lipoli390 wrote:This was an unacceptable loss. They lost by nearly 20 points to a team with inferior talent. The Wolves had their core players healthy and were playing at home with a lot on the line. There's no excusing or explaining away this loss. And with Denver losing to a surging Spurs team, a win tonight would have put the Wolves in a decent position to end up with the 6th seed. Now the Wolves are definitely headed to a challenging play-in game against the Clippers. But beyond tonight's loss is the a more serious concern - namely the fact that this team has been horrible defensively the past couple weeks.
Given the way the Wolves have been defending lately, I don't see this team making the playoffs. The Clippers have Paul George back and have been playing well lately. I think the Clippers will win the play-in tournament. And if the Wolves get past the Clippers I wouldn't count on them getting past the Spurs or Pelicans who have also been hot lately. Actually, getting eliminated in the play-in might be the best thing that can happen to this team right now. They've shown they've got a lot to work with. But not making the playoffs might be the wake-up call this front office needs to shore up this team's weaknesses, especially its lack of inside strength, size and defensive rebounding. And it would also put the Wolves back in the lottery. :) I see everyone but KAT, Edwards and Beverley as potentially moveable in the offseason. I'm not advocating for a major shakeup after what will be a largely successful 46 or 47 win season. But if this team ends up on the outside looking in on the playoffs this year, then I don't think the front office should necessarily be satisfied with a minor tweak.
Rationalize for me how last year tanking for Cade wasn't a good idea but missing the playoffs this year might be what this team needs.
lipoli390 wrote:This was an unacceptable loss. They lost by nearly 20 points to a team with inferior talent. The Wolves had their core players healthy and were playing at home with a lot on the line. There's no excusing or explaining away this loss. And with Denver losing to a surging Spurs team, a win tonight would have put the Wolves in a decent position to end up with the 6th seed. Now the Wolves are definitely headed to a challenging play-in game against the Clippers. But beyond tonight's loss is the a more serious concern - namely the fact that this team has been horrible defensively the past couple weeks.
Given the way the Wolves have been defending lately, I don't see this team making the playoffs. The Clippers have Paul George back and have been playing well lately. I think the Clippers will win the play-in tournament. And if the Wolves get past the Clippers I wouldn't count on them getting past the Spurs or Pelicans who have also been hot lately. Actually, getting eliminated in the play-in might be the best thing that can happen to this team right now. They've shown they've got a lot to work with. But not making the playoffs might be the wake-up call this front office needs to shore up this team's weaknesses, especially its lack of inside strength, size and defensive rebounding. And it would also put the Wolves back in the lottery. :) I see everyone but KAT, Edwards and Beverley as potentially moveable in the offseason. I'm not advocating for a major shakeup after what will be a largely successful 46 or 47 win season. But if this team ends up on the outside looking in on the playoffs this year, then I don't think the front office should necessarily be satisfied with a minor tweak.
Rationalize for me how last year tanking for Cade wasn't a good idea but missing the playoffs this year might be what this team needs.
Because tanking means deliberately losing games over an extended period, which is antithetical to this team's need at the time to start developing a winning culture. I'm not suggesting that this team should deliberately lose one or both of this year's potentially two play-in games. That's not rationalizing. I'm simply recognizing, as I think most of us do, that this team is likely to lose to the Clippers if they keep playing the way they've been playing lately and a silver lining in losing might be further front-office motivation to improve the roster in key areas.
lipoli390 wrote:This was an unacceptable loss. They lost by nearly 20 points to a team with inferior talent. The Wolves had their core players healthy and were playing at home with a lot on the line. There's no excusing or explaining away this loss. And with Denver losing to a surging Spurs team, a win tonight would have put the Wolves in a decent position to end up with the 6th seed. Now the Wolves are definitely headed to a challenging play-in game against the Clippers. But beyond tonight's loss is the a more serious concern - namely the fact that this team has been horrible defensively the past couple weeks.
Given the way the Wolves have been defending lately, I don't see this team making the playoffs. The Clippers have Paul George back and have been playing well lately. I think the Clippers will win the play-in tournament. And if the Wolves get past the Clippers I wouldn't count on them getting past the Spurs or Pelicans who have also been hot lately. Actually, getting eliminated in the play-in might be the best thing that can happen to this team right now. They've shown they've got a lot to work with. But not making the playoffs might be the wake-up call this front office needs to shore up this team's weaknesses, especially its lack of inside strength, size and defensive rebounding. And it would also put the Wolves back in the lottery. :) I see everyone but KAT, Edwards and Beverley as potentially moveable in the offseason. I'm not advocating for a major shakeup after what will be a largely successful 46 or 47 win season. But if this team ends up on the outside looking in on the playoffs this year, then I don't think the front office should necessarily be satisfied with a minor tweak.
I strongly disagree with the best thing that could happen to the Wolves is miss the playoffs.
Need to see how our Big 3 reacts to consent scouting reports to stop them. Kat and Dlo were both terrible in their only career playoff experience. Also we need to see if players like Vando, Beasley, Nowell (I don't think he will be in the playoff rotation) are even playable in a playoff series.
Still a terrible loss, bad defense for these last 2 weeks but wolves will still be favored against the Clippers and they will be heavily favored against the Pelicans or Spurs if they did lose to the 1st play in game
That's a good point, kek. I was careful to say that getting eliminated "might be" the best thing. I was equivocal for the very reason you mentioned. I'd love to see the Wolves win the play-in game and make the playoffs. And I'd like the Wolves to make a series of it against the Grizzlies. But the defense we've seen from the Wolves lately won't cut it. The good news is that we've seen this team play better defense than they've been playing lately and we know this team can score. So there's certainly reason for optimism that this team can beat the Clippers at home.
Pathetic loss. Really needed that one, and we let an inferior team get hot and stay hot.
I was an anti-tanker for years, and then last year I was all for tanking down the stretch because of how strong that draft class was, because we won't be that bad again anytime soon, and because we need more talent/assets to increase the likelihood of capitalizing on the time when we have KAT. Nobody really thinks losing this year would be a good thing, but we really should have done it last year. We still could have hit the reset button and changed the culture this year as Finch's first year, and while we still might've lost the lottery, I think we lowered our chances by 20% of getting one of those top 4 picks by winning all those games down the stretch. I guess you could say we might have taken Suggs and then not traded for Beverley, which would have sucked this year, but who knows? I suspect we'd have traded for Beverley anyway. If we'd have gotten lucky and landed Cade or Mobley or Barnes, we'd be a really deep team with moveable assets. Mobley would've helped our defense so much this year. *sigh* I really like Cade. And Barnes looks to be a pretty fun player.
