Nice try guys. This is nothing like the Rubio debate, we are not working against the evidence so far here. These stats are on Lavine taking more shots than Wiggins too. Any notion that Zach gets his through the offense in clutch situations is crazy. If anything he becomes a chucker in these situations and for the most part makes god awful decisions.
People see what they want to see Doper. I don't know who is going to become the better player in the long run, nor do I care. But it's ridiculous to say Zach has had more clutch moments than Wig so far. And Wig has clearly been the better player so far in their careers. I don't see how that can be argued, but somehow it still is.
Nice try guys. This is nothing like the Rubio debate, we are not working against the evidence so far here. These stats are on Lavine taking more shots than Wiggins too. Any notion that Zach gets his through the offense in clutch situations is crazy. If anything he becomes a chucker in these situations and for the most part makes god awful decisions.
People see what they want to see Doper. I don't know who is going to become the better player in the long run, nor do I care. But it's ridiculous to say Zach has had more clutch moments than Wig so far. And Wig has clearly been the better player so far in their careers. I don't see how that can be argued, but somehow it still is.
I want Zach to be great too. I still question what's between his ears a lot of times. But I share the excitement for his talent and abilities. It's all there.
Dunn and Aldrich were impressive as hell defensively in my opinion. Tonight our bench scored too, but they haven't been half-bad defensively throughout the year. Dunn and Aldrich are two big reasons.
I actually think one thing that helped zach really improve his game was actually playing him at point guard. Was it a success? No. But i think it really helped him improve overall as a player. Call me crazy, but with how this season has started ibwouldnt mind seeing wiggins in that role to see if it would help improve wiggins game as well. Will kind if force him to better his handle and also force him a bit more to look to feed his teammates and not get the tunnel vision he tends to get.
CoolBreeze44 wrote:It wasn't too long ago I had to argue in here that Zach wasn't a bust. The board was very anti-Zach for a long time.
We're all prone to hot takes once and a while. I thought Williams really was a caged lion for a while.
Many of us argued that Zach was a bust as a PG - god awful in fact. I never once thought he should be dumped or traded. He still has a looooong ways to go even at his natural SG position, but no question he's worked hard on his game.
CoolBreeze44 wrote:What's that Lip? Wig isn't clutch?
I've said that a few times this season, but he was tonight!
I will maintain that since he arrived 3 years ago, he's been our best clutch performer.
LaVine's right there with him. Big shots from everybody tonight. Wig, LaVine, Rubio, Dieng, etc.
Meh. It's hard for me to call anyone consistently clutch on this team when we consistently lose and blow a lot of close games. Wiggins has certainly had more opportunities to be clutch since he's been a #1 type option from almost day one. Of course he's going to get some big shots to go down - he gets the most opportunities.
Tonight was awesome because we got big plays from multiple people and no one tried to play hero.
I was out and missed the game tonight. Before checking the score on ESPN, I checked in on this thread. I went right to the last page and all I saw was a debate about whether Zach or Andrew is the better player. I couldn't even tell who won tonight's game until I backed up two pages in the thread. I then looked at the box score on ESPN and noticed that Zach and Wiggins both appeared to have very good games scoring -- not so much in any other statistical category except that I liked seeing Wiggins' 4 assists, but wasn't happy to see is 4 turnovers. I was disappointed to see Zach's lack of production in categories other than scoring, but was pleased to see he had zero turnovers in 44 minutes. Given how often he must have touched the ball in all those minutes, that's really impressive.
So I'll just focus on the fact that I'm thrilled we finally won a game tonight and we did it on the road against a pretty tough though not great opponent. And I'm happy that Wiggins, LaVine and KAT all appeared to be highly productive. But I was even more impressed to see a second consecutive night of what appears to have been very solid bench play -- tonight from Bazz, Cole and Dunn again but also from Belly.
As for the Wiggins/LaVine debate, I have no interest in participating. I want to enjoy the win. And I'll come back to what I've been saying for a year now -- the fortunes of this team will ultimately depend on the development and play of our core three, namely KAT, Zach and Andrew. I put them in that order deliberately based on what I see as their relative potential after considering intensity and mental toughness as well as physical tools. But I could certainly see things shaking out in a different order among these three. I honestly don't care. I want to see all three develop and overcome their biggest weaknesses - KAT overcome his desire to do it all himself and his mental mistakes defensively; Zach overcome his mental lapses where he tries to do something he shouldn't; Andrew overcome his all too frequent periods of no intensity and poor effort. We really need all three of them to make big strides for this team to become the special team it has the potential to be.
Let's hope tonight's big OT win signals a leap forward for this team. I'm concerned that we gave up 120 points so I'm not sure we've turned the corner defensively. But we scored 125 and won a hotly contested crunch-time game on the road against a good team. I'm hopeful and keeping my fingers crossed that both Andrew and Zach get over their flaws and become all-stars. And I'd love to see this team string together a few wins in a row.
I came to a realization tonight during the game. I think turning this season around comes down to two basic factors. This is going to sound overly simplistic, but here are the keys as I see it:
1) Ball movement on offense. Our big 3, especially KAT, are much too focused on trying to do too much. Not because they're selfish, but because they think they have to play that way. Once they realize that the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts and play with each other, the improvement will be dramatic.
2) Bring the same intensity to the defensive end of the floor as the offensive. The talent is there as well as the athleticism. It just comes down to expending the energy. There is no reason this team can't be at least sound defensively.
