Minnesota Sports Forum

FNG wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 4:04 pm

rapsuperstar31 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 2:56 pm

FNG wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 1:26 pm

I don't think there's any way this happens without both Jaden and Ju in the deal, plus picks. We aren't going to include Ant, and I don't see anyone else the Bucks might be interested in. I would be intrigued by that deal, but I don't think I would do it.

This probably won't be well received here, but seeing how well we have played without Ant, I would be in favor of a true blockbuster: Ant and Conley for Giannis. I get that Ant is much younger, but I've moved into the camp that I don't see us ever competing for a chip with him as our leader. Giannis is an on/off monster...+20 this year and positive every year of his career...while Ant is a -3.9 this year and barely breakeven for his career. If the Bucks are moving on from Giannis, a deal with Ant in it would likely be as good as they could get. And we could compete with a starting line of Rudy, Ju, Jaden, Giannis, and Donte, with Naz and the youngsters coming off the bench.

Knock it off with seeing how well we have played without Ant to a shitty Kings team and a Golden State team that just lost yesterday to a Portland team without Jru that lost to New Orleans the previous game by 23 on a night Curry hit 12 threes. A two game sample size is nothing. Do you know what is a pretty significant sample size? The Wolves making it out of the first round of the playoffs once in 34 seasons before Ant got here.

Rap. I'm not taking that much from the two wins over the Warriors and the Kings, even though the Warriors were favored by 4 1/2. I am taking something though from the fact that the Wolves covered the spread in both games (i.e. exceeded expectations). When I saw that Draymond was out, I laid a big bet on the Wolves to cover, because the Wolves can survive Ant missing a game easier than the Warriors can survive Draymond missing a game, because Draymond is a guy who consistently makes everyone around him better at both ends of the court. Like Giannis, he consistently has a strong on/off stat...he's +8.4 this season compared to Ant's -3.9. Ant supporters tie themselves up in knots trying to justify why the Wolves do better when he is off the court than on by saying it's because of the mix of players he's on the court with, but the guys he plays the most minutes with are our 4 best on/off guys (Donte, Rudy, Jaden and Ju)...they actually prop up his on/off! The players I think are winners are guys who consistently rank high in on/off. For instance this season, here are the on/offs for key players on their teams:

Giannis: +20
Joker: +17.7
Markkennen: +16.2
Wemby: +12.9
Luka: +9
Draymond: +8.4
Brunson: 7.1
Booker: +5.9
SGA: +5.5

When one of these guys is out, I look to make a bet on the other team if I think Vegas hasn't adjusted the line enough, and it's been a good strategy for me. But as much as I admire Ant's talent, he doesn't have the same positive impact as the guys above. He's more like these high scorers:

Trae: -11
Ja: -6.2
LaVine: -5.4
Ant: -3.9

Despite their elite scoring, their teams tend to do just fine or even better when they miss a game. We need Ant to move into the other group if we're going to challenge for a championship, but he's still a negative player mostly because of his defensive indifference. I'm sure we all noticed a huge difference in how much more aggressive and better our defense looked against the Warriors and the Kings, even if our offense without Ant looked pretty bad in the first half last night.

I get that trading Ant for Giannis might not be the best long-term move because Ant is 7 years younger. But I would argue our chances of competing for a championship the next 3 years would skyrocket with that trade. Maybe others think moving Jaden and Ju is a better move than moving Ant, but I don't. Unfortunately it's the trade that is being rumored and that TC is more likely to make.

That's fine but it's still regular season. Playoffs is what really matters, regular season not so much. Pull up everyone's playoff numbers the last few years and avg them for a decent sample size.

Even Ant knows he doesn't take the regular season seriously. His lack of defensive effort shows up in the stats as seen above.

The fair criticism is that are regular season habits taken over to the playoffs and should Ant play them more seriously?

Coolbreeze44 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 4:47 pm

Lipoli390 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 4:34 pm

Coolbreeze44 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 4:15 pm

FNG, great post and you laid out the argument very well. Fanboys always get attached to the young star, thinking it's always going to get better and result in a championship. The fact is that hardly ever happens. There are legitimate reasons against Ant ever leading us to a title, some of which you laid out in your post.

So, you've heard the rumor is Jaden and Ju? I'll take Giannis any way i can get him, but I'd much rather just give up Ant than those two players. I know Giannis can win a championship, and he would have a better supporting cast than he did in Milwaukee when they won.

I’d hate to trade Ant for anyone, including Giannis. Ant’s talent and charisma are an enormous and critical combo for a franchise like ours. On the other hand, it’s hard to dispute the numbers that FNG posted. Ant isn’t where he needs to be for this team to be a true championship contender. That’s why, even though I love Giannis and know he’s a championship superstar, I’d prefer to stay the course with Ant and hope he takes that next step. Our lack of draft capital means we’ll be stuck in a rut for a long time if we give up a lot for an older vet to win now. I see the argument for swapping Ant for a star like Giannis but I’m not there.

We’re 2.5 games out of 2nd place in the West and we’ve won two in a row without Conley or Ant. We’ve seen signs of what Dilly and Bones can do for us if they get some meaningful minutes. I’d stay the course even if the Bucks offer a Giannis for Ant swap.

I get what you're saying Lip, but you are our resident "let's hold onto guys longer than we should" guy. I mean we can go back to Culver, Minott, and now Dillingham. I get that Ant is a star as opposed to those guys, but Giannis is a true superstar who would put us right in the conversation of true contender. Ant most likely will not be the best player on a championship team, but he has a chance. However, it's time for this franchise to push our chips into the middle. Julius and Jaden are having career years and we've got pretty decent depth. I want to see us go for it.

Cool - I think your argument for a Giannis-Ant swap is solid and tempting to me. I’d probably be all in on it if Giannis were 27 but he’s over 30 and his body already seems to be breaking down. And I still believe Ant’s competitive nature will drive him to take that next step although I have some doubts. I generally don’t like short term hale Mary moves in sports because they rarely pan out and typically lead to long periods of misery. I’m old enough to remember the Herschel Walker trade.

I don’t think I’m a “hold on to players longer than we should guy.” I just like finding young talent and developing it because that’s usually how championship NBA teams are created - at least in smaller franchise markets. It’s certainly the key formula for creating a sustainable contender.

I wasn’t calling for the Wolves to keep MInott after last season and I don’t think we held onto him too long. One might argue we should have kept him longer and given him more playing time but he was at a very crowded position on this team and I didn’t’ complain when we let him go. I like him and stand by my positive view of his talent, but don’t think I ever objected to any proposed Minott trades.

I never liked Culver. I think I posted some of the angriest rants when Rosas traded up and took him. He was so bad from the beginning that he never had much trade value so I might have posted that we should keep him rather than give him up for nothing but my general recollection is that I never wanted him here and generally wanted him gone.

It’s not very compelling to argue that keeping Dillingham through this season is holding on too long. The guy is 20 years old and clearly hasn’t been getting enough NBA minutes to properly assess him. His Kentucky backcourt mate had equally bad numbers last season playing similarly paltry minutes but once he started getting 25+ minutes per game this season his play blossomed. I don’t know whether the same would happen with Dilly but the point is we’ll never know if he doesn’t get those minutes. And unlike the situation with Minott, the PG position isn’t overcrowded. Hence the case for getting Dilly on the court for at least 20 minutes a game for an extended period. If Bones continues to play like he did last night, then maybe 20 minutes is all Dilly should or will get but this 10-11 minutes limit is organizational malpractice in my book given our need at his position and the fact we what little draft capital we had left to trade up to #8 to take him.

I don't know FNG, those numbers you are tossing out seem awfully noisy to me. For instance, ANT has missed 6 games. But the team is a +40 in those 6 games because they included Charlotte, Brooklyn, Sacramento and a Warriors team without Draymond, Horford, and Curry's minute-restricted first game back. That point differential in those 6 games paint ANT's contributions in a negative light. He is by almost all measures, at only age 24, taking another leap statistically, along with Jaden.

This attempt to justify giving up on ANT seems pretty ludicrous to me...

60WinTim wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 6:19 pm I don't know FNG, those numbers you are tossing out seem awfully noisy to me. For instance, ANT has missed 6 games. But the team is a +40 in those 6 games because they included Charlotte, Brooklyn, Sacramento and a Warriors team without Draymond, Horford, and Curry's minute-restricted first game back. That point differential in those 6 games paint ANT's contributions in a negative light. He is by almost all measures, at only age 24, taking another leap statistically, along with Jaden.

This attempt to justify giving up on ANT seems pretty ludicrous to me...

Yeah, it's such a cherry-picked and dare I say disingenious stat for FNG to use. He looked only at this season's limited sample size, as you mention above. It's funny that FNG didn't cite Ant's net On/Off rating from the 42 playoff games he's played across four seasons. The data completely contradicts his own argument and it's based on a much larger body of work and stronger competition. And for those that don't want to look it up, here are Ant's Net On/Off ratings over the past four years in the playoffs:

2021-22 +6.6
2022-23 +30.3
2023-24 +1.4
2024-25 +2.5
Career Net On/Off Playoff Rating +6.0

This is without getting into the flaws of the metric and how a crappy bench can inflate On/Off net rating when said player is sitting. Ant has almost always had a pretty strong bench, especially the two seasons prior to this one.

Some very good points by Tim and Q. I don't disagree that on/off is a "noisy" stat, but tell me one that isn't! Zach LaVine looks terrific by many stats, but I challenge anyone to tell me he is a positive player. On/off is personal to me...when I played in high school and college, I always wanted to know I had influenced the score positively while I was on the court. Would I get pissed off and say to myself "it's not my fault" if a teammate was lax on defense or jacking up ill advised shots? Of course. But I knew that things tend to average out, and it was a good goal to outscore my opponent while I was on the court. Q, Ant had a terrific 2022-3 post-season when we got eliminated in the first round 4-1. But in the next two years in much more competitive series he was barely breakeven. I need more from my team leader than that.

Cam anyone really make the case that we would not be improved the next three years if somehow we were able to convince the Bucks to take Ant and Conley for Giannis?

Q-is-here wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 6:56 pm

60WinTim wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 6:19 pm I don't know FNG, those numbers you are tossing out seem awfully noisy to me. For instance, ANT has missed 6 games. But the team is a +40 in those 6 games because they included Charlotte, Brooklyn, Sacramento and a Warriors team without Draymond, Horford, and Curry's minute-restricted first game back. That point differential in those 6 games paint ANT's contributions in a negative light. He is by almost all measures, at only age 24, taking another leap statistically, along with Jaden.

This attempt to justify giving up on ANT seems pretty ludicrous to me...

Yeah, it's such a cherry-picked and dare I say disingenious stat for FNG to use. He looked only at this season's limited sample size, as you mention above. It's funny that FNG didn't cite Ant's net On/Off rating from the 42 playoff games he's played across four seasons. The data completely contradicts his own argument and it's based on a much larger body of work and stronger competition. And for those that don't want to look it up, here are Ant's Net On/Off ratings over the past four years in the playoffs:

2021-22 +6.6
2022-23 +30.3
2023-24 +1.4
2024-25 +2.5
Career Net On/Off Playoff Rating +6.0

This is without getting into the flaws of the metric and how a crappy bench can inflate On/Off net rating when said player is sitting. Ant has almost always had a pretty strong bench, especially the two seasons prior to this one.

Thank you guys for doing the work for me on this. Saw the post from FNG earlier and was too lazy to give very important context to the On/Off numbers this year

kekgeek wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 7:36 pm

Q-is-here wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 6:56 pm

60WinTim wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 6:19 pm I don't know FNG, those numbers you are tossing out seem awfully noisy to me. For instance, ANT has missed 6 games. But the team is a +40 in those 6 games because they included Charlotte, Brooklyn, Sacramento and a Warriors team without Draymond, Horford, and Curry's minute-restricted first game back. That point differential in those 6 games paint ANT's contributions in a negative light. He is by almost all measures, at only age 24, taking another leap statistically, along with Jaden.

This attempt to justify giving up on ANT seems pretty ludicrous to me...

Yeah, it's such a cherry-picked and dare I say disingenious stat for FNG to use. He looked only at this season's limited sample size, as you mention above. It's funny that FNG didn't cite Ant's net On/Off rating from the 42 playoff games he's played across four seasons. The data completely contradicts his own argument and it's based on a much larger body of work and stronger competition. And for those that don't want to look it up, here are Ant's Net On/Off ratings over the past four years in the playoffs:

2021-22 +6.6
2022-23 +30.3
2023-24 +1.4
2024-25 +2.5
Career Net On/Off Playoff Rating +6.0

This is without getting into the flaws of the metric and how a crappy bench can inflate On/Off net rating when said player is sitting. Ant has almost always had a pretty strong bench, especially the two seasons prior to this one.

Thank you guys for doing the work for me on this. Saw the post from FNG earlier and was too lazy to give very important context to the On/Off numbers this year

You guys are in charge of the parade for Ant for his breakeven on/off numbers in the playoffs over far more games the past two years than his outlier 2022-3 stats in only 5 games! Now, full disclosure: Giannis's numbers haven't been that good in the playoffs, so that's something TC needs to focus on. But his numbers over entire seasons are so much better than Ant's, you really gave to stretch to say we wouldn't be better if we could land him for Ant.

Kek, would you not trade Ant and Mike for Giannis?

Trading Ant for Giannis has a major fatal flaw. The only reason that Giannis would consider the Wolves is his affinity for Ant.

How hilariously Wolvsian would it be to trade Ant for Giannis and have him walk as soon as his contract would allow?

FNG wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 7:33 pm Some very good points by Tim and Q. I don't disagree that on/off is a "noisy" stat, but tell me one that isn't! Zach LaVine looks terrific by many stats, but I challenge anyone to tell me he is a positive player. On/off is personal to me...when I played in high school and college, I always wanted to know I had influenced the score positively while I was on the court. Would I get pissed off and say to myself "it's not my fault" if a teammate was lax on defense or jacking up ill advised shots? Of course. But I knew that things tend to average out, and it was a good goal to outscore my opponent while I was on the court. Q, Ant had a terrific 2022-3 post-season when we got eliminated in the first round 4-1. But in the next two years in much more competitive series he was barely breakeven. I need more from my team leader than that.

Cam anyone really make the case that we would not be improved the next three years if somehow we were able to convince the Bucks to take Ant and Conley for Giannis?

I won't argue with the premise that Giannis is currently better than Ant. I'd probably have to twist myself into a pretzel to make a statistical or qualitative argument in favor of Ant.

Where I have a bone to pick is that you are using a highly flawed statistical sample (and stat) to make Ant look worse than he really is.

Also, the part I bolded above....that describes Net Rating, not Net On/Off Rating. Ant had a +4.4 Net Rating in our first WCF run and a +4.1 Net Rating in last year's playoffs. And that's going against the best of the best in terms of the competition. In other words, we did win the minutes he was on the floor!

I think almost all of us will agree that Ant isn't on the Jokic, Giannis, or SGA tier yet. He may never get there. But using a flawed statistical approach to make him seem worse than he actually is....not sure what the point is.

FNG wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 7:46 pm

kekgeek wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 7:36 pm

Q-is-here wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 6:56 pm

Yeah, it's such a cherry-picked and dare I say disingenious stat for FNG to use. He looked only at this season's limited sample size, as you mention above. It's funny that FNG didn't cite Ant's net On/Off rating from the 42 playoff games he's played across four seasons. The data completely contradicts his own argument and it's based on a much larger body of work and stronger competition. And for those that don't want to look it up, here are Ant's Net On/Off ratings over the past four years in the playoffs:

2021-22 +6.6
2022-23 +30.3
2023-24 +1.4
2024-25 +2.5
Career Net On/Off Playoff Rating +6.0

This is without getting into the flaws of the metric and how a crappy bench can inflate On/Off net rating when said player is sitting. Ant has almost always had a pretty strong bench, especially the two seasons prior to this one.

Thank you guys for doing the work for me on this. Saw the post from FNG earlier and was too lazy to give very important context to the On/Off numbers this year

You guys are in charge of the parade for Ant for his breakeven on/off numbers in the playoffs over far more games the past two years than his outlier 2022-3 stats in only 5 games! Now, full disclosure: Giannis's numbers haven't been that good in the playoffs, so that's something TC needs to focus on. But his numbers over entire seasons are so much better than Ant's, you really gave to stretch to say we wouldn't be better if we could land him for Ant.

Kek, would you not trade Ant and Mike for Giannis?

No I would not trade 24 year old who is in under team control and cheaper for 4 more years for a 30 year old who is often hurt who is under team control for 2 more years who has a legitimate leg injury this year.

You are taking all the context of the teams out of your on/off numbers. The last how many years the wolves have had the best bench in the nba so when ant sits the drop off will not be as dramatic as Giannis playing with no bench, really skewing the on/off numbers of both players.

This year like 60win pointed out played multiple games this year without ant against the bottom barrel of the NBA that is massively skewing on off numbers.


Also comparing Lavine to Ant is so BS and such a disgusting argument. We have year after year of no playoff lavine playing on losing team after losing team and comparing Ant to him who has lead the team to 2 WCF as a 22 and 23 year old. Like what are we doing here.

I think Giannis is better than Ant currently but the downside of trading Ant for Giannis is so much higher than keeping Ant, with in my opinion minimal upside.