Minnesota Sports Forum

I would also say the wolves are not an aesthetically pleasing team to watch so when they lose it is more frustrating to watch

kekgeek1 wrote:

lipoli390 wrote:I was out tonight and missed the game. I recorded it, but I'm don't think I can stomach watching it. So I'm hoping one of you guys can provide a description and some analysis of tonight's game. That way I won't have to watch it. Thanks.

Give a quick breakdown from my perspective.

Teague, played decent, a lot of dribbling but was aggressive, and played decent D on walker.

Butler, was rough, to many long 2s and was not a distributor tonight. Good defense.

Wiggins, old lazy Wig. Did nothing but score. Spacing didn't allow him to get to the hoop.

Taj, one of his worst games, didn't play bad but didn't put his stamp on it.

Towns got punked by Howard. Got owned. Enough said.

Tyus, was decent but can he please hit a open 3. Would be nice.

Crawford, team worse in +/-, carried the second unit offensively and I thought he was doing real good, until he had 4 straight contested bad shots, 3 being long 2s that allowed the Hornets to pull away in the 4th.

shabazz, none factor again, hit a 3.

Belly, once again amazing on offense, Kaminsky worked him and made tough shots but he was visually frustrated he could stop frank.

Gorgui, same old gorgui, solid nothing special.

Thibs, games like these annoy me with him, starters played 40+ minutes last night and no bench guy got more than 17 minutes tonight. Same old rotation and no feel of how the game was going. Why can't we play a towns/dieng/belly lineup. Nobody can kill belly of the Hornets at SF.

bench defense bad. Nothing good to take away in my opinion

Thanks, Geek! Just as I suspected from my perusal of the box score. I recorded the Sixers game tonight, so I'm about to watch that instead. I've been watching the Sixers and Lakers a to lately. It's fun to see two young talented teams play with energy, movement and pace. Fun to see players really enjoy playing the game and playing together. Great to see head coaches who don't constantly bark at their players on every single possession and then look like they've been constipated for weeks as their players come off the court during a timeout.

If I could make only one change, I'd fire Thibs. But knowing that won't happen, I'm totally with you in wanting to see a Towns/Dieng/Belly lineup.

I didn't realize how plotting and deliberate with everything Jimmy Buckets is. Not particularly fun to watch. It's funny to watch Kat get his lunch money stolen.

Seriously though, the way we shoot 3's, we can lose any night I think.

lipoli390 wrote:I was out tonight and missed the game. I recorded it, but I'm don't think I can stomach watching it. So I'm hoping one of you guys can provide a description and some analysis of tonight's game. That way I won't have to watch it. Thanks.

Lip, a few observations....

- Howard killed us inside for a good chunk of the game. He's just one of these overpowering players that we don't have the interior strength to stop. He had numerous deep seals against KAT for easy drop step moves and got a few easy put backs on the glass after KAT chased a block on someone else. He also had his fair share of miscues and fumbles, as has been his tendency, but he did a lot more good than bad for Charlotte.

- The Charlotte defense is back at full strength. Besides Howard in the middle, they now have Batum and MKG back along with Marvin Williams. I mean, those three guys can basically switch anything and all of them are pretty long and mobile. They played really good defense.

- We missed our 3's, they made their's. We had some good looks, but just couldn't make them.

- Frank Kaminsky freakin' destroyed us. I actually thought the defense on him was not bad. He made some tough-ass shots from awkward distances with nice contests, but it is what it is. He just went off on us.

- I thought Teague along with our bigs (no PG can stop another PG alone) actually did a really good job bottling up Walker. He did not beat us tonight. It was the other guys.

- I thought Batum made some tough shots as well. I don't know what it is, but it feels like we don't get our fair share of missed shots on nice contests. Teams just have confidence shooting the ball against the Timberwolves.

- They finally found KAT for a couple of possessions in the low post in the 4th quarter, but it was too late. He had Marvin Williams guarding him a good chunk of the game, yet he was parked out on the perimeter setting his usual half-hearted ball screens with the defender easily getting over them.

- No need to say much more about Wiggins. It was a classic Wiggins game of inefficient scoring and otherwise doing nothing notable. I get why we paid him a max contract, but damn, he has done nothing to shut up the skeptics like myself this year.

- Bjelly has a nice stroke, but can't shoot in volume because he is either unwilling or unable to pull the trigger when well guarded. We just don't have a guy, other than Crawford when he's really on, that can rise up in someone's face and stick a 3 down their throat.

Save yourself some time and skip this one.

Edit: Shit, just saw Kekgeek did a nice breakdown! Oh well, I think our notes line up pretty closely. Only on a Wolves board do you get multiple detailed perspectives on a crappy loss!

lipoli390 wrote:

kekgeek1 wrote:

lipoli390 wrote:I was out tonight and missed the game. I recorded it, but I'm don't think I can stomach watching it. So I'm hoping one of you guys can provide a description and some analysis of tonight's game. That way I won't have to watch it. Thanks.

Give a quick breakdown from my perspective.

Teague, played decent, a lot of dribbling but was aggressive, and played decent D on walker.

Butler, was rough, to many long 2s and was not a distributor tonight. Good defense.

Wiggins, old lazy Wig. Did nothing but score. Spacing didn't allow him to get to the hoop.

Taj, one of his worst games, didn't play bad but didn't put his stamp on it.

Towns got punked by Howard. Got owned. Enough said.

Tyus, was decent but can he please hit a open 3. Would be nice.

Crawford, team worse in +/-, carried the second unit offensively and I thought he was doing real good, until he had 4 straight contested bad shots, 3 being long 2s that allowed the Hornets to pull away in the 4th.

shabazz, none factor again, hit a 3.

Belly, once again amazing on offense, Kaminsky worked him and made tough shots but he was visually frustrated he could stop frank.

Gorgui, same old gorgui, solid nothing special.

Thibs, games like these annoy me with him, starters played 40+ minutes last night and no bench guy got more than 17 minutes tonight. Same old rotation and no feel of how the game was going. Why can't we play a towns/dieng/belly lineup. Nobody can kill belly of the Hornets at SF.

bench defense bad. Nothing good to take away in my opinion

Thanks, Geek! Just as I suspected from my perusal of the box score. I recorded the Sixers game tonight, so I'm about to watch that instead. I've been watching the Sixers and Lakers a to lately. It's fun to see two young talented teams play with energy, movement and pace. Fun to see players really enjoy playing the game and playing together. Great to see head coaches who don't constantly bark at their players on every single possession and then look like they've been constipated for weeks as their players come off the court during a timeout.

If I could make only one change, I'd fire Thibs. But knowing that won't happen, I'm totally with you in wanting to see a Towns/Dieng/Belly lineup.

I am one of the few who don't kill thibs because I think it is a players league. But the lack of playing time for belly is just annoying. Ya, Belly might be exposed with more minutes but let's see if he is. He is playing the best ball of his NBA life let's see it.


Also we are paying 15 mil a year to a guy sees 15 minutes a night on gorgui, now gorgui is very solid but bad use of resources in my opinion. If you are going to play guys this little should of used that taj/gorgui money on Milsap.

One more thing that annoyed me was we went to hack a Howard down 12 what is fine with me but why is belly not in the game. We don't need taj rebounding and defense if we are not running set defense we need offense

Also what happened to that wiggins and towns double elbow action we had so much success last year. I haven't seen that run once this year. In theory if you run butler in the ricky spot from last year. We are theoretically putting our best 3 vs other teams 3. And with the individual offensive talent we have I like our chances in that matchup

kekgeek1 wrote:I would also say the wolves are not an aesthetically pleasing team to watch so when they lose it is more frustrating to watch

Great point, geek! We're not even fun to watch when we win, but I'll never complain about a victory. :). Ultimately, I don't see our style of play enabling us to become one of the elite teams in the NBA.

Duke13 wrote:I didn't realize how plotting and deliberate with everything Jimmy Buckets is. Not particularly fun to watch. It's funny to watch Kat get his lunch money stolen.

Lol. Sure looks like he got bullied tonight.

I love KAT, he's a fellow countryman, but I am sick of watching him play. He's Rasheed Wallace on good behavior.

The entire team has played worse than the record indicates, which for now isn't the worst thing, but the record will reflect how we really are at some point.

Teague and Towns just aren't meshing.