Minnesota Sports Forum

41 mins for Wiggins.
39 for Towns.
37 for Gibson.
36 for Butler.

Against a 55 - 60 loss team without its best player in a matinee game right after a holiday to begin a long road trip.

That's not good. Not good at all.

Agreed Abe. This win was almost more troubling than gratifying. We once again couldn't get many stops and allowed a team to make a bunch of shots against us. And this was without by far their best shooter and player!

Tired legs.

You can't play hard for 30 minutes and still expect to have fresh legs on little rest in the 4th.

The bench need to give us something... Anything.

Thibs likes to stagger Kat (2nd+4th) or Wiggins (1st+3rd) with the bench. Why not do it with Butler and Taj as well and completely forgo that all second unit line up.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:41 mins for Wiggins.
39 for Towns.
37 for Gibson.
36 for Butler.

Against a 55 - 60 loss team without its best player in a matinee game right after a holiday to begin a long road trip.

That's not good. Not good at all.

Nope, not good at all...definitely not a sustainable strategy, and that is why no other NBA coach employs such an extreme rotation strategy. Wolves' reserves are dead last in minutes played by a wide margin. Not only does this lead to extreme 4th quarter collapses (another one yesterday, although playing a bad opponent allowed us still to win) and losses, but it also takes a toll on players over the long season. Smart coaches understand the concept of the "season" and use their players accordingly; dumb coaches like Thibs don't understand this concept, and panic in an attempt to win every game. Not an intelligent approach.

Last year, some here argued that Thibs was forced into this strategy because of his weak bench. But now with players on the second unit (and beyond...yes, Cole) who have proven elsewhere and here that they are legit NBA players, there is no excuse to keep wearing out his starters. The bench has a net +/- of only -2.2, is 2nd in free throw percentage, and 5th in 3-point percentage.

Thibs continues to be a glaring outlier in using his bench, and it's holding us back.

One of the things Thibs did last year and again this year is start his best 5 players. That may seem like a logical thing to do, but many teams don't do this. It allows them to ensure multiple "starting caliber" players are in the game at all times, while also selectively blending the 6-10 guys in with the starters.

That being said, I can't think of a logical alternative to our existing starting lineup. But I do think Thibs needs to bring in bench guys sooner and do so in a much more staggered fashion. We should NEVER have less than two of our starters in the lineup in any game where the opponent is within 25 points of us in the first three quarters.

crazy-canuck wrote:Tired legs.

You can't play hard for 30 minutes and still expect to have fresh legs on little rest in the 4th.

The bench need to give us something... Anything.

Thibs likes to stagger Kat (2nd+4th) or Wiggins (1st+3rd) with the bench. Why not do it with Butler and Taj as well and completely forgo that all second unit line up.

Yup, missed this post when I just put mine up, but this is exactly what Thibs should be doing. He should not only forgo an all second unit lineup, but also any four-man 2nd unit lineup. There should never be more than three bench guys out there at once. And Crawford and Bazz especially should never play together. Wiggins and Butler need to be staggered, as you said above.

Q12543 wrote:

crazy-canuck wrote:Tired legs.

You can't play hard for 30 minutes and still expect to have fresh legs on little rest in the 4th.

The bench need to give us something... Anything.

Thibs likes to stagger Kat (2nd+4th) or Wiggins (1st+3rd) with the bench. Why not do it with Butler and Taj as well and completely forgo that all second unit line up.

Yup, missed this post when I just put mine up, but this is exactly what Thibs should be doing. He should not only forgo an all second unit lineup, but also any four-man 2nd unit lineup. There should never be more than three bench guys out there at once. And Crawford and Bazz especially should never play together. Wiggins and Butler need to be staggered, as you said above.

Some very good points here. I agree that Thibs is starting the correct five guys, and assuming they are all playing hard, those five should also lead us in minutes. But he needs to get better acquainted with pairing stats and employ the pairing strategy you guys talk about, and also make some Pop-like ad hoc substitutions to punish bad performance or effort. He also needs to stop panicking during games, and avoid putting players back into games when they still look gassed...it's amazing what that extra 4 minutes of bench time can do to refresh a player (those of us who played a lot can relate to this).

To sum it up- Thibs is a dumbass.

WolvesFan21 wrote:To sum it up- Thibs is a dumbass.

Not sure he is a dumb ass, but it doesn't seem like he has adapted to the modern game. If he had a team capable of defending at a really high level, I think we could tolerate a bit more of the slow-paced isolation ball. Elite defense allows for teams to be more methodical on offense and run down the shot clock before identifying a mis-match and playing iso ball, which seems to be Thibs' preferred strategy in the 4th quarter.

The problem is his defense doens't get enough stops for us to play this way. Therefore our best defense is better offense. And running down the shot clock to 5 seconds and then having one of our guys put up a tough, contested shot is not a good strategy.

10 game or so ago people were saying how awesome the bench was performing (even with Bazz being bad) and lately its been less good. People were also saying Belly needed to play more and wondered why he wasn't. Now he has missed 2 games with a foot issue. My theory was they wanted to keep his minutes down because he struggles to stay healthy. Maybe that has some merit. Maybe not. So at what point did the bench start to struggle? 10 games ago? 7? Its had some pretty good moments and its no surprise with Belly out who was a complementary glue guy and someone who could do a lot of things out there that they would struggle. I agree with staggering guys but for a few games it seemed like the bench group was doing some good things out there. Maybe its time to make an adjustment now. I'd guess Thibs also wanted to get his starters minutes together to get them on the same page when they play together especially with the shorter preseason etc. It will be interesting to see how things play out as the season progresses. Dieng and Bazz playing better will help matters.