Minnesota Sports Forum

JasonIsDaMan wrote:

markkbu wrote:This is a funny discussion. All the words that have been used to describe Martin have been something similar to "adequate".

The guy is in the Top 25 in the NBA in PPG, is shooting .400 from 3 land, and occasionally plays some decent defense......and that gets refereed to as "OK" or "fair market value" by our fanbase.

While our PG is one of the worst shooting NBA players through the course of history and Love's defense is one of the worst from any PF that I have ever seen.

It is always surprising the obvious facts that people will exclude in attempts to to support long held beliefs.

You raise a good point. I could have used stronger language. I think Martin has been one of the bright spots this year. I just wish MIN signed him at 4yrs/$20m rather than 4yrs/$28m.

That would have been nice,But no way Kmart signs for 5M per year.. Just look around the league and try to find me a player that puts up numbers just as good if not better then martin that makes 6.5M or less per year...It can't be a guy on a rookie deal..... IMO it's a very fair deal.. Look what OJ mayo got to stand around and tie his shoe lol....

JasonIsDaMan wrote:

worldK wrote:My negativity towards flip stems from the fact that i believe he didnt make good use of the assets that he got when he took over. #9 and #26th pick, dw and shved(when their value isn't as low as it is now) the cap space he got with ak opting out, luke's expiring, non guaranteed deals of steimsma and roy and even jj has decent value. He ended up with martin,brewer and bud. All 3 of those contracts are not easy to move.

Him targeting miller and jack dont make sense when we are currently 6 games out of a playoff seed and are over the cap next season with love and rubio extentions coming. We dont have much assets anymore. The fact that spencer hawes expiring got them 2 second rounders doesnt inspire confidence that jj,luc and shved' expiring next season can get us anything of value to upgrade the team. We are very limited in what we can do outside of trading 1 of the love-rubio-pek threesome. Flip painted himself into a corner of either being a perennial challenger for the 6-8 seed or being forced to blow it up.

Let's go through these one by one
1. Look, if you want to discuss how Flip screwed up his life so bad that he now has to do whatever Bill Duffy tells him to, that's one thing. But understanding that Shabazz would still be there at #11 (and probably #111), and getting #21 in the process, is actually kind of shrewd, in THE VERY NARROW SCOPE of actually drafting an adult male who lies about his age in the first place.

2. Totally agree that DW needed to be package with some other crap while he still had value. SAC hadn't done the Hetero deal yet, so maybe DW/Shved for LRMaM/McLemore or LRMaM/Jimmer?

3. In terms of cap space, it's fun to play Monday Morning QB now, but I remember everybody being pretty excited about Brewer (Lead league in 3pt. % from Left Corner in 12/13) and I think everyone had an appreciation for what Bud could do when healthy. If you want to convince others you knew better at the time, have at it, I guess.

4. He got Martin for "Luke's" expiring. Martin's been OK. He's made some dumb mistakes in close games, but his D has been better than I thought it would be.

5. They tried with Roy and Steisma. Just didn't happen. And can you post a link of who was clamoring for JJ?

6. Actually, not to get anyone's hope up, but I can totally see a JJ/LRMaM/Shved for Hetero trade at the next deadline. SAC will be panicking to get under the lux, and MIN will be panicking to keep Love, so no picks need exchanging.

Like I said before, the story of this season is 1)Bud's injury/Brewer's Slump 2)Getting more from the #58 pick two drafts ago than the #11 pick in this past draft 3)Trading Williams for a guy who is actually worse, and I will add Blonde Ricky's slump as well. They have AT LEAST 10 more wins if those things go right.

Jason, in response to your points
1. We traded the 9th pick for 14+21. the 11th pick was mcp by philly. Im not againts trading the 9th for 14+21. But i would have drafted the greek freak over bazz. For some weird reason, flip sounded disappointed when talikng about drafting bazz on draft day, like he seems forced to settle for him. Also, the #26th pick was traded away for nothing so we could get rid of malcom lee's 800k salary. Was hoping we could at least got another future 1st for trading away a 1st.

2. We agree on this jason regarding derrick wiliams and shved. Should have sell when their value wasnt at their lowest point.

3. My take on brewer from the beginning was that while i like him as a energy bench guy, im not sold on giving him 4.7m/yr average to be the starting sf and i never once thought he could be a 3pt threat. You can check the old espn boards for that. Having said that, brewer has exceeded my expectations and actually earning his contract but still, i stand by my take that i dont see another team making him that offer. I havent check but is brewers agent bill duffy?

4. We could sign martin outright without trading luke's expiring. trading luke actually open up cap space to sign brewer and bud.

Now, regarding bud. Like you jason, im a fan and supporter of bud. He was actually my pick for breakout player of the team back when we first traded for him. His injury sethim back that year. Im still a fan of bud and was fine when he got his deal. Part of that is because im a fan of his and want to see him on the team. But even then, i still feel he is overpaid for about a million considering the likes of dunleavy, delfino, bellineli and dudley got lesser money and are comparable player. I still prefer bud though, jus wish he would gottent a bit less tha he got.

5. I know they tried, but going back to number 2. I would like to have seen them tried to package them with dw and even our draft pick and see if we could have gotten something out of it.

Regarding jj, im not saying teams were calling for jj, but im just saying jj has better value last off season than he does right now. Being an expiring isnt as valuable now so it seems.

6. i would be on board if we could pull off a trade for gay. he would fit very well next to love and rubio and pek. Gay is the player i was thinking we should have went after this past offseason with the assets we have.

Some posts in this thread went to great lengths to question the accuracy of Doogie's report. That's fair. That's why my opening post read, "According to Doogie." But Doogie is pretty wired in so I suspect this report was accurate. And if not, then it at least made for an interesting discussion. :) My favorites were those that questioned the accuracy of Doogie's report and then went on to defend the proposed trades that Doogie reported. Then there were those defending poor Flip from vitriol. Poor Flip -- the guy who publicly throws his coach under the bus after telling us at the beginning of the season that he and Adelman have the same coaching philosophy. Poor Flip -- the guy who told us our major problem is having too many one-way players while failing to acknowledge that he signed or traded for most of them in Luc, Brewer, Martin and Budinger.

Note that I've complimented Flip for the way he's handled Love. I've also complimented him for his effort to improve our training staff and reduce injuries. And I'll give him credit for refraining from making any panic moves that would have blown things up prematurely. He's not a terrible GM and it's too early in my view to render a final verdict. But as things stand now, Flip had not been impressive. I think the word mediocre applies pretty well to him. As World noted, we need better than mediocre. We will have to see what Flip is able to do this coming summer through the draft, free agency and trades. Obviously I have very little faith in Flip at this point. I sincerely hope I'm wrong about him.

markkbu wrote:This is a funny discussion. All the words that have been used to describe Martin have been something similar to "adequate".

The guy is in the Top 25 in the NBA in PPG, is shooting .400 from 3 land, and occasionally plays some decent defense......and that gets refereed to as "OK" or "fair market value" by our fanbase.

While our PG is one of the worst shooting NBA players through the course of history and Love's defense is one of the worst from any PF that I have ever seen.

It is always surprising the obvious facts that people will exclude in attempts to to support long held beliefs.

I agree with this statement for the most part, I wouldn't say Love is one of worst PF defenders though. I think part of some of his defensive woes come from knowing there is absolutely zero way he can get into foul trouble. He can put his body into people and hold his own, despite not being a shot blocker. I think if maybe he had the same game, but we had another player of similar star power who could help carry this team, Love would throw himself around a little more and mix it up. Without Martin and Pek, we have a team who's offense is totally predicated on Love being a superstar and Rubio creating shots for everyone. Just a theory, but my guess was you think he's a bad defender partially because sometimes when there's an opportunity for a clean but maybe, hard, foul Love let's them go by. I assume my theory is why.

Squishypoo wrote:

JasonIsDaMan wrote:

markkbu wrote:This is a funny discussion. All the words that have been used to describe Martin have been something similar to "adequate".

The guy is in the Top 25 in the NBA in PPG, is shooting .400 from 3 land, and occasionally plays some decent defense......and that gets refereed to as "OK" or "fair market value" by our fanbase.

While our PG is one of the worst shooting NBA players through the course of history and Love's defense is one of the worst from any PF that I have ever seen.

It is always surprising the obvious facts that people will exclude in attempts to to support long held beliefs.

You raise a good point. I could have used stronger language. I think Martin has been one of the bright spots this year. I just wish MIN signed him at 4yrs/$20m rather than 4yrs/$28m.

That would have been nice,But no way Kmart signs for 5M per year.. Just look around the league and try to find me a player that puts up numbers just as good if not better then martin that makes 6.5M or less per year...It can't be a guy on a rookie deal..... IMO it's a very fair deal.. Look what OJ mayo got to stand around and tie his shoe lol....

Jason, I agree that I would have loved to get him for cheaper, and I think that ilove.MN.sports makes one of the more astute observations on this thread with his post. Do we know of 5 or 10 players (not on their rookie deal) that could have done what Martin has done this year for his price or cheaper? I found 1 in the NBA.......and then a few more if you are willing to add a million or so to what Martin is making. It seems like pretty good value to me, considering available options.



Ahughes.......I agree with much of your last point..........and if we were looking for the top 3 challenges that lead Love to be a poor defender, I definitely believe that your explanation would be in those top 3 things. To your point, Love is the "least fouling" big man (in fouls per minute) in the NBA (of players that see the floor with any degree of regularity). I'm sure that Love not fouling people is very intentional. All that said, I believe that Love has other challenges to his defensive game, other than just the desire to keep him on the court.

leado01 wrote:Markkbu - what's wrong with this world that you are the voice of reason? I agree that this is a funny discussion predicated on a Darren Wolfsen report. Lipoli has a lot of vitriol right now (how can you hate Andre Miller for this many years? At some point you have to admit that we should have picked him up 10-11 years ago when we had the chance). I also don't understand the disdain for K Mart who has been very good for us this year (and I'm surprised that his defense is better than advertised).

So am I cray cray? Or am I agreeing with markkbu?

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Leado, I am as concerned about this (us agreeing on something.....anything) as you are. I have no business being a voice of reason for anything! Some on this board are involved, right now, in a weird group-think that is well outside of my ability to understand.

I'm sure that sometime in the next couple months things will even out a bit and we can get back to disagreeing over most stuff, or at least I hope that happens.

markkbu wrote:

Squishypoo wrote:

JasonIsDaMan wrote:

markkbu wrote:This is a funny discussion. All the words that have been used to describe Martin have been something similar to "adequate".

The guy is in the Top 25 in the NBA in PPG, is shooting .400 from 3 land, and occasionally plays some decent defense......and that gets refereed to as "OK" or "fair market value" by our fanbase.

While our PG is one of the worst shooting NBA players through the course of history and Love's defense is one of the worst from any PF that I have ever seen.

It is always surprising the obvious facts that people will exclude in attempts to to support long held beliefs.

You raise a good point. I could have used stronger language. I think Martin has been one of the bright spots this year. I just wish MIN signed him at 4yrs/$20m rather than 4yrs/$28m.

That would have been nice,But no way Kmart signs for 5M per year.. Just look around the league and try to find me a player that puts up numbers just as good if not better then martin that makes 6.5M or less per year...It can't be a guy on a rookie deal..... IMO it's a very fair deal.. Look what OJ mayo got to stand around and tie his shoe lol....

Jason, I agree that I would have loved to get him for cheaper, and I think that ilove.MN.sports makes one of the more astute observations on this thread with his post. Do we know of 5 or 10 players (not on their rookie deal) that could have done what Martin has done this year for his price or cheaper? I found 1 in the NBA.......and then a few more if you are willing to add a million or so to what Martin is making. It seems like pretty good value to me, considering available options.



Ahughes.......I agree with much of your last point..........and if we were looking for the top 3 challenges that lead Love to be a poor defender, I definitely believe that your explanation would be in those top 3 things. To your point, Love is the "least fouling" big man (in fouls per minute) in the NBA (of players that see the floor with any degree of regularity). I'm sure that Love not fouling people is very intentional. All that said, I believe that Love has other challenges to his defensive game, other than just the desire to keep him on the court.

Markkbu, I've never ben a big fan of Kevin on the defensive end, but he really showed me something against Indiana. I don't know if you saw the game. but his defense was stellar. Indy is very physical and tried to do their chippy thing to us, but Kevin wouldn't take it. Basically he was tougher than they were, and totally bottled up West and Scola...held them to 6 points total and outrebounded both of them 16-10.. Best defensive game I've seen him play.

Barreiro read Flip an email on the last funkadelic saying Flip has been a "disaster". Flip's response was "how can I be a disaster in 6 months?

Lip, I was thinking "I'll be Lipolli wrote that"

Flip ended up getting screwed by Kahn again at the deadline by not having this years first to add with anyone. People talk about giving away last year's 26th pick for nothing (which I would much prefer to have Roberson now than LRMAM). How about giving away a top 13 protected pick just to take Wes off our hands? Who the hell has a top 13 protection on a pick when there are 14 lottery teams? I don't care if your plan is making the playoffs, that's the dumbest protection I've heard of. If you are that confident in making the playoffs, make it a top 10 or something but to leave one spot open in the protection seems like our GM just got beat by the other team's GM. If we had a first and a D Will expiring on our hands, we could have done some damage because that would have been an actually valuable expiring for the other teams to see what they have in D Will unlike these guys that are either hurt or way too overpaid. All these teams wanted firsts in this year's draft and that kept us from making the kind of impactful trade everyone on this board was looking for.

As for the draft, I don't get why so many teams look for the guys that can help you right away. It doesn't ever seem to work anyway. Rookies don't make that big of an impact on good teams, so I would think you should treat the draft in a manner of who do you think will be the best by the end of their rookie contracts and take that guy. I would rather have taken Giannis, Adams or even MCW and given them the time to develop. We drafted Bazz and Dieng and they aren't playing anyways (Dieng is only because of injuries) so did Flip just think Bazz was the BPA at the time for the short-term forgetting that 99% of rookies have little to no stake in a team making the playoffs? The D-League exists for a reason. It is meant as a confidence booster and playing time for guys who can't get any at the pro-level. We are such a bad franchise that we should have our own affiliate filled with prospects (some from our main roster). I would like to see that as the next step after this practice facility gets built. The minors work in Hockey and Baseball for a reason. They filter out bad players and give the good ones the stepping stones to be useful by the time they get to the pros. If you do the D-League right and have a coaching staff running the same stuff as your pro coach it could work really well. This is our chance to be a trend setter and get in on the ground floor of something that could work rather than be old school and still view the D League as a death sentence for rookies. Why are 18 and 19 year old basketball players considered to be any different than 18 or 19 year old players in any other sport?

Khans, if that first rounder stopped Flip, he is even worse at his job than I think. The Wes deal also got us 3 second round picks back as well, with one of them being the 2014 pick of the lakers. That will likely be around the 5th pick in the second round. That has more value to many teams than a late first due to not having to offer up a guaranteed salary, which should have made it easy for Flip to make an exchange like that, thus allowing him to offer up our first rounder (if in the top 13) or a first next season. That pick is also protected up to 12 for the next couple years and then drops to 2 seconds. A lot of deals end up dropping the protection later on.

I hated the Wes pick, hated Wes while he was here, but also realize that Adelman wanted him gone. Hate Kahn for drafting him, but realize that Adelman's failure to take advantage of Wes' D and 3pt ability also contributed to this lousy deal. Wes was on that list Adelman gave to Kahn containing players he wanted off the team.

Flip knew what his options were when he took this job. He started with a proven core of players and had cap space and two firsts to immediately improve the club. This team entered the season with similar expectations to the club they had the year before with a significantly higher payroll. Flip failed miserably in his first season!

Why is it that nobody was cutting Kahn slack when he had to give up a #10 overall pick to satisfy a deal McHale made?