lipoli390 wrote:I was at the game. I may do a full game report tomorrow.
But for now, I want to clear something up. The problem with Wiggins tonight was Wiggins -- not Ricky or anyone else. Wiggins was NOT moving without the ball. He would find a spot in the offense and stand there, sometimes moving to another spot. When he moved, his movements were casual and his "cuts" round and lazy. He'd watch from his corner perch as his teammates put up shots but would make no attempt to crash the boards for a putback attempt. And his body language was terrible. it was a repeat of his play and attitude the second half of the Atlanta game. Some or maybe a lot of it might be pure physical and mental fatigue from all the minutes Flip has played him. That part's on Flip. But what I've seen from Wiggins the past 6 quarters isn't acceptable from someone looked upon as a cornerstone of this franchise. He had a reputation for passivity coming out of college and that's a demon in his character that has to be exorcised if he's going to become an elite player.
Regarding Ricky, as Flip said, Ricky's still effectively in training camp and doesn't fully have his legs under him yet, so he's struggled a bit the last couple games. But he was a gamer tonight as he nearly led the Wolves to an improbably win with a 4th quarter comeback.
Thad was terrific tonight. Another guy, like Ricky, who you can count on for effort. Pek also played well and gave a great effort. I'm surprised by the criticism of Martin tonight. He was the main reason we had a chance to win tonight. He put points on the board and surprisingly did a nice job defending Thompson.
The main problems with the team tonight were the abysmal passive play of Wiggins and the lack of production from our bench. I like seeing LaVine get minutes, but I don't understand why Flip didn't have Brown in there as our second unit's PG with LaVine at SG and Shabazz at SF. Why he played Chase mystifies me.
As for Payne, the bad news is that he looks a bit fat. But perhaps he could have given us some long-range shooting and scoring off the bench tonight.
Dieng looked horrible tonight. The more I see of him, the more apparent how far he has to go to be a good player in this League. If I could swap him for Gobert or Whiteside I'd do it in a heartbeat.
But the good news is that the Wolves almost beat what might be the best team in the West. Almost beat the Warriors even though Ricky's not back at full strength and more than half our starters (Martin, Pek, and Ricky) haven't played together for 3 months. Wiggins needs some rest and an infusion of some of Shabazz's toughness, aggressiveness and intensity. LaVine needs to play SG rather than PG. I still see the Wolves winning at least 10 games the rest of the way. I just to see Wiggins back on the path to greatness.
Lip I have a counter to your comments on Wiggins. If you played for 40 minutes with rarely being part of the flow of the offense, most often not even touching the ball, and worse being used primarily as a decoy so the team can play 4 on 4, I might not have the usual energy to crash the boards either,. It was shameful the way he was used tonight, and I personally put very little blame on him, He's being asked to do all the dirty work at the defensive end, yet you chastise him for not selling out on every offensive possession when he knows he's not getting the ball. Didn't you see Ricky repeatedly motion him from one side of the court to the other so they could run plays away from him? Or did you miss that part? Perception is in the eye of the beholder I guess.
