Minnesota Sports Forum

Bryn Forbes was Minnesota's best player by far tonight. All hail the plus-minus gods. Woof.

Remove Minnesota's possessions where they try to force-feed the ball to Rudy Gobert in the post and instead use him optimally as a screener and in the dunker spot and the offense would be enhanced dramatically, I feel. Let's stop trying to make him more than what he is.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:FNG, as long as they are going to continue to keep score in basketball, what stat is important?

Hmm...you mean they're going to continue to keep score and not just hand out participation trophies? Well, in that case I would say +/- and on/off are important stats if your intention is to outscore your opponent. And while I agree that it's dangerous to take too much out of a small sample of any statistic, I've observed that winning players (and players that I admire) generally do well in these stats over the course of their careers.

FNG wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:FNG, as long as they are going to continue to keep score in basketball, what stat is important?

Hmm...you mean they're going to continue to keep score and not just hand out participation trophies? Well, in that case I would say +/- and on/off are important stats if your intention is to outscore your opponent. And while I agree that it's dangerous to take too much out of a small sample of any statistic, I've observed that winning players (and players that I admire) generally do well in these stats over the course of their careers.

Yes, provided that's your intention.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

FNG wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:FNG, as long as they are going to continue to keep score in basketball, what stat is important?

Hmm...you mean they're going to continue to keep score and not just hand out participation trophies? Well, in that case I would say +/- and on/off are important stats if your intention is to outscore your opponent. And while I agree that it's dangerous to take too much out of a small sample of any statistic, I've observed that winning players (and players that I admire) generally do well in these stats over the course of their careers.

Yes, provided that's your intention.

And the way most of our guys came out today, I'm not convinced that really was our intention. 47 points given up in the first quarter? I just looked it up, and the all-time NBA record for points scored in the first quarter is 51...also by the Warriors.

I know our backcourt takes a lot of abuse on this board, but Ant and DLo were primarily responsible for the 1st quarter disaster (and frankly after that, the Warriors seemed to just sit on the lead). I mentioned it at halftime, but it was shocking how those two made no effort to get back on fast breaks. I replayed some of the sequences over a few times to try to determine whether it was laziness or lack of awareness, and I concluded that it was more the latter. I don't know that either of them is inherently a lazy player. But both would watch to see if a 3-point shot by a teammate was going in while a Warrior was streaking down the court. I encourage anyone who plans to watch the replay of the game to really focus on Russell and Edwards...it's astonishing sometimes how clueless two talented guys can be at times. It's a big problem for this team, because it kills us on rotations too.

FNG wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

FNG wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:FNG, as long as they are going to continue to keep score in basketball, what stat is important?

Hmm...you mean they're going to continue to keep score and not just hand out participation trophies? Well, in that case I would say +/- and on/off are important stats if your intention is to outscore your opponent. And while I agree that it's dangerous to take too much out of a small sample of any statistic, I've observed that winning players (and players that I admire) generally do well in these stats over the course of their careers.

Yes, provided that's your intention.

And the way most of our guys came out today, I'm not convinced that really was our intention. 47 points given up in the first quarter? I just looked it up, and the all-time NBA record for points scored in the first quarter is 51...also by the Warriors.

I know our backcourt takes a lot of abuse on this board, but Ant and DLo were primarily responsible for the 1st quarter disaster (and frankly after that, the Warriors seemed to just sit on the lead). I mentioned it at halftime, but it was shocking how those two made no effort to get back on fast breaks. I replayed some of the sequences over a few times to try to determine whether it was laziness or lack of awareness, and I concluded that it was more the latter. I don't know that either of them is inherently a lazy player. But both would watch to see if a 3-point shot by a teammate was going in while a Warrior was streaking down the court. I encourage anyone who plans to watch the replay of the game to really focus on Russell and Edwards...it's astonishing sometimes how clueless two talented guys can be at times. It's a big problem for this team, because it kills us on rotations too.

I'm not going to excuse Ant or DLO, but they were no worse than any of the other Wolves players (except maybe Rivers and Nowell) when it comes to poor defense and lack of intensity. Actually, live in the arena, I through DLO's energy was better than most of his teammates. The entire team repeatedly ball-watched as Warriors players chased down loose ball. What I saw today in the Wolves was a bad team - emphasis on the word, team.

Rivers post game when asked if we can get better on defense: "If we get back on defense, we'll be fine".

Yeah, he brought up something that was horribly bad tonight, but that's not the only thing we need to improve on to be "fine". Our perimeter defensive rotations continue to be terrible. Rivers is good at it though.

Camden wrote:Remove Minnesota's possessions where they try to force-feed the ball to Rudy Gobert in the post and instead use him optimally as a screener and in the dunker spot and the offense would be enhanced dramatically, I feel. Let's stop trying to make him more than what he is.

I think they are practicing for the playoffs so that when an opposing team goes small-ball in a series, he will have had a bunch of reps during the regular season trying to take advantage of the mis-match.

Q-was-here wrote:

Camden wrote:Remove Minnesota's possessions where they try to force-feed the ball to Rudy Gobert in the post and instead use him optimally as a screener and in the dunker spot and the offense would be enhanced dramatically, I feel. Let's stop trying to make him more than what he is.

I think they are practicing for the playoffs so that when an opposing team goes small-ball in a series, he will have had a bunch of reps during the regular season trying to take advantage of the mis-match.

We have to make it to the playoffs to worry about that.

thedoper wrote:

Q-was-here wrote:

Camden wrote:Remove Minnesota's possessions where they try to force-feed the ball to Rudy Gobert in the post and instead use him optimally as a screener and in the dunker spot and the offense would be enhanced dramatically, I feel. Let's stop trying to make him more than what he is.

I think they are practicing for the playoffs so that when an opposing team goes small-ball in a series, he will have had a bunch of reps during the regular season trying to take advantage of the mis-match.

We have to make it to the playoffs to worry about that.

Understood, I'm just telling you why I think they keep trying to get him the ball. Part of the thesis with the Gobert trade was to punish teams for switching a small guy onto him, something Utah failed to do because they rarely tried to get him the ball in those situations during the regular season (may be now we know why!). Ultimately, the strategy may not work if he doesn't get better at catching and securing the ball.