Q12543 wrote:Hard to point the finger at any one player. It's a total team breakdown, starting with the coaching staff and down through every single player.
Q, I have a hard time calling this season a total team breakdown, or pinning much on the coaching staff. While we can find little things to pick at...like Flip's reluctance to encourage threes, Young's below average rebounding, etc...the failure of this season can be summed up in one word...injuries. We only got a chance to see a reasonably healthy roster for 4 1/2 games, and most of us on this board were quite happy with what we saw...2-2, with the only losses being to two of the elite teams in the NBA, and on our way to a 3rd win. And then Ricky went down, followed by 2 of our 3 centers, and finally by Kevin Martin. And just to put a cherry on the sh#t sundae, we lost Thad Young for 2 weeks for personal reasons, and frankly he hasn't been in physical or mental shape to contribute much since he has been back.
I don't think any team in the league could lose 1)it's leader, best facilitator and best defender, 2) its leading scorer and best shooter, 3) its second leading scorer and starting center, plus 1 of his two backups, and 4) its starting PF, and do much better than 4-12. Go ahead and project a similar 5-player loss onto any team in the NBA, and you'll come up with a similar horrible record. Even the great San Antonio Spurs wouldn't be .500 this year if they had played most of the season without Duncan, Ginobli, Parker and Splitter. The Wolves are essentially playing their second team against their opponent's starters every night, and the results are as expected. Let's reverse the situation, and imagine a healthy Wolves team against any other similarly depleted NBA team. I think Rubio, Martin, Wiggins, Young and Pek would blow out the league-leading Grizziies if they were starting Kosta Koufos, Jon Leuer, Tony Allen, Jordan Adams and Nick Calathes. A healthy Wolves team would beat the Clippers by 25 if they had Wolves-like injury losses and were forced to start Spencer Hawes, Glen Davis, Matt Barnes, Jamal Crawford, and Jordan Farmar.
When you apply the same type of personnel losses the Wolves have incurred onto other teams, you likely get the same kind of lopsided results...but this time in the Wolves favor. Perhaps it would be fair to rip Flip the PBO for assembling a roster of guys who have more than their share of injuries...Pek, Martin, Rubio, Bud, Turiaf and Hummel are all guys who have been in suits instead of sweats much more than the typical NBA player. But three of those guys we weren't counting on to be in the 9-man rotation, and I would argue that any NBA player would be missing 2 months after incurring what Ricky did. So much of it is bad luck.
I don't think it's fair to attribute much of the failure of this season to the coaches, and even though the young players we have been forced to rely on have been wildly inconsistent (as young players often are), for the most part they have played hard and, in many cases, exceeded my expectations for what they were going to provide us this year. Unfortunately, we really haven't gotten a chance to see what this team and this coaching staff can do. All we know for sure is that our second team is not good enough to compete with other team's starters.
