Minnesota Sports Forum

Q12543 wrote:

thedoper wrote:I interpreted that last stat wrong Q, my apologies. You may be right. Wiggins might be our 4th best player.

Whoa! From 1st to 4th! That was a quick retreat :)

I agree with Monster that identifying the best player on the Wolves (or the 2nd best, or 3rd best, etc., etc.) is a little muddy. I think I can lay out a pretty darn good case that it's Rubio and/or KAT, but it's not by a country mile.

We all want Wiggins to be great. He's not there yet.

You are right that Wiggins is not great yet. No one on this team is great. I think that is the point. Lots of potential.

KAT has been an amazing rookie, but a number of mediocre bigs have gone off against him. Ricky still can't shoot and we need him to hit shots when it matters, because team defense changes in the 4th to play the numbers.

Wiggins is taking the alpha dog role in the 4th with mixed results. I think the reason he is getting the opportunity is because it is fairly obvious that he is our best player to the coaching staff and the rest of the team. Of course there will be mixed results because our team is not that great.

If I had to choose one guy, and thank God I don't, I'd say Wig is our best player right now. If Ricky was more consistent it would be him. But as much as I'm about defense and ball movement, you have to be able to score in the NBA. And no one on our team is as good of a scorer as Andrew. He consistently gives us 20 points a night, and is our best man defender and 2nd best at getting around screens. We have other players who can score 25 points on a given night, but no one could be as consistent as Andrew is with the defensive focus he gets.

KAT will supplant Andrew before too long, maybe even this year. But today our best player is Andrew Wiggins, and his absence would be missed more than anyone's.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:If I had to choose one guy, and thank God I don't, I'd say Wig is our best player right now. If Ricky was more consistent it would be him. But as much as I'm about defense and ball movement, you have to be able to score in the NBA. And no one on our team is as good of a scorer as Andrew. He consistently gives us 20 points a night, and is our best man defender and 2nd best at getting around screens. We have other players who can score 25 points on a given night, but no one could be as consistent as Andrew is with the defensive focus he gets.

KAT will supplant Andrew before too long, maybe even this year. But today our best player is Andrew Wiggins, and his absence would be missed more than anyone's.

I agree with your last 2 sentences more than anything I've seen on here.

So, according to RPM, there are 81 SGs better than Wiggins. This stat makes no sense...Randy Foye and Jamal Crawford are better defenders than Wiggins? please.

RNK NAME TEAM GP MPG ORPM DRPM RPM RPM WINS
81 Randy Foye DEN 28 20.0 -2.26 -1.72 -3.98 -0.29
82 Andrew Wiggins MIN 27 34.9 -0.01 -4.05 -4.06 -0.54
83 Jamal Crawford LAC 29 25.5 -1.12 -3.19 -4.31 -0.55
84 Rashad Vaughn MIL 21 9.0 -2.74 -1.79 -4.53 -0.16
85 Bojan Bogdanovic BKN 28 26.7 -2.32 -2.62 -4.94 -0.83
86 Tony Wroten PHI 8 18.0 -2.72 -2.25 -4.97 -0.15
87 Marco Belinelli SAC 28 25.8 -1.65 -4.09 -5.74 -1.19
88 Nik Stauskas PHI 28 22.6 -2.95 -2.82 -5.77 -1.06

KAT has been an amazing rookie, but a number of mediocre bigs have gone off against him.

This isn't really accurate. The only games he lost his position match-up were against Vucevic, Whiteside, Okafor and Koufos. Koufos is the only mediocre big on that list. You're extra high on Wiggins, which is good, but let's not downplay how terrific Towns has been by saying something false.

Also, Towns has been our best player so far. Not a shot taken at Wiggins, he's been super, but Towns is impacting everything.

Camden0916 wrote:KAT has been an amazing rookie, but a number of mediocre bigs have gone off against him.

This isn't really accurate. The only games he lost his position match-up were against Vucevic, Whiteside, Okafor and Koufos. Koufos is the only mediocre big on that list. You're extra high on Wiggins, which is good, but let's not downplay how terrific Towns has been by saying something false.

Also, Towns has been our best player so far. Not a shot taken at Wiggins, he's been super, but Towns is impacting everything.

The 2 Denver centers (3 times), Olynyk, Zeller, the list goes on of bigs that have shot 70-80% on Towns. This also doesnt include Jordan completing punking him that Clippers game. There is nothing false about what I am saying, look at the box scores they don't lie. As I said, Towns has been great and but many mediocre Centers have done great against him.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:Okay Lip, for sake of argument I'll list things that Andrew has over Zach. I'm a big Zach fan too, but for the sake of balance:

1) Better body control
2) Better length
3) Better defender
4) Better post game
5) Gets to the line much easier

Cool - I agree with you on all 5 points. So no doubt Wiggins might end up the better overall player compared to LaVine. And he could still end up better than Towns. The beauty is that we have the makings of a great core in those three. All three have a lot of work to do improving their games, but all three are only 20 years old. The only thing that could screw this up would be poor management and coaching. Oh crap!

lipoli390 wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:Okay Lip, for sake of argument I'll list things that Andrew has over Zach. I'm a big Zach fan too, but for the sake of balance:

1) Better body control
2) Better length
3) Better defender
4) Better post game
5) Gets to the line much easier

Cool - I agree with you on all 5 points. So no doubt Wiggins might end up the better overall player compared to LaVine. And he could still end up better than Towns. The beauty is that we have the makings of a great core in those three. All three have a lot of work to do improving their games, but all three are only 20 years old. The only thing that could screw this up would be poor management and coaching. Oh crap!

Well said my friend. One thing for sure, the ride is going to be fun.

KAT now ranks sixth in PER among all centers...as a rookie. Here are some of the guys behind him:

Monroe
Lopez (both)
Horford
Vslenciunas
Jordan
Howard
M Gasol
Bogut
Jefferson
Duncan
Gobert
Okafor
Hibbert
Mozgov

How high is this guy's ceiling?

longstrangetrip wrote:KAT now ranks sixth in PER among all centers...as a rookie. Here are some of the guys behind him:

Monroe
Lopez (both)
Horford
Vslenciunas
Jordan
Howard
M Gasol
Bogut
Jefferson
Duncan
Gobert
Okafor
Hibbert
Mozgov

How high is this guy's ceiling?

You know his house had at least 10' ceilings. Could you imagine him living in your typical 8' ceiling home?

longstrangetrip wrote:KAT now ranks sixth in PER among all centers...as a rookie. Here are some of the guys behind him:

Monroe
Lopez (both)
Horford
Vslenciunas
Jordan
Howard
M Gasol
Bogut
Jefferson
Duncan
Gobert
Okafor
Hibbert
Mozgov

How high is this guy's ceiling?

Olajuwon