls to his stat line too.
After a great scoring night last night, he reverts tonight. I cringe everytime Thibs puts Wiggins in the point forward role late in games. I expect a turnover or bad shot even though I know he can make some spectacular drives to the hole.
A lot of things contributed to tonight's loss. Every player did something to contribute to the loss as did Thibs. But the mistakes each player made has to be viewed in the context of their overall effort and contributions. Zach had 24 efficient points along with 8 rebounds and 5 assists tonight. He defended well most of the night. KAT made mistakes on the defensive end and didn't shoot particularly well, but he grabbed 15 boards and his shooting wasn't horrific. Gorgui was solid most of the game. Ricky made a couple terrible passes, but he shot the ball surprisingly well and played tenacious defense all night.
I'll boil it down to this. Our defense was good enough to hold a top 10 offense to 94 points. Zach, KAT, Gorgui and Ricky gave us a lot of positives. The bench wasn't bad. But Wiggins simply can't keep having 31% FG nights on high volume shooting. He can't continue to miss 4 of 7 free throws. And he can't turn the ball over 5 times. That's just not acceptable as he enters the midpoint of his 3rd season with a lot of NBA minutes under his belt.
I think it's crazy to put this loss on Wiggins and absolve Towns because he got 15 boards when he gave up the game winning shot off an offensive putback by Gobert because he wasn't paying attention. Everyone folded at the end. They all are at fault. This loss literally goes on everyone, not just one person. You don't get a get out of jail free card for huge mistakes at the end of a close game because you did some nice things during other parts of the game. That's why everyone is preaching 48 minutes.
I couldn't go to the game tonight. Hated to miss it because some of the kids I coach in my NFP got to go on the court with Chris Wright during a time out...they were psyched at practice earlier today!
But the tired script continues. I didn't look at the score when I got home, but instead added up the bench minutes for both teams...90 for the Jazz, 49 for the wolves. Are you frickin' kidding me???? As soon as I saw the huge disparity, I knew there had to be another 4th quarter collapse...and sure enough, there was. I scanned the GDT and saw a lot of questions about how an entire team can be so mistake-prone and dumb at the end of games. That one seems pretty simple to me. The other team is rested because a smart coach has used his bench correctly, while our team is physically and mentally exhausted because Thibs continues to be a huge outlier in terms of using his bench. Jeez...how many more tired, late-game disasters does Thibs have to create before he realizes he's not doing it right.
Was it the whopping -3 the bench put up that made Thibs so gun shy about using them? I know some here think I'm a broken record in continuing to bring this up, but the real broken record is Thibs refusing game after game to give his bench any meaningful minutes, and getting beat up in the 4th quarters almost every night as a result. And don't tell me we're losing games in the 4th quarter because we're young...we were younger last year, and this didn't happen often at all. Rotation management is one of the key things a coach does, and Thibs is failing miserably. And we are getting exactly the results his terrible game management skills say we should. 90-49 in bench minutes...this guy is a disaster, and getting worse!
It should also be noted since it doesn't show up in the box score that Wiggins drew fouls 4 and 5 on Gobert putting him on the bench for chunks of the second half. 4 assists, 5 boards and putting their best player on the bench with foul trouble. It wasn't a good game, but blaming him for the loss is overdoing it in my opinion. He contributed.
