Minnesota Sports Forum

longstrangetrip wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:You can't put LaVine out there for significant minutes at PG right now.

It's an insult to every other professional on the team. It's the Wolves saying "Ok, we're punting on the season." Whether they are or not... it's irrelevant. That's making it obvious with 77 games to go.

He's not ready. He's not close to ready. He should be in the D League.

You're probably right with respect to running the point, Abe, although he was adequate (and unspectacular) last night. But let me ask you something...who did a better job defending Payton last night, Mo or Zach?

I don't know. I fast-forwarded most of the second half until the end after Rubio was injured. (The team is much less fun to watch without Rubio)

But I assume it was LaVine.

I don't' think anyone is suggesting that Zach is going to be better than Mo, or that he plays starter minutes. It just gives him less responsibility if he doesn't have to worry about scoring. He will have a more stable group to play with and help him adjust on the fly.

We are stuck if we can't get something out of Zach, and do we give up Mo's offensive advantage by moving him into the starting group?

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:You can't put LaVine out there for significant minutes at PG right now.

It's an insult to every other professional on the team. It's the Wolves saying "Ok, we're punting on the season." Whether they are or not... it's irrelevant. That's making it obvious with 77 games to go.

He's not ready. He's not close to ready. He should be in the D League.

You're probably right with respect to running the point, Abe, although he was adequate (and unspectacular) last night. But let me ask you something...who did a better job defending Payton last night, Mo or Zach?

I don't know. I fast-forwarded most of the second half until the end after Rubio was injured. (The team is much less fun to watch without Rubio)

But I assume it was LaVine.

I must have been leading the witness...

But yes, Ricky shut Payton down in the first half, and the rookie got really big eyes when he saw old Mo was on him to start the second half...beat him off the dribble every time down the court. Flip finally swapped in Zach, and he was able to shut him down.

I guess defense is the main reason I'm happy Flip is starting LaVine.

BizarroJerry wrote:I'm going to jump ahead 15 games, lavine plays really well at the point, and fans will be complaining about the Rubio signing!

Yea because we should only have 5 good players who are starters and a bench full of bums. It is easier to fit everyone into a neat box that way. Dieng is good so that is why Pek needs to be traded too.

longstrangetrip wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:You can't put LaVine out there for significant minutes at PG right now.

It's an insult to every other professional on the team. It's the Wolves saying "Ok, we're punting on the season." Whether they are or not... it's irrelevant. That's making it obvious with 77 games to go.

He's not ready. He's not close to ready. He should be in the D League.

You're probably right with respect to running the point, Abe, although he was adequate (and unspectacular) last night. But let me ask you something...who did a better job defending Payton last night, Mo or Zach?

I don't know. I fast-forwarded most of the second half until the end after Rubio was injured. (The team is much less fun to watch without Rubio)

But I assume it was LaVine.

I must have been leading the witness...

But yes, Ricky shut Payton down in the first half, and the rookie got really big eyes when he saw old Mo was on him to start the second half...beat him off the dribble every time down the court. Flip finally swapped in Zach, and he was able to shut him down.

I guess defense is the main reason I'm happy Flip is starting LaVine.

To be fair, I thought I saw Payton get to the rim the first two times he matched up with LaVine. A foul on one of them. The eyes were big.

Good for LaVine if he was able to slow him down. Then again, Payton was a 34% shooting rookie.

Well, we know Flip's answer!

Any thoughts on how LaVine looked last night at the point? I thought he made a couple nice passes, a couple errant ones, and mostly tried not to do too much, which was good. He seemed to focus on just bringing up the ball and giving it to Martin to initiate the offense or trying to feed Pek. That's probably the safest approach if he's getting the trial by fire.

The team overall needs to step up its passing with Rubio out and Flip needs to figure out different ways to initiate offense to get the ball moving. Pek can pass, and Dieng has made some good passes too. I'd like to see some more Dieng passes to backdoor cutters actually. We only had 13 assists last night and we're averaging 20.

http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/team/_/stat/miscellaneous-per-game/sort/avgAssists

I didn't see this thread till after I watched the last 2 games so I won't vote. I was a little surprised Flip started Lavine but really it makes a lot of sense. My vote would have been to just play Lavine minutes. While Rubio is out a backup PG isn't gonna save us so might as well let Lavine get minutes. Its pretty much a nobrainer. If we have another PG go down for an extended time maybe we could get an injury exception to sign a d-league PG for a few days or couple weeks or whatever. Hopefully that ankle heals up fast but also no reason to rush Rubio back too quickly either.