Minnesota Sports Forum

58 3's and 42 FT's is the dumbest stat line I've ever seen for a team with no Hack a Shaq. That style of play definitely isn't good for basketball and frankly if it ever did take over they'd just move the 3pt line back another couple of feet and make it even harder to be a worthwhile strategy. Or just bring back the defensive tool to stop it in hand checking so they can't ever get free around the 3pt line.

The guys played hard tonight on a back to back. Could have caved many times but never gave in.

Belly sucks.

Stupid turnover after stupid turnover.

You have to make Ryan Anderson pay on the other end, and we did somewhat. But you have to make him a complete liability on defense. Same with Harden - he doesn't want to work on D.

If this is what basketball is going to turn into, move the 3 point line back.

Chances of the Rockets getting by the Warriors or Spurs in a 7 game series = ZERO

I guess I don't get the angst from many of you regarding style of play being poor. This Rockets team has taken on an identity that matches the strength of its players....and it is working. Isn't that exactly what teams should do? Are you more comfortable having mediocre players, running a benign offense with middling results? If so, you are in the right place. Look, most teams couldn't run this type of offense because personel wouldn't allow it. Certainly, this won't grab hold for this reason alone.

A couple people mentioned, you need to adapt your style to defend this team. I can't imagine this is easy to do as this Rockets team is fairly unique. And that Lou Williams signing was big for them.

A few thoughts i just finished watching the game.

The first quarter so was forced to listen to the Houston broadcast crew. Drexler was terrible. Didn't know how to pronounce Shabazz claimed twice the wolves were talking to Chicago about getting Rose for Rubio thought that foul Tyus drew was a bail out despite it being pretty obviously a foul I could go on. The Play by play guy and Matt Bullard sounded like Geniuses and I liked Drexler as a player but yikes I was going crazy. It was great to get back to Dave and Jim for the rest of the game.

The Wolves lost this game because they turned the ball over. Let's say the wolves have 7 less turnover and score 2 points on 3 of those possessions and prevent the Rockets from scoring just one 3 pointer on one of those turnovers. That's a 9 point swing and I am pretty fairly conservative. Did the Wolves defense well? Not exactly but those turnovers killed them.

Tyus had a nice game.

The biggest silver lining was Dunn did some pretty nice things offensively. If he had put down that one pass from Tyus it would have been easily his biggest highlight game of the season.

Rubio struggled but I liked he stood up to Beverly and ended up coming out of that drawing a T on him.

Towns needs to do something quicker on those double teams but I feel like guys are also not helping him out. Dude put in a hell of an effort tonight though.

Wiggins had another pretty good game and was pretty active all over the floor.

I'm gonna keep sticking up for Belly. He does good and bad things but he finished with 10 efficient points in 13 minutes.

Rush offensively is basically only good from behind the arc. He is so limited once he takes a dribble and has to do anything else. His defense is solid so I think he has plenty of value but he has to hit those long range shots and move the ball. He can spot start I think but after a few games his limitations become more pronounced as a starter.

Bazz should go back to no head band. Lol he is another guy that probably wishes the AS break didn't happen he was rolling. I think he will find his groove especially from 3 again but guys are also guarding him from his spots out there more. That's going to help the team as it will open things up more.

Good fight from this team oddly it felt like they had some sort of chance in the 4th quarter and that's without their best 3 point shooter.

The Rockets D played well the deserve credit for when the Wolves struggled.

This isn't the best matchup for a Dieng/Towns frontcpurt but Dieng put up a pretty healthy stat line.

Overall it was a game that despite everything the Wolves were competitive against a top level team and it keeps the generally positive momentum rolling for this squad.

Actually... it was 62 three point attempts. Didn't the Wolves foul the Rockets 4 times on three pointers?

By the way, I "love" how the NBA waffles on points of emphasis each year. Wasn't the swim move to get fouled on a shot taken away? It seems to be right back in play for Houston.

The Timberwolves had 27 more rebounds...
Nobody on Houston went apeshit on offense with a great game...
Wiggins and Towns combined to shoot 27 - 48 fg for 67 points...
And G. Dieng shot 7 - 10 fg...
The team shot 52%...

... and they still lost by 12 in a game that wasn't really close.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:Actually... it was 62 three point attempts. Didn't the Wolves foul the Rockets 4 times on three pointers?

By the way, I "love" how the NBA waffles on points of emphasis each year. Wasn't the swim move to get fouled on a shot taken away? It seems to be right back in play for Houston.

The Timberwolves had 27 more rebounds...
Nobody on Houston went apeshit on offense with a great game...
Wiggins and Towns combined to shoot 27 - 48 fg for 67 points...
And G. Dieng shot 7 - 10 fg...
The team shot 52%...

... and they still lost by 12 in a game that wasn't really close.

Good point on the fouled 3 point attempts.

Abe the fouls that players get now are when they get a guy sort of following them on D and they just sort of stop and fling up the shot. I've seen less of the sweep through stuff this year but something else has come around. It's such a difficult game to officiate and players come up with new ways to get an advantage. It gets kinda old but I've tried to draw plenty of fouls making guys pay for playing me aggressive.

You laid out the game pretty well but again those TOs were big. It's hard to win any game having 23 turnovers much less against a good team and one that is HIGHLY likely to turn that turnover into 3 points. 38 points off turnovers is what the Rockets had.

monsterpile wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:Actually... it was 62 three point attempts. Didn't the Wolves foul the Rockets 4 times on three pointers?

By the way, I "love" how the NBA waffles on points of emphasis each year. Wasn't the swim move to get fouled on a shot taken away? It seems to be right back in play for Houston.

The Timberwolves had 27 more rebounds...
Nobody on Houston went apeshit on offense with a great game...
Wiggins and Towns combined to shoot 27 - 48 fg for 67 points...
And G. Dieng shot 7 - 10 fg...
The team shot 52%...

... and they still lost by 12 in a game that wasn't really close.

Good point on the fouled 3 point attempts.

Abe the fouls that players get now are when they get a guy sort of following them on D and they just sort of stop and fling up the shot. I've seen less of the sweep through stuff this year but something else has come around. It's such a difficult game to officiate and players come up with new ways to get an advantage. It gets kinda old but I've tried to draw plenty of fouls making guys pay for playing me aggressive.

You laid out the game pretty well but again those TOs were big. It's hard to win any game having 23 turnovers much less against a good team and one that is HIGHLY likely to turn that turnover into 3 points. 38 points off turnovers is what the Rockets had.

But the ridiculous amount of TOs didn't fit my narrative, dammit!

Yeah, incredibly, if we had won the turnover battle, we might have pulled out a win despite the massive disparity in 3's. Also, some of those turnovers is what led to 3's. Remember, open 3's are mostly easily found in transition.

kekgeek1 wrote:

TeamRicky wrote:

kekgeek1 wrote:

TeamRicky wrote:

kekgeek1 wrote:Can wiggins beat them by himself. Towns might be the worst defender in the nba

He wasn't the worst ranked center in Defensive RPM until Thibs got a hold of him.

Yep thibs fault. TROLL!!!!!!

If questioning Thib's having any postive impact on our defense makes me a troll, then I'm happy to be a TROLL and that's MR TROLL to you Geeky Boy.

I get that you don't like thibs but to say it is thibs fault that towns does not rotate at all is thibs fault in my opinion is idioic

Geeky Boy. Now you are calling me "Idioic" whatever that means! I assume you meant to say I am "Yodaistic" as my insight was 100% factual. Read and Learn.