Minnesota Sports Forum

Just watched the game. I'm curious how many of you have had a chance to watch the game because some of you sound a little dismissive just based on looking at the boxscore. But watch it and you'll see that was a pretty impressive play all around after the first quarter. Even the box score shows that three of our five starters came out ahead in plus-minus, and that undersells how good the team looked after the first quarter.

Now, the first quarter was horrendous. Terrible first quarter for us, and the Warriors were the Warriors. Looked like so many of our dumpster fire 3rd quarters from last year.

But after that, it was pretty legit. Our backups closed the gap and the starters came back in to close it up a bit before the half as well.

And then in the second half our starters were playing much better. Better defense and ball movement, really some good clever ball movement, and then our bench looked absolutely great the rest of the way. Yes, part of it was against their deep bench (Bell and some other guys), but our bench guys were also playing better than Iggy, West, McGee, Livingston, Casspi, McCaw, and Nick Young. Those are the Warriors' legit bench guys. And ours really crushed them.

There are definitely things to critique from the starters. Towns looked a out of control on some of those drives. Teague's shot was off. But in the face of a great team that was not totally lying down, I thought they actually did pretty well. I especially like that they seemed to be working harder on defense. I'm hoping that some of Gibson's lunch-bucket style is starting to rub off on the rest of the starters. Wiggins looked pretty good sliding his feet defensively, and not biting on fakes. He had a nice kickout pass to Teague for a 3 off a drive. Butler is crazy. You barely notice him. He looks like he's hanging back and letting the other guys take a featured role, but then he does all sorts of little stuff, snagging rebounds out of nowhere, making clever passes, and drawing fouls at just the right time. Dude scored 16 points on 6 shots. Crazy. I can't wait until we get a chance to see him be more demanding. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the corner 3s from Gibson and Dieng. I've been calling for that from Dieng for a couple years and was calling for it after we traded for Gibson. Those are two of the best long-two shooting big men in the game, so it's logical that with enough practice, they should be able to stretch that shot out on the baseline and really help open up the floor.

I was particularly impressed with the toughness and intensity of the bench. Dieng was getting physical with guys. I love that. When he gave West that hard intentional foul after the shove, that was awesome. I don't even care that he gave up a free throw for that. When was the last time we had some toughness on this team? We've had guys talk, and Bazz got in McGee's face there. But I want guys who foul hard. Seeing that from Dieng was awesome. And some of Dieng's passing was really impressive too. Those two assists to Tyus were awesome. Crawford is not shooting the ball well, but he's a great ball handler and really ran the offense well. I totally trust him as a backup PG when needed. I've been most impressed with Crawford's defense, believe it or not. I expect him to be horrible out there defensively, but he was hustling and putting the pressure on a bit. Bazz was getting after it, even for Bazz. Tyus looked solid. And Bjelica's defense was not bad. Clutch three point shooting down the stretch.

Excellent summary, Drew!

It was nice watching a game live at night after work (NZ time).

A few thoughts:

*I loved the toughness shown by our guys, something I haven't seen on this team since the KG era. Defensively this team looks different. Started off a bit sluggish but when they got going it was great to watch. Solid rotations and switches. On one play Dieng got elbowed by I believe David West (trying to create space for himself) and replied by pushing West back. Gorgui got called for a flagarant foul but in my opinion it was great to see and I believe Gorgui did the right thing as the officials should have pinged West for the elbow. On another ocassion Bazz got pushed by McGee for committing a common shooting foul (nothing malicious at all). McGee took acception and push Bazz, then Bazz got right up in his face and pushed him back before the two were separated. That competitiveness is contagious and it showed later in the game when we shut down there 2nd and 3rd units.

*Wiggins is bigger. No two ways about it. Looks like he's grown an inch and certainly filled out his frame. Once he learns to play with that added weight he will be lethal. I remember Lip mentioning his wife confusing Wiggins as Dieng, I did too on a couple of occasions. I thought he played great defence on Durant last night even though he scored 20 points on super efficient scoring (Durant is unguardable most nights).

*Our second unit played magnificently. Awesome ball movement on offense and great rotations and hustle on defense. I have the confidence they can hold their own most nights. Out starters could learn a thing or two as resorted to half court ISO sets with little ball movement and forced shots.

*Watching the Warriors starters is a thing of beauty. There ball movement and unselfishness is second to none. They always seem to find the open man. I still hate them though and will be rooting against them come finals times.

*I just don't think Nick Young is a good fit for the Warriors. He's a glorified chucker on a team where he probably shouldn't be taking those shots. He went 0 - 5 from the free throw line and most of them were 'way off'.

Good observations and "game reports" by all. Just remember, we were 5-2 in the pre-season before our wonderful 16-win regular season a couple years ago. Obviously we are a much better team on paper than that one, but nothing anyone sees in pre-season should change whatever prediction they made for wins and losses prior to these games.

Q12543 wrote:Good observations and "game reports" by all. Just remember, we were 5-2 in the pre-season before our wonderful 16-win regular season a couple years ago. Obviously we are a much better team on paper than that one, but nothing anyone sees in pre-season should change whatever prediction they made for wins and losses prior to these games.

This preseason game was played like a regular season game for the most part, probably to put on a show for the Chinese. But I understand where you are coming from Q. As Thibs said it was a good game to gauge our progress.

KiwiMatt wrote:Real lack of ball movement on offense.

They didn't look like they were comfortable running their offense did they? That shouldn't be too shocking and the Warriors probably had something to do with that as well.

I watched the game this afternoon.

Imo dieng was showing this same toughness last year. Bazz has never backed down from guys.

Drew's summery was really good.

I'm not worried about Teague. He got a lot of the shots he wanted and one of them was a crazy block by MCGee that VERY few players could have gotten to. He also hit some 3's.

Overall the Wolves stayed in this game even in preseason at times it seemed like that game was gonna get out of hand. They kept it from happening.

It will be interesting to see if Brooks gets a shot at playing time the next game. Tyus did well.

Belly looks like he is back to himself which is a big boost for this team.

Also Tim sorry about the dog barf but at least you ended up with a fun game to watch. Wednesday morning we had to put down one of our cats due to cancer which is the 2nd one this year (cancer sucks). She is my new profile pic. The good news is since I changed to that pic the Lynx won a championship and the Wolves beat GS in a preseason game. Only good things from here on out folks. :)

Thanks to Drew and Matt for the great game summaries and insights. I recorded the game but haven't watched it yet. I'm not surprised by Gorgui's or Bazz's toughness. As Monster mentioned, they showed that attribute last season. That's a big reason I wanted to re-sign Bazz. It will be interesting to see how this teams comes together. No doubt our bench has improved tremendously on paper and that improvement seems to be apparent on the floor so far this preseason.

One thing I noticed is that Thibs had Crawford out there for a short stretch as the point guard along with all the other starters. Tyus may have to worry about Crawford more than Brooks in terms of backup PG minutes!

Seriously, it's hard for me to see Thibs using 10 guys on a regular basis because you know that KAT, Butler, and Wiggins are all going to be playing 36 or 37 MPG or more. Jones, Crawford, and/or Bazzy may have some DNP-CDs this year.

Speaking of Bazz, based on the snippets of game action I've seen from the pre-season, that guy hasn't changed a bit. The effort and hustle are there, which is good, but so are the blinders. He'll never pass up a somewhat open shot for a team mate's wide open shot.