Tactical unit wrote:Well as a Sam Mitchell hater I have to say I am impressed and glad that he realized Prince starting was a mistake. Tonight Sam also ran with what was working and I commend him for that as Rudez and Dieng both came up big. I still think it should be LaVine as the starting SG over K-Mart but I guess that won't matter much with Ricky likely down again for who knows how long. I was also impressed that Sam Mitchell subbed in KG for defense with 45 seconds left. Where most people probably hate the fact that Sam didn't go back to KAT, I don't mind as much. He 100% needs to follow it up with a one on one conversation with KAT though explaining why he rode the hot hands and emphasizing the importance of it not having anything to do with KAT and everything to do with rewarding Dieng and Rudez for playing so well. Pop will ride his second unit and let them finish off a game, it creates quite a bit of motivation for the second unit when they know if they play well that the coach will reward them by letting them close the deal.
TU. I agree with much of what you say here (especially the part about successful coaches riding their second units when they are hot, even if the fans think they are crazy!), but I'm on the other side of the fence on Tay Prince. I think Sam's decision to replace him in the starting lineup is his biggest blunder of the year. With Tay in the starting lineup, we won or stayed even against the other teams' starters in almost every 1st quarter, while in the first game with Tay out of the starting lineup, we trailed the terrible 76ers by 8 at the end of the 1st. Small sample size of just one game, of course, but here are the season +/- stats for every 5-man Wolves lineup. Note that the second best lineup this year has been the starting lineup with Tay, and the only one better is when Sam subs in Belly for KG
.http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/plus/lineup_finder.cgi?request=1&player_id=&match=single&lineup_type=5-man&output=total&year_id=2016&is_playoffs=N&team_id=MIN&opp_id=&game_num_min=0&game_num_max=99&game_month=&game_location=&game_result=&c1stat=&c1comp=ge&c1val=&c2stat=&c2comp=ge&c2val=&c3stat=&c3comp=ge&c3val=&c4stat=&c4comp=ge&c4val=&order_by=diff_pts
It's all about guarding the perimeter and preventing threes, and lineups with Tay excel at this. In the first 10 minutes of the first Atlanta game, the Wolves tough perimeter defense held Atlanta to only 4 3-point attempts (all contested, as I recall). Yesterday though with Martin in for Tay, Korver got one off 15 seconds into the game, and they had taken 8 of them by the time KMart was subbed at 10 minutes into the game...not good.
I'm curious why you think it's a mistake to start Tay.