Minnesota Sports Forum

These Shabazz excuses are bullshit, how do you make all of these claims about how bad his floor spacing is, etc when all he's had are a few 3 minutes spans in the end of a blowout on the court with our 4 worst players. I'm sick of this shit there is no reason not to give him some burn. The one time Adelman randomly inserted Shabazz into the game in the first half he held his own for the 3 or 4 minutes he was out there with the starters.

BloopOracle wrote:These Shabazz excuses are bullshit, how do you make all of these claims about how bad his floor spacing is, etc when all he's had are a few 3 minutes spans in the end of a blowout on the court with our 4 worst players. I'm sick of this shit there is no reason not to give him some burn. The one time Adelman randomly inserted Shabazz into the game in the first half he held his own for the 3 or 4 minutes he was out there with the starters.

The spacing comment is a legitimate criticism of Shabazz, bloop...he demonstrated this deficiency in college and D-League too. But I agree that it's not a reason to not play him. And speaking of bogus reasons to not play him, here are three that popped up on this board today:

1) Because he walked off the court without congratulating a teammate after a game winning shot. I was at that game, and my buddies and I were screaming at Larry Drew as he ignored a wide open Shabazz (like he did all season) only to put up a desperation fade away jumper. Somehow it went in, but I would have been frustrated too if I were Shabazz. By the way, Muhammad's post game comments to the press were all very complimentary of Drew (unlike mine!)

2) Because he broke the rules by sneaking a girl into his room at the rookie orientation. Really?

3) Because he "laid an egg" in his one NCAA tournament game. I'll admit he had one of his worst shooting nights of the season. But he still led his team in scoring with 20 points despite having Austin Hollins and usually one other guy hanging on him the entire game. And his relatively bad shooting percentage in that one game was still better than Bud's FG% this entire season. If Shabazz laid an egg in that game, I'll take a little egg-laying over the brick-laying we have been forced to watch the past 12 games!

longstrangetrip wrote:

BloopOracle wrote:These Shabazz excuses are bullshit, how do you make all of these claims about how bad his floor spacing is, etc when all he's had are a few 3 minutes spans in the end of a blowout on the court with our 4 worst players. I'm sick of this shit there is no reason not to give him some burn. The one time Adelman randomly inserted Shabazz into the game in the first half he held his own for the 3 or 4 minutes he was out there with the starters.

The spacing comment is a legitimate criticism of Shabazz, bloop...he demonstrated this deficiency in college and D-League too. But I agree that it's not a reason to not play him. And speaking of bogus reasons to not play him, here are three that popped up on this board today:

1) Because he walked off the court without congratulating a teammate after a game winning shot. I was at that game, and my buddies and I were screaming at Larry Drew as he ignored a wide open Shabazz (like he did all season) only to put up a desperation fade away jumper. Somehow it went in, but I would have been frustrated too if I were Shabazz. By the way, Muhammad's post game comments to the press were all very complimentary of Drew (unlike mine!)

2) Because he broke the rules by sneaking a girl into his room at the rookie orientation. Really?

3) Because he "laid an egg" in his one NCAA tournament game. I'll admit he had one of his worst shooting nights of the season. But he still led his team in scoring with 20 points despite having Austin Hollins and usually one other guy hanging on him the entire game. And his relatively bad shooting percentage in that one game was still better than Bud's FG% this entire season. If Shabazz laid an egg in that game, I'll take a little egg-laying over the brick-laying we have been forced to watch the past 12 games!

ok then please, what are the reasons to play him?

-Arguably the worst bench in the NBA
-Has scored at every level no matter what you think of his style of play
-Quality volume 3 point shooter
-He's a rookie which means he still has potential/upside, etc

It's mind boggling how he hasn't gotten a chance

4) Because he is less than a year away from setting the all-time Pac-10 scoring record for a freshman, and the Wolves second unit is desperate for some scoring

5) Because he is described as the hardest working guy on the team in practice

6) Because he is a relentless offensive rebounder

7) Because the guy getting his SF minutes is killing us by shooting less than 28% from the field the last ten games, and clearly needs more time to rehab his post-surgical knee

8) Because every other NBA coach is giving meaningful minutes to this year's first rounder. Adelman is just out of step with his peers on this one...with both Muhammad and Dieng

9) Because a smart NBA franchise wants to see how its rookies perform in real game situations, so they can make an accurate assessment about their future.

I obviously don't know for sure, but my biggest problem with Adelman is that he MAY put more stock in the three excuses I cited in my previous post for NOT playing Shabazz than the 9 reasons bloop and I have provided FOR playing him.

10) Because how he plays helps us either way. Right now we're destined to be the 14th seed, so we both miss the playoffs and lose our pick. Giving Muhammad some big minutes either:

1) makes us better, and we make a run for the playoffs, or

2) makes us worse, and at least we get a pick in a deep draft.

I wish we had James Johnson and Courtney Lee.

Camden wrote:I wish we had James Johnson and Courtney Lee.

Ditto, Cam. Williams for Lee would have been a better deal than the deal Flip made for another one-way player.

Fire Adelman
Trade Love
Start tanking

Only thing that makes sense at this point. Lip, anyway you see Flip moving Love before the deadline? This team isn't making the playoffs. Love will not re-sign (he shouldn't we have given him no reason too).

Patrick - The odds of Flip trading Love this month are 1 billion to 1. And that's probably an understatement. In fact, in our season ticket holder meeting last night, Flip made it pretty clear he's not anxious to make a deal by the deadline. He said he doesn't want to do a deal for the short term that jeopardizes the team's long term horizon and then he recited all sorts of statistics of teams failing to improve after trades near the trade deadline in past seasons. He also made it clear he sees Love as the cornerstone of the franchise and expects to continue building around him. So we should probably expect the status quo the rest of the season. If we trade anyone this month, I would expect it to involve JJ and/or Shved, not Love, Rubio, Pek, Or Martin. But I do to foresee any Wolves trades by the deadline.