Minnesota Sports Forum

alexftbl8181 wrote:and please let's stop with the "this guy needs to go, this guy needs to play BS" after every game. People want to get rid of Pek when he struggled and Dieng looked good. Tonight it was the opposite. Young is going to look shitty, Wiggins is going to look shitty, everybody will look shitty at some point. That's when you need backup plans like Brewer and Bud who can keep things rolling. As I said before, don't change a thing.

Agree with this. After every game guys are making knee jerk statements about who should go, play, sit, whatever. Everything is fine at this point, although I hope Zach can work his way into more consistent minutes. There will be a game soon where Brewer will play a pivotal role in a victory. Maybe even Bud will have a stretch of solid play. Just relax as Aaron Rodgers would say.

And on Wiggins Defense: He was guarding Joe Fricking Johnson without any help in the 4th quarter. Sure Joe got over for some baskets, but how many did we not give up by leaving someone open? You guys gotta realize that defending 1 on 1 against one of the best is near impossible. The fact the Wolves had their 19 year old on him alone should tell you something.

Joe Johnson has 40 lbs on Wiggins. It showed, but Wiggins made him work for everything. The only way to slow that down would have been to go at Johnson on the other end so he had to play hard on both ends of the floor. You can't ask Wiggins to do any more against such a matchup disadvantage in the post. I do think Flip should have possibly considered moving Thad over on him and force them to go through whoever was playing the 4 at the time which would have made for an easier target to double and possibly get a turnover than Johnson. But with a win in the books it was a good learning opportunity for him without the same consequences it had against the Bulls.

The thing I liked most was the change in attitude from last year. Last year we'd jump out to these big leads only to watch them slip away throughout the game. By like 5 minutes left in the 4th quarter we knew if the opponent was within striking distance we'd probably end up losing. So far this year it feels like the team will be able to fight to the end and the players look committed enough on the defensive end that we might actually get a few key stops to close out games.

I also want to give some props to Rubio for the play he made to draw an offensive foul on Lopez at the end of the game. That's just one example of the type of winning plays he makes that don't necessarily show up in the box score.