Minnesota Sports Forum

With you on Dunn Monster. Last night was a good example of his lapses and impact. He over commits trying to deny the ball. But at times he looks like Tony Allen out there.

thedoper wrote:With you on Dunn Monster. Last night was a good example of his lapses and impact. He over commits trying to deny the ball. But at times he looks like Tony Allen out there.

Agreed. I'll also say that to a certain extent I don't mind him making some mistakes being aggressive. He has to figure out what he can and can't do on that end.

What i think might be the most shocking thing about this entire season is how much Thibs is willing to let guys play through mistakes. Sure he has lifted guys after poor play but nobody has lost their rotation spot. He has kept things pretty consistant and taken a developmental approach to this roster that I was not expecting but Inam actually pretty pleased with it despite the record.

I really am starting to think Towns was a mirage defensively in college and it was almost all WCS. Towns is a bad help defender and I think it's because he was just parked under the rim in college while WCS roamed the perimeter so Towns has no idea of the timing to be a help defender yet now that he's all over the court defensively now. I think our defensive IQ from a team perspective is low combined with some flaws. Ricky is a bad overall defender. I don't care what DRPM says. We seemingly get killed in the PnR when he's on the floor failing to get around any screens. Good PG's can score and dish at will against us. Then we have defenders behind him who don't know how and when to help compounding our destruction due to normal ball movement. And finally we have nobody at the rim who can just clean up when the defense breaks down. Towns and Dieng have been bad rim protectors. So it's a combination of having poor defense at the point of attack, then the help is wrong or bad leading to an easy 3 or a shot at the rim because nobody there can challenge the shot well anyway. It's a snowball of bad defense that happens for large portions of the game. If we can fix two of those things I think we become a competent defense and as I've said before, I think if you get a good rim protector it will help the other two areas tremendously giving more room for error. Good defenses can do two of those things and great defenses can do all 3 and we're doing none of them consistently right now.

Great post Khans. I'm with you 100%. I think you've identified our current state of affairs. I do think that Towns had a free ride in college a bit but his potential is undeniable. He can be a great defender. I do find it peculiar that Thibs has elected to keep him exclusively guarding 4s this year. I'm not not sure what he's seeing but it seems to me it creates a mismatch for us at both spots.

Dieng is the problem not KAT. We didn't talk about this last year when he was playing next to KG. KAT needs to be paired with a strong vet and Dieng is solid bench player. I think Thibs has proven with the Bulls he can get by with any type of PG, but he had solid bigs in Noah and Gibson to make his defense work. I am still bullish on Bobby Portis. Not a vet, but someone that could grow with KAT and seems to have the fire this team might lack.

thedoper wrote:Some glaring aggregate stats by position:
Center Position - 23.7 ppg (4th worst in the NBA) at league worst 59% FG. We are the 6th best in creating turnovers at this position and have been getting a +1 rebound differential for the season. So G's defensive stats, like Rubio's, have been getting inflated by being relatively good at individual metrics while their cover is going off at will. Yes team concepts matter in covering these guys. But the 3pt % from the point only seems to highlight Ricky's inability to fight through screens. If you go back and look at the box scores of the center position for the year it is sad. There is always at least one big who seems to shoot 80% against us. We're 4th worst in the league in points in the paint as I mentioned above.

About that bolded part. The metric that is mostly used to advocate the defense of Dieng and Rubio, is DRPM, which is not based on individual metrics (i.e. steals or blocks). That metric is based on how each player affect to team defensive rating. So even tough their individual match up would score quite much, whole team is much more effective in defense when Dieng or Rubio are on court. I think main reason is that they are much better help defenders than any of our three stars Lavine, Wiggins or Towns.

Mikkeman wrote:

thedoper wrote:Some glaring aggregate stats by position:
Center Position - 23.7 ppg (4th worst in the NBA) at league worst 59% FG. We are the 6th best in creating turnovers at this position and have been getting a +1 rebound differential for the season. So G's defensive stats, like Rubio's, have been getting inflated by being relatively good at individual metrics while their cover is going off at will. Yes team concepts matter in covering these guys. But the 3pt % from the point only seems to highlight Ricky's inability to fight through screens. If you go back and look at the box scores of the center position for the year it is sad. There is always at least one big who seems to shoot 80% against us. We're 4th worst in the league in points in the paint as I mentioned above.

About that bolded part. The metric that is mostly used to advocate the defense of Dieng and Rubio, is DRPM, which is not based on individual metrics (i.e. steals or blocks). That metric is based on how each player affect to team defensive rating. So even tough their individual match up would score quite much, whole team is much more effective in defense when Dieng or Rubio are on court. I think main reason is that they are much better help defenders than any of our three stars Lavine, Wiggins or Towns.

That's exactly right Mikkeman. While you can't rely on just one metric, if you look at the other folks at the top of DRPM, it mostly makes sense. So if it's a completely junk metric for Rubio and Dieng, then is it also invalid for Chris Paul, Patrick Beverley, and Draymond Green?

I do think Rubio and Dieng, when matched up mano-a-mano, are not the greatest defenders. We've seen how Dieng can get housed pretty easily in the low block and Rubio can be taken advantage of by quicker guards (although wasn't it just a couple weeks ago Rubio stayed in front of Kemba Walker to contest the game winning shot that ended up being missed? Mmmmmm). However, I think both are by far our best team defenders. And the key to great defense is helping each other out.

I think another stat that illustrates the point is the "hustle" stat category. Rubio and Dieng are #1 and #2 in deflections, loose balls recovered, and charges drawn - they are our top two in all three! They are absolutely doing their part to be glue guys defensively. We need the other three to step up.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:I'm not going to watch the clips. I get it, the Wolves are bad on defense. Finding new ways to illustrate it doesn't interest me. And there is enough Wiggins hate on the board already. If you think he's that terrible why bother?

It's worth a look, cool. I'm a big Wig guy...think he could easily be a 25 PPG career scorer, and they don't come around every day. But the clips highlight some of the areas that continue to frustrate me about the guy. Everyone should check out the third clip...really demonstrates why he is such an anemic rebounder. And why doesn't he use that freakish vertical to block a shot once in a while? I'm not a Wig hater...far from it, in fact...but I just think he could be so much more. Just one of many reasons this is still a 25-win team.

All that said, Doper's points in this thread are well said...our defensive issues go way beyond Wig, and nobody is immune from the criticism, beginning with the coach who was supposed to make our defense better. So frustrating that all five of our starters were concerned very good defenders in college (or in Europe for ricky), but our coaches have them playing like mutts...so much promise, so little results.

Mikkeman wrote:

thedoper wrote:Some glaring aggregate stats by position:
Center Position - 23.7 ppg (4th worst in the NBA) at league worst 59% FG. We are the 6th best in creating turnovers at this position and have been getting a +1 rebound differential for the season. So G's defensive stats, like Rubio's, have been getting inflated by being relatively good at individual metrics while their cover is going off at will. Yes team concepts matter in covering these guys. But the 3pt % from the point only seems to highlight Ricky's inability to fight through screens. If you go back and look at the box scores of the center position for the year it is sad. There is always at least one big who seems to shoot 80% against us. We're 4th worst in the league in points in the paint as I mentioned above.

About that bolded part. The metric that is mostly used to advocate the defense of Dieng and Rubio, is DRPM, which is not based on individual metrics (i.e. steals or blocks). That metric is based on how each player affect to team defensive rating. So even tough their individual match up would score quite much, whole team is much more effective in defense when Dieng or Rubio are on court. I think main reason is that they are much better help defenders than any of our three stars Lavine, Wiggins or Towns.

Other Adjusted +\- calculations that I've read about account for rb% and steal% as part of their metric. I assume espn does that with RPM which explains why G and Ricky rate high. Do you have a different reference that says otherwise? ESPN doesn't publish their equation on their website so I am a bit confused by your point.

This website says rebound rate is part of the calculation:

https://www.google.ca/amp/nyloncalculus.com/2014/04/21/calculating-rapm/amp/

longstrangetrip wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:I'm not going to watch the clips. I get it, the Wolves are bad on defense. Finding new ways to illustrate it doesn't interest me. And there is enough Wiggins hate on the board already. If you think he's that terrible why bother?

It's worth a look, cool. I'm a big Wig guy...think he could easily be a 25 PPG career scorer, and they don't come around every day. But the clips highlight some of the areas that continue to frustrate me about the guy. Everyone should check out the third clip...really demonstrates why he is such an anemic rebounder. And why doesn't he use that freakish vertical to block a shot once in a while? I'm not a Wig hater...far from it, in fact...but I just think he could be so much more. Just one of many reasons this is still a 25-win team.

All that said, Doper's points in this thread are well said...our defensive issues go way beyond Wig, and nobody is immune from the criticism, beginning with the coach who was supposed to make our defense better. So frustrating that all five of our starters were concerned very good defenders in college (or in Europe for ricky), but our coaches have them playing like mutts...so much promise, so little results.

LST, without trying to sound cocky, I know what our defensive problems are. I see it during the games. Our players that can defend one on one are terrible in the team concept, and guys like Ricky and Dieng who have at least some awareness get overwhelmed by their individual matchup. We allow dribble penetration much too easily, and we are terrible at transition defense due to lack of effort. Wiggins is an anemic rebounder due to a lack of "want to" and his poor hands. I don't need Nate Duncan to demonstrate these inefficiencies. Like I said, I get it.