Minnesota Sports Forum

KAT just implodes as Beal dominates. KAT's by far our best player, but most nights he is the 2nd or 3rd best player on the floor with the other team having the best.

Good timeout here.

Wolves 1-7 with Kat and without Dlo

Culver was awesome tonight. Great to have him back.

Who says no?

Pistons get KAT, DLO, Layman, Ed, and Okogie
Wolves get Blake Griffin, Delon Wright, Killian Hayes, Isaiah Stewart, Saddiq Bey, and Jahlil Okafor, 2021 unprotected 1st, 2023 first, 2025 first and pick swap rights in 2022 or 2026 and 2024

Rubio, McLaughlin, Hayes
Beasley, Nowell, Culver
Edwards, Bey
McD, Vandy
Naz, Stewart

Buyout Griffin, sell off Wright, Juancho, and Okafor to anyone that wants them. Even Ricky if he's wanted.

Phenom's_Revenge wrote:Who says no?

Pistons get KAT, DLO, Layman, Ed, and Okogie
Wolves get Blake Griffin, Delon Wright, Killian Hayes, Isaiah Stewart, Saddiq Bey, and Jahlil Okafor, 2021 unprotected 1st, 2023 first, 2025 first and pick swap rights in 2022 or 2026 and 2024

Rubio, McLaughlin, Hayes
Beasley, Nowell, Culver
Edwards, Bey
McD, Vandy
Naz, Stewart

Buyout Griffin, sell off Wright, Juancho, and Okafor to anyone that wants them. Even Ricky if he's wanted.

Wolves and I don't think this deal is not even close for the Wolves imo

kekgeek1 wrote:

Phenom's_Revenge wrote:Who says no?

Pistons get KAT, DLO, Layman, Ed, and Okogie
Wolves get Blake Griffin, Delon Wright, Killian Hayes, Isaiah Stewart, Saddiq Bey, and Jahlil Okafor, 2021 unprotected 1st, 2023 first, 2025 first and pick swap rights in 2022 or 2026 and 2024

Rubio, McLaughlin, Hayes
Beasley, Nowell, Culver
Edwards, Bey
McD, Vandy
Naz, Stewart

Buyout Griffin, sell off Wright, Juancho, and Okafor to anyone that wants them. Even Ricky if he's wanted.

Wolves and I don't think this deal is not even close for the Wolves imo

Ambitious, I like it. I would argue that those picks have a great chance to be quite valuable though.

kekgeek1 wrote:Wolves 1-7 with Kat and without Dlo

So DLO is better than KAT? Is that what you're trying to stand on?

I didn't see tonight's game.

Looking at the score tells me why the Wolves lost. It's simple. The Wolves gave up 128 points. You're going to lose nearly every time you give up that many points. So once again, the score alone indicates that it was the Wolves consistently poor defense that resulted in tonight's loss.

Checking out the box score for a slightly deeper dive, it looks like Okogie shot the ball well tonight. It also looks like Nowell played well on the offensive end with 15 highly efficient points, 5 rebounds and 4 assists. Edwards was Edwards. That is, he put up a lot of shots and 21 points, but did it pretty inefficiently. He hit 40% of his FG attempts and just under 30% of his three-point attempts. Those were his shooting percentages in college and that's how he's shot for the most part nearly half-way into his first NBA season. I like that he had 6 rebounds and 2 blocks, which shows he's doing other things. But he's going to have to become a more efficient scorer, which includes getting to the line more. Looks like Naz had a good game offensively. I like that Vanderbilt had 12 rebounds and 2 blocks. That's what he can do.

Culver apparently picked up where he left off going 1 for 6 from the field. I know it's his first game back in a while, but the way he shot tonight aligns with his shooting before his injury. He has a broken shot and failed to fix it during an extended off season. His trade value continues to plummet. Ricky's stats looked terrible. I still can't believe Rosas traded for him. He's an unreadable and almost unplayable $17M per year contract.

Regarding KAT, I'm not worried. His shot was obviously off tonight, but he's always been a highly efficient scorer so that part of his game will come around. He's been much better defensively so far this season, but I'd be interested in hearing how well he played defensively tonight. I noticed he had 2 blocks, but that's not necessarily indicative of a player's overall defense. I also noticed that he had 5 turnovers tonight. I think we're going out see more turnovers from KAT as Finch attempts to expand his role in the offense. There will be growing pains in that regard, but it should pay off in the long haul unless KAT's just not capably of having a Jokic-type role in the offense.

In any event, from Ryan to Finch, the beat goes on. This roster isn't very good right now. Yes, there's some young talent in Edwards, McDaniels, Nowell and Vanderbilt. And Beasley's a really good young offensive player. But that's it. We have to overpriced PGs and one of them hasn't been able to stay healthy since his arrival here. We lack size and have no inside defensive presence to complement KAT. And our only two decent perimeter defenders, Okogie and Culver, are terrible offensive players. As we all know, we have the worst record in the NBA, but not draft picks unless we get really lucky in the lottery. Oh, and we're only $1M under the luxury tax threshold. So even if we do keep our first round pick, we can't sign him without exceeding the luxury tax threshold unless we trade for salary space. Unfortunately, I don't how we can trade for salary space without giving up additional assets as enticement.

So yes, the situation is really had. Finch won't fix it. Rosas needs to go before his contract is up. Unfortunately, Glen or the owner he sells to will now have to eat the rest of Finch's contract too.

Lip, your box score analysis is pretty close, but I'll add some color. The defense in the first half was quite good. Finch started a lineup that looked disastrous...KAT and 4 non-shooters. But Okogie, whom I have ripped all year, really stepped up against Beal, and we had one of our first sub-30 defensive first quarters of the season. Only a lucky bouncing three by Mo Wagner got them even to 27. And despite the lack of shooters on the floor and Ant's insistence on putting the ball up every time he touched it, we still were able to put up 29 points...thanks primarily to relentless offensive rebounding, great back cuts by Vando and JO, and easy looks from Rubio (he didn't have many assists, but KAT and Vando feasted at the free throw line off of good looks by Ricky.

But everything changed in a terrible third quarter. Both PG's quit moving the ball, and we forgot how to defend the perimeter...the number of open looks we gave outside the arc was embarrassing.

Finch was visibly angry postgame about the lack of ball movement. While or PGs were not good (6 assists and 4 TOs with 2-8 shooting), I sensed a lot of Finch's anger was directed toward Ant. When the ball went to him, it stopped, as he dribbled around probing for an opening to miss another three...he frankly looked like DLO to me, except without made shots. Finch has publicly asked Ant to limit his threes to 1/3 of his shots, but 11 of Ant's 22 shots were beyond the arc. Tellingly, he missed 8 out of 11 threes, but he made 6 of his 11 2's. Shame on Ant for relying on an inefficient shot, and shame on Finch for giving him a team-high 32 minutes when he clearly wasn't doing what the coach wanted. If Culver had shown anything, I would have encouraged Finch to start him at SF in place of Ant tonight, but Culver was actually worse than Ant.