Minnesota Sports Forum

I think a realistic trade that can improve our bench is Shved and a 2nd round pick to the Bucks for Gary Neal.

The Bucks are trying to move Neal and I think they will finally embrace the tank. With that in mind I think they would welcome Shved in as a project for the rest of this year and next; plus they would welcome any draft asset they can acquire. Shved makes just a little bit less than Neal next year so it also saves the Bucks a little cap room.

Neal isn't a great player but he has one above average skill and that is 3pt shooting. He's been hurt a lot of this year and his statistics have suffered because of it but I think most people here would just be happy with having Shved off the team.

Given the option of having Neal or Shved on this team next year I'll take Neal every time.

sjm34 wrote:

JasonIsDaMan wrote:

sjm34 wrote:Yes Bud sucks right now, and I don't expect that to get much better this season. Who cares what Hummel makes? He doesn't have the talent or athletic ability to be a solid player in the NBA. I have never said Pek can't play defense. I said he can't play PnR defense, and that he wasn't good on help defense. Am I wrong?

Right now?!?!?! He's INJURED right now! Great job taking a shot at an injured guy, but that seems to be going around the board lately.

Hummel is doing fine, and if LRMaM, Shved or Shabazz ever put on their big boy pants and outplay him, so what? HE MAKES FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND!

As I said on the thread you started about this (and again, really?): IF PEK DID EVERY SINGLE THING ABSOLUTELY FUCKING PERFECT, HE WOULD NOT HAVE LASTED UNTIL THE SECOND ROUND!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Some team would have drafted him and waited the four years needed for the rookie salary structure to expire. Sounds like a lot, but that what you do for absolutely fucking perfect players.

Bud isn't injured. He is practicing with no restrictions. He may even play tonight. He just isn't back into game shape.

How is Hummel doing fine. He is a horrible defender, who may know where he is supposed to be, but can't guard anyone when he gets there. His offense has been atrocious to this point. Way to take a shot at an injured player in LRMAM. I guess it is going around the board lately.

Is this Pek rant your way of saying you were wrong. Apology accepted.

So is acknowledging that Bud hasn't played in a game yet your way of saying you were wrong(?) Apology accepted.

It's about expectations. Hummel was a #58 pick making $500K, perfect for a sixth wing. NOT HIS FAULT THAT LRMAM AND SHVED TURNED HIM INTO A THIRD WING. And LRMaM wasn't setting the world on fire when healthy.

And about Pek: Your constant badmouthing him reminds me of a time when you could sign on to the BSPN board and see "fans" extolling the virtues of guys like Telfair, Cardinal and Pavlovic. Pek is part of the SOLUTION, no matter what metric you use, and your complaints sound like bored whining, like you want the Wolves to trade for 15 brand new players because YOU are bored. If you are bored, go elsewhere.

slimcalhoun27 wrote:Mark..the 76ers is a golden showcase of the Bench and its solid performance. But VS. to many teams its a nasty nasty Negative. OKC...down 51 and lost by a bucket. That in itself is the issue, its a roller coaster...

Slim, I agree with all of the above......I hope the bench continues to improve......and starts to hae good nights against good teams.....and some positive consistency would be wonderful.

It looks like people are still complaining about our bench (in spite of the well documented improvements). But, since there is still question about the value of our bench as a whole, here is another update on how our bench is playing.

All these are on a per minute basis.

.............past 5 games .............past 3 game (past 3 with Turiaf and 2 with Bud)
pts.......................4th........................................3rd
Fg%....................3rd.........................................9th
3PT%..................4th.........................................7th
assists................6th.........................................5th
Reb....................13th........................................3rd

The punch line of all of this, is that we can't keep blaming our bench for much. Our bench has been getting better for a while now. The improvement started well before Turiaf returned (we were the absolute worst bench in the league until around the D-Will trade with a pretty gradual improvement from there).

And....Turiaf and Bud have been playing well. Turiaf #s have been 17.3 min, 6.7 boards, and 1.3 blocks. That is pretty good, and it looks like he is giving us a bit of inside toughness.

Bud's #s have been pretty decent at 13.5 min, Fg% .500, .200% from 3, and 7 pts.

I think that hoping that our bench stays at the top of the league might be a bit unrealistic. But, it also looks like Flip might have done a pretty good job putting together an effective second team.

Now, it looks like our most challenging issue is finding the leadership to win close games. Unfortunately, finding that leadership i think will prove more challenging than putting together a functioning bench.

I agree our bench has improved, and certainly the arrival of Turiaf and Budinger has helped. But that doesn't erase the damage their impotence caused in earlier losses. In fact, I don't think the recent Dallas or OKC losses would have been close games to begin with if our bench had just been average. Instead, they put up a total of 10 points in the two games combined. And that's fairly recent!

Our starters deserve a fair share of the blame for all of these close losses (Phoenix most recently), but if our bench had performed better, we would be in less close games to begin with and probably be seeded 7th or 8th right now in the West.

Going forward, I hope we're in less close games due to a stronger bench, and that the ones that do end up being close, something has to give! Someone's bound to make a shot at some point or someone on the other team is bound to choke. The odds are with us....

The bench is still the worst in the league on many levels. There is no legitimate statistical argument to say that Derrick Williams or the trade has any impact on improving our bench stats since our overall stats. Our bench sucked with him and without him. I am hopeful that some of your matrices show a trend of improvement but there is no impact that you can assert improvement since our overall stats for our bench places us at the bottom of the league. If our bench had significantly improved we should have had a larger impact on many of our overall stats by now since Williams only played in less than a third of our total games. Your stats for our current performance may give you confidence in their ability but your point about improvement since the Dwill trade has nothing to do with stats.

Simple example:
Our bench has taken 901 FGA. 54 of them can be credited to Dwill. THat is 6% of our bench's FG. So the impact on our overall ranking is negligible to any offensive matrix. Yet we are still dead last in FG% and 4th last in 3pt%. There is no DWill impact on where we stand now.

Simply from the stats Hummel and Shved have had more of a negative impact on are ranking than DWill. You have a hard on to explain that the Dwill trade has improved our bench but the stats don't support that at all. As you point out, they are starting to show improvement in 10, 3 or 5 game splits which is great. But your leap to make the explanation or the point of improvement getting Dwill off the floor is not fair to how bad the rest of the bench has been. They should have had sustained improvement on their overall stats by now since over 2/3rd of their games have been played without him. Plain and simple. To use your logic, clearly the vast bench improvement of the 5 game splits or most recent 10 game split has been because MBAM has been injured? Stats are great to show trends but I think you are going too far on your interpretation which I have cited multiple times.

...hummm.....I obviously can't convince Doper with facts..........I might need to try something more tricky to convince him...........

markkbu wrote:...hummm.....I obviously can't convince Doper with facts..........I might need to try something more tricky to convince him...........

You seem like a smart, articulate guy, but you are clearly not a statistician. You are reaching not on the stats you are providing but on the conclusions you draw from them. You are presenting facts, you are just misinterpreting the facts you are presenting. Symptomatic problem of the internet and the access to data. I don't blame you, it is a common issue.

thedoper wrote:

markkbu wrote:...hummm.....I obviously can't convince Doper with facts..........I might need to try something more tricky to convince him...........

You seem like a smart, articulate guy, but you are clearly not a statistician. You are reaching not on the stats you are providing but on the conclusions you draw from them. You are presenting facts, you are just misinterpreting the facts you are presenting. Symptomatic problem of the internet and the access to data. I don't blame you, it is a common issue.

Doper, thank you for the compliment and you are correct, I am not a statistician by profession. I could be, due to the multiple quantitative analysis courses that I have taken at the masters level though. You know, stuff like stats, decision modeling, regression analysis and the like. But, starting businesses is much more fun for me than limiting myself to quantitative analysis so I chose not to pursue the profession of statistician.

If you will look at the conclusions that I draw, it is merely looking at, and acknowledging, trends as they occur, which takes no statistical training given the tools that stats oriented websites (like hoopsstats) provide.

For example, by looking at the website that you have referenced numerous time, it is easy to tell that the Wolves are 27th in scoring per minute over the entire season. By altering 1 dropdown box, I can tell that over the past 10 games the Wolves are 18th in the NBA per minute. By altering the same dropdown box I can see that the Wolves are 4th in scoring per minute over the last 5 games. Again, same dropdown box shows me that over the past 3 games, the Wolves are 4th in scoring per minute.

Also, saying that the Wolves are 4th in the league in scoring per minute over the past 5 games is not interpretation. It is a fact. Pointing out the relative improvement (to other teams) is not interpretation, it too is fact.

One can do the exact thing with Rebounds, assists, FG%, 3pt%, steals and the like.

All one has to do is to be able to note that being 4th in scoring per minute is better than being 18th in scoring per minute , which is better than being 27th in scoring per minute. The consistency of the trends assist in determining their validity and allows logical conclusions to be drawn.

None of this is high level analysis.

Lol well-done markkbu.