Minnesota Sports Forum

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:Jokic is very good, but he's never going to be Karl Anthony Towns. Towns was just a monster last night, and I love that he took the challenge personally. I also have to mention that in the midst of Towns' dominant game, Wiggins had one hek of a 4th quarter. Big 3 pointer around the 2 minute mark, 10 points including the steal and length of the court finish. He also had some good individual defensive moments and won the matchup with Gallo (the flopper).

Just different players. Jokic seems to be a gifted passer. I nudged my buddy last night early on about how good he is and called out his passing.

He then made 3 straight great passes. My buddy suddenly thought I was smarter than I really am...

I think when you compare KAT and Jokic on a per minute basis, Jokic comes off as just as productive, if not more productive, than KAT. And in real life it shows, as his skills are off the charts. The stat that is telling though is minutes played. KAT plays big minutes and Jokic doesn't. Is it his fitness level? Is it matchups? Is it foul problems? Part of being great is actually being able to play on a full time basis. Jokic doesn't do that right now. KAT does.

The other thing to keep in mind about Jokic is that it's not like he's a grizzled Euroleague vet that finally made it to the U.S. He's only 21 years old! The dude is only going to get better. It should be fun to watch these two battle in the future.

Yeah Nokic is good no doubt about it. But I wouldn't trade KAT for him.

Q12543 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:Jokic is very good, but he's never going to be Karl Anthony Towns. Towns was just a monster last night, and I love that he took the challenge personally. I also have to mention that in the midst of Towns' dominant game, Wiggins had one hek of a 4th quarter. Big 3 pointer around the 2 minute mark, 10 points including the steal and length of the court finish. He also had some good individual defensive moments and won the matchup with Gallo (the flopper).

Just different players. Jokic seems to be a gifted passer. I nudged my buddy last night early on about how good he is and called out his passing.

He then made 3 straight great passes. My buddy suddenly thought I was smarter than I really am...

I think when you compare KAT and Jokic on a per minute basis, Jokic comes off as just as productive, if not more productive, than KAT. And in real life it shows, as his skills are off the charts. The stat that is telling though is minutes played. KAT plays big minutes and Jokic doesn't. Is it his fitness level? Is it matchups? Is it foul problems? Part of being great is actually being able to play on a full time basis. Jokic doesn't do that right now. KAT does.

The other thing to keep in mind about Jokic is that it's not like he's a grizzled Euroleague vet that finally made it to the U.S. He's only 21 years old! The dude is only going to get better. It should be fun to watch these two battle in the future.

Heck, he wasn't even a starter all season. Denver was high on Nurkic too. Then, they have Faried.

In recent weeks, they've unleashed Jokic more. Last night, foul trouble kept him under 30 minutes. And the Nuggets won a blowout the game before.

Other than those, he was over 30 minutes for four straight games for the first time. He's really really good.

Totally cool with Towns. But I think the discussions about Towns... and then everybody else is below him might be peetering out a bit.

- Towns. Embiid. Porzingis. Jokic.

And let's not forget Anthony Davis.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:Jokic is very good, but he's never going to be Karl Anthony Towns. Towns was just a monster last night, and I love that he took the challenge personally. I also have to mention that in the midst of Towns' dominant game, Wiggins had one hek of a 4th quarter. Big 3 pointer around the 2 minute mark, 10 points including the steal and length of the court finish. He also had some good individual defensive moments and won the matchup with Gallo (the flopper).

Just different players. Jokic seems to be a gifted passer. I nudged my buddy last night early on about how good he is and called out his passing.

He then made 3 straight great passes. My buddy suddenly thought I was smarter than I really am...

I think when you compare KAT and Jokic on a per minute basis, Jokic comes off as just as productive, if not more productive, than KAT. And in real life it shows, as his skills are off the charts. The stat that is telling though is minutes played. KAT plays big minutes and Jokic doesn't. Is it his fitness level? Is it matchups? Is it foul problems? Part of being great is actually being able to play on a full time basis. Jokic doesn't do that right now. KAT does.

The other thing to keep in mind about Jokic is that it's not like he's a grizzled Euroleague vet that finally made it to the U.S. He's only 21 years old! The dude is only going to get better. It should be fun to watch these two battle in the future.

Heck, he wasn't even a starter all season. Denver was high on Nurkic too. Then, they have Faried.

In recent weeks, they've unleashed Jokic more. Last night, foul trouble kept him under 30 minutes. And the Nuggets won a blowout the game before.

Other than those, he was over 30 minutes for four straight games for the first time. He's really really good.

Totally cool with Towns. But I think the discussions about Towns... and then everybody else is below him might be peetering out a bit.

- Towns. Embiid. Porzingis. Jokic.

And let's not forget Anthony Davis.

Abe, would you trade Towns straight up for any of those guys?

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:Jokic is very good, but he's never going to be Karl Anthony Towns. Towns was just a monster last night, and I love that he took the challenge personally. I also have to mention that in the midst of Towns' dominant game, Wiggins had one hek of a 4th quarter. Big 3 pointer around the 2 minute mark, 10 points including the steal and length of the court finish. He also had some good individual defensive moments and won the matchup with Gallo (the flopper).

Just different players. Jokic seems to be a gifted passer. I nudged my buddy last night early on about how good he is and called out his passing.

He then made 3 straight great passes. My buddy suddenly thought I was smarter than I really am...

I think when you compare KAT and Jokic on a per minute basis, Jokic comes off as just as productive, if not more productive, than KAT. And in real life it shows, as his skills are off the charts. The stat that is telling though is minutes played. KAT plays big minutes and Jokic doesn't. Is it his fitness level? Is it matchups? Is it foul problems? Part of being great is actually being able to play on a full time basis. Jokic doesn't do that right now. KAT does.

The other thing to keep in mind about Jokic is that it's not like he's a grizzled Euroleague vet that finally made it to the U.S. He's only 21 years old! The dude is only going to get better. It should be fun to watch these two battle in the future.

Heck, he wasn't even a starter all season. Denver was high on Nurkic too. Then, they have Faried.

In recent weeks, they've unleashed Jokic more. Last night, foul trouble kept him under 30 minutes. And the Nuggets won a blowout the game before.

Other than those, he was over 30 minutes for four straight games for the first time. He's really really good.

Totally cool with Towns. But I think the discussions about Towns... and then everybody else is below him might be peetering out a bit.

- Towns. Embiid. Porzingis. Jokic.

And let's not forget Anthony Davis.

Abe, would you trade Towns straight up for any of those guys?

Dunno. Davis is tempting. He's only 23. I'd have to look into it more. But considering it was a resounding "no" before the season, it shows that I'm not convinced he's the very best.

And that's fine. He's still super good. And promising. And I firmly believe he can be THE guy for a great team. So, I'm happy the Wolves have him.



[Note: A healthy Embiid is mind-numbingly good by the way. For the good of the league, I hope he stays healthy.]

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:Jokic is very good, but he's never going to be Karl Anthony Towns. Towns was just a monster last night, and I love that he took the challenge personally. I also have to mention that in the midst of Towns' dominant game, Wiggins had one hek of a 4th quarter. Big 3 pointer around the 2 minute mark, 10 points including the steal and length of the court finish. He also had some good individual defensive moments and won the matchup with Gallo (the flopper).

Just different players. Jokic seems to be a gifted passer. I nudged my buddy last night early on about how good he is and called out his passing.

He then made 3 straight great passes. My buddy suddenly thought I was smarter than I really am...

I think when you compare KAT and Jokic on a per minute basis, Jokic comes off as just as productive, if not more productive, than KAT. And in real life it shows, as his skills are off the charts. The stat that is telling though is minutes played. KAT plays big minutes and Jokic doesn't. Is it his fitness level? Is it matchups? Is it foul problems? Part of being great is actually being able to play on a full time basis. Jokic doesn't do that right now. KAT does.

The other thing to keep in mind about Jokic is that it's not like he's a grizzled Euroleague vet that finally made it to the U.S. He's only 21 years old! The dude is only going to get better. It should be fun to watch these two battle in the future.

Heck, he wasn't even a starter all season. Denver was high on Nurkic too. Then, they have Faried.

In recent weeks, they've unleashed Jokic more. Last night, foul trouble kept him under 30 minutes. And the Nuggets won a blowout the game before.

Other than those, he was over 30 minutes for four straight games for the first time. He's really really good.

Totally cool with Towns. But I think the discussions about Towns... and then everybody else is below him might be peetering out a bit.

- Towns. Embiid. Porzingis. Jokic.

And let's not forget Anthony Davis.

Abe, would you trade Towns straight up for any of those guys?

Dunno. Davis is tempting. He's only 23. I'd have to look into it more. But considering it was a resounding "no" before the season, it shows that I'm not convinced he's the very best.

And that's fine. He's still super good. And promising. And I firmly believe he can be THE guy for a great team. So, I'm happy the Wolves have him.



[Note: A healthy Embiid is mind-numbingly good by the way. For the good of the league, I hope he stays healthy.]

If there were no health concerns about Embiid...I'd be tempted to trade him straight up for Towns. I believed in his talent this whole time it's the injury issues and not being able to play that made me worry. I don't see any gap in overall talent between those 2 right now. That's more credit to Embiid than knocking on Towns. Again the young NBA big men starting out in this league is incredible. I watched some of Myles Turner the other day and he looks pretty good for a young player...and he turns 21 in March.

Please Abe don't waste your time looking into something that's never gonna happen.

Even in our pretend world here, I wouldn't trade KAT for any of those other bigs Abe listed. I agree that Embiid might be the better two-way player because of his impact on defense, but the injury history scares the hell out of me. The same thing with Davis, who has never played more than 70 games. But damn, he is really, really good.

I really like Jokic, but it seems like KAT has more of an ability to take over games with his scoring than Jokic (even though Jokic is really, really efficient). KAT has such a wide array of ways to score. If we didn't have Wiggins and LaVine on our team, he might already be averaging 25+ PPG.

Edit: I didn't mention Porzingas, but I think he's a tier below all these other guys for now. He's good, but these guys are all great.

The second Embiid plays 2 straight seasons without a major injury he becomes the number 1 center in the NBA. It really isn't close how good he is defensively compared to Towns. One of the major sports writers (Lowe, Stein, whoever) tweeted that in the last month or so Philly is the number 1 defense in the NBA with him anchoring. They're the 30th offense, but #1 defense because of his impact. Embiid is a superstar on both ends whereas Towns right now is a one-way star offensively working on getting better defensively. Embiid is a monster who just need to get free and clear of the injuries and he'll be number 1 at the end of the day. That being said, Towns will be number 2 so I'll take it.

khans2k5 wrote:The second Embiid plays 2 straight seasons without a major injury he becomes the number 1 center in the NBA. It really isn't close how good he is defensively compared to Towns. One of the major sports writers (Lowe, Stein, whoever) tweeted that in the last month or so Philly is the number 1 defense in the NBA with him anchoring. They're the 30th offense, but #1 defense because of his impact. Embiid is a superstar on both ends whereas Towns right now is a one-way star offensively working on getting better defensively. Embiid is a monster who just need to get free and clear of the injuries and he'll be number 1 at the end of the day. That being said, Towns will be number 2 so I'll take it.

I would say the odds of him going two straight years without a major injury are less than 40%.