monsterpile wrote:FNG wrote:Kudos to you guys for hanging in there and watching this game. I bailed out when the two teams were a combined 5-30 on threes...unwatchable! It looked to me like neither team was interested in winning. Golden State especially looked like they just wanted to get on the plane and go home after a long road trip, and other than KAT and Jaden, I thought we looked uninspired in the first half. But I just finished a box score review and it looks like, uncharacteristically, the bench put the starters on their back and won this game...good to see! We need the bench to be better, and it looks like they were tonight.
Despite the terrible shooting while I was watching, there were a couple things that caught my eye. DLO's pocket passing keeps getting better...love how he finds Vando cutting to the basket! I thought Jaden's defense was elite tonight...not at all surprised he was a team-leading +27 in 21 minutes! KAT played hard, but his whining was another reason I left this game early.
I agree that any win is a good win when you're a fringe playoff team. But how long is our incredible injury luck going to last? We're 100% healthy (although Nowell says his ankle isn't fully healed), and tonight we faced a team missing 4 key players. Now we go to NY to face a team on the back end of a back to back that will be missing Rose, Walker, Noel and Reddish. Then on to Atlanta to face a team missing its 3rd and 5th leading scorers and its best rebounder. Finally we get the Nets without Durant. We can only hope that this luck continues, but it also would ne nice to see this team beat a healthy team!
I'll take wins if they are against a team made up of only replacement players. There will be time enough to find out how good this team is or isn't.
One of the questions that will be interesting to see if it can be answered is whether Nowell has been that other versatile right side of "combo guard" the Wolves have mostly been missing for like a decade. Some guys that have come through may have been ok/good in that role but some of them had to play something above what they had to. It sounds like Nowell is doing better at playing a PG role than expected. That's a big deal. I saw in the highlights he had a couple impactful defensive plays.
Monster, Nowell seems to be putting it all together. We saw his potential in the G-League back in the day, but he's had a tough time stringing together both consistent playing time and consistent performances at the NBA level. It's finally happening. He's been arguably our 4th or 5th best player over the past month or so. Huge development.
