Minnesota Sports Forum

At least it was primarily the young guys - LaVine, Wiggins and Gorgui -- who carried the team to victory tonight. So while I wanted a loss, I'm ok with the win given how it happened. However, I'd be really down if we had won the game in regulation on Martin's final shot in the 4th.

I just don't understand Flip. Why on earth did he have Martin and not LaVine on the floor at the end of the 4th??!! If Flip is truly focused on the future as he says he is, then having Martin on the floor as our primary ball handler taking the last shot for the win with Wiggins stationed in the corner and LaVine on the bench made no sense. Flip must have wanted to win and thought that turning the ball over to Martin gave the Wolves the best chance to win. I'm not sure what's more absurd: (1) Flip wanting to win a meaningless game against the hapless Knicks at the expense of lottery balls and player development for this rebuilding team, or (2) Flip thinking that featuring our notorious choker, Kevin Martin, over Wiggins or LaVine for that last shot gave us the best chance of winning.

But maybe I'm missing Flip's genius. Perhaps he knew that Martin's propensity to choke in crunch time would ensure a loss and help us in the lottery battle. Or maybe he thought it would ensure overtime and give Zach and Wiggins the opportunity to get more game experience. Yeah, that must be it.

Yeah, I would have liked to see them go to Wiggins at the elbow. While he wasn't getting his shots to fall (neither was Martin by the way), he at least was drawing fouls.

By the way, one thing you will notice is that guys defending Wiggins are increasingly forcing him to go left, which is definitely not his comfort zone. He ends up having to put up a lot of difficult floaters instead of getting all the way to the rack.

lipoli390 wrote:At least it was primarily the young guys - LaVine, Wiggins and Gorgui -- who carried the team to victory tonight. So while I wanted a loss, I'm ok with the win given how it happened. However, I'd be really down if we had won the game in regulation on Martin's final shot in the 4th.

I just don't understand Flip. Why on earth did he have Martin and not LaVine on the floor at the end of the 4th??!! If Flip is truly focused on the future as he says he is, then having Martin on the floor as our primary ball handler taking the last shot for the win with Wiggins stationed in the corner and LaVine on the bench made no sense. Flip must have wanted to win and thought that turning the ball over to Martin gave the Wolves the best chance to win. I'm not sure what's more absurd: (1) Flip wanting to win a meaningless game against the hapless Knicks at the expense of lottery balls and player development for this rebuilding team, or (2) Flip thinking that featuring our notorious choker, Kevin Martin, over Wiggins or LaVine for that last shot gave us the best chance of winning.

But maybe I'm missing Flip's genius. Perhaps he knew that Martin's propensity to choke in crunch time would ensure a loss and help us in the lottery battle. Or maybe he thought it would ensure overtime and give Zach and Wiggins the opportunity to get more game experience. Yeah, that must be it.

Bingo Lip. You are spot on here. Would have been a great opportunity to build up somebody that actually has a chance to be a closer in this league. Opportunity missed.

Bah. The whole art of tanking is doing so without being totally obvious about it. We had to play that game tough or it would have raised too many eyebrows. Now they got their token win for the week and they can get back to another losing streak. 14 games left. I'll guess four more wins. They have two games coming up against the Lakers. Those are "must lose" games and I'm counting on Flip to put his worst team forward to ensure the Lakers don't tank past us. Those are big games for us ping pong ball watchers. Who says it's not exciting this time of year! :-)