Minnesota Sports Forum

Watching Nowell tonight a thought crossed my mind and it's not a prefect comparison but I think it does kinda capture some of what Nowell has become. Nowell is kinda like Rose was with the Wolves. Get the ball and fly down the court and if nobody stops you go to the basket and quite frankly Rose couldn't be stopped in those situations. Nowell isn't quite that good quite as athletic but a lot of the same principal applies and both guys also have that in between game. Nowell I believe is more of a true threat from 3 but anywho being compared to that version of Rose is pretty good. Nowell playing with the fury of pace is something new this year and it's pretty exciting to watch.

Heck of a win at the end of the game I was like...oh damn Kyle Anderson was out too?!? Obviously we wouldn't know for sure but it felt like the wolves were on their way to winning the game even if Luka doesn't get tossed. DFS being out hurt them too. Of course Bertrand came is nailing a bunch of 3's to almost make things interesting and the Wolves still won easily.

I always believed Rivers would eventually turn things around and be more worthwhile. He won't keep shooting like he has but he was unlikely got keep shooting as bad as he was before also. I thought he was a good matchup against Luka at times guarding him on the perimeter. Luka is bigger but Rivers is quicker and isn't gonna back down from him either. I think this team has a lot of the pieces it needs if they can just get healthy. Another more experienced lengthy wing wouldn't hurt though. Forbes is really small. Getting Prince back would help a lot.

monsterpile wrote:Heck of a win at the end of the game I was like...oh damn Kyle Anderson was out too?!? Obviously we wouldn't know for sure but it felt like the wolves were on their way to winning the game even if Luka doesn't get tossed. DFS being out hurt them too. Of course Bertrand came is nailing a bunch of 3's to almost make things interesting and the Wolves still won easily.

I always believed Rivers would eventually turn things around and be more worthwhile. He won't keep shooting like he has but he was unlikely got keep shooting as bad as he was before also. I thought he was a good matchup against Luka at times guarding him on the perimeter. Luka is bigger but Rivers is quicker and isn't gonna back down from him either. I think this team has a lot of the pieces it needs if they can just get healthy. Another more experienced lengthy wing wouldn't hurt though. Forbes is really small. Getting Prince back would help a lot.

??? DFS played 27 minutes for Dallas last night.

As for Luka, I'm really surprised he doesn't have an injury designation, even if it's just day-to-day. He was wincing in pain and at times gimping out there. Of course, his game is based so much on angles, craftiness, and using his dearth that he can still do some amazing things on just one good leg. The Wolves need to keep going at him on defense.

Q-was-here wrote:

monsterpile wrote:Heck of a win at the end of the game I was like...oh damn Kyle Anderson was out too?!? Obviously we wouldn't know for sure but it felt like the wolves were on their way to winning the game even if Luka doesn't get tossed. DFS being out hurt them too. Of course Bertrand came is nailing a bunch of 3's to almost make things interesting and the Wolves still won easily.

I always believed Rivers would eventually turn things around and be more worthwhile. He won't keep shooting like he has but he was unlikely got keep shooting as bad as he was before also. I thought he was a good matchup against Luka at times guarding him on the perimeter. Luka is bigger but Rivers is quicker and isn't gonna back down from him either. I think this team has a lot of the pieces it needs if they can just get healthy. Another more experienced lengthy wing wouldn't hurt though. Forbes is really small. Getting Prince back would help a lot.

??? DFS played 27 minutes for Dallas last night.

As for Luka, I'm really surprised he doesn't have an injury designation, even if it's just day-to-day. He was wincing in pain and at times gimping out there. Of course, his game is based so much on angles, craftiness, and using his dearth that he can still do some amazing things on just one good leg. The Wolves need to keep going at him on defense.

Ok well DFS must have played a lot of the game before he got injured then because the Dallas broadcast said he was ruled out I thought there was plenty of game left but I could be remembering wrong. Sounds like he is out for Tomorrow's game which obviously is more significant.

Yeah Luka obviously is playing hurt to some extent. The way the Dallas broadcast talked about him he would play with one leg if the team let him. I do sense that's probably true which does make me like him more despite other annoying things about watching his game.

Pretty unbelievable performance in this game...great win! Sure, Luka was ineffective, but the Wolves were missing their two best max players, two valuable bench players, and SloMo. And we still won easily! So many impressive performances:

Jaden- So much fun to watch him defend the opponent's best player every night, and he was especially good tonight. His rebounding numbers are going to be low when he has to defend out on the perimeter so much like this game, so I'm satisfied with 5 for a guy who essentially has to play like a guard on defense.

Ant- Wow, just wow...27-13-9 with just 1 TO! Love how he is getting to the line, and also how he is locking down his man in 1 on 1 defense.

Naz- 27-13 and quick feet on D

Rivers- Another fine defender, and since he changed his shooting mechanics (he said he was leaning back too much...I agree), a suddenly hot 3-point shooter (48.4 % his last 10)

Nowell- We needed him tonight, and I thought he was absolutely terrific.

But then there's Russell. I read through the GDT, and was surprised to not find one negative comment about his performance tonight. 9 points on 4 for 13 shooting and only 2 more assists than turnovers, and his -9 was 22 points worse than the second "worse" starter (Jaden at +13)...roll that around in your head for a moment! DLO has been hot over the past two weeks, so I would totally excuse an offensive game like this...IF, he was giving us anything at all on the other end of the court. But his defense continues to be alarmingly bad. Despite his recent great shooting, he continues to be last on the team in on/off among players with more than 400 minutes. The Wolves are 7 1/2 points per 100 possessions worse when DLo is on the court. And it has little to do with his offense...the Wolves are equally effective on offense whether he is playing or not. But his defense is atrocious...we give up 7.7 more points per 100 possessions when he is playing. Watch closely, and it's easy for any student of the game to see why. DLo so often prefers to drift and look for deflections or steals rather than focusing on the man he should be focusing on, and that leads to fat too many wide open shots when he is out there,,it frustrates the hell out of me. At times when I watch him, it seems like we have four men playing man-to-man while he is playing zone! He simply needs to work harder on defense, rather than pointing to tell his teammates where they should be while leaving his man far too open.

I don't want to throw a wet blanket over a really good night because it might have been our best game of the year, but DLo's defense last night was not a one-night problem. Almost all of us (including me) have been raving about Russell's shooting the past few weeks...he's been hot! But as Wolves fans who dearly want to see this team make a deep playoff run, we need to keep it real too, and acknowledge that it's difficult to stop another team from scoring when we're essentially playing 4 on 5, and we're going to struggle if a starter getting 32 MPG continues to get outscored when he is on the court. I believe DLO has the ability to be an average NBA defender, and I continue to think his improving on defense is the main key to our making a deep playoff run.

FNG wrote:Pretty unbelievable performance in this game...great win! Sure, Luka was ineffective, but the Wolves were missing their two best max players, two valuable bench players, and SloMo. And we still won easily! So many impressive performances:

Jaden- So much fun to watch him defend the opponent's best player every night, and he was especially good tonight. His rebounding numbers are going to be low when he has to defend out on the perimeter so much like this game, so I'm satisfied with 5 for a guy who essentially has to play like a guard on defense.

Ant- Wow, just wow...27-13-9 with just 1 TO! Love how he is getting to the line, and also how he is locking down his man in 1 on 1 defense.

Naz- 27-13 and quick feet on D

Rivers- Another fine defender, and since he changed his shooting mechanics (he said he was leaning back too much...I agree), a suddenly hot 3-point shooter (48.4 % his last 10)

Nowell- We needed him tonight, and I thought he was absolutely terrific.

But then there's Russell. I read through the GDT, and was surprised to not find one negative comment about his performance tonight. 9 points on 4 for 13 shooting and only 2 more assists than turnovers, and his -9 was 22 points worse than the second "worse" starter (Jaden at +13)...roll that around in your head for a moment! DLO has been hot over the past two weeks, so I would totally excuse an offensive game like this...IF, he was giving us anything at all on the other end of the court. But his defense continues to be alarmingly bad. Despite his recent great shooting, he continues to be last on the team in on/off among players with more than 400 minutes. The Wolves are 7 1/2 points per 100 possessions worse when DLo is on the court. And it has little to do with his offense...the Wolves are equally effective on offense whether he is playing or not. But his defense is atrocious...we give up 7.7 more points per 100 possessions when he is playing. Watch closely, and it's easy for any student of the game to see why. DLo so often prefers to drift and look for deflections or steals rather than focusing on the man he should be focusing on, and that leads to fat too many wide open shots when he is out there,,it frustrates the hell out of me. At times when I watch him, it seems like we have four men playing man-to-man while he is playing zone! He simply needs to work harder on defense, rather than pointing to tell his teammates where they should be while leaving his man far too open.

I don't want to throw a wet blanket over a really good night because it might have been our best game of the year, but DLo's defense last night was not a one-night problem. Almost all of us (including me) have been raving about Russell's shooting the past few weeks...he's been hot! But as Wolves fans who dearly want to see this team make a deep playoff run, we need to keep it real too, and acknowledge that it's difficult to stop another team from scoring when we're essentially playing 4 on 5, and we're going to struggle if a starter getting 32 MPG continues to get outscored when he is on the court. I believe DLO has the ability to be an average NBA defender, and I continue to think his improving on defense is the main key to our making a deep playoff run.

The reason DLO continues to be a net negative is even when he is hot he gives up points on the defensive end. His defense is too lazy, too slow. We would be much better off with a good defender instead of DLO who can simply hit the open three ball. Leave the ball handling and scoring to Ant, KAT, Nowell, JMac, Slo-Mo and others.

If DLO played good defense he'd be worth his contract, but the problem is that defense is part of basketball. You can't just be a shitty defender and part time hot scorer.

How many times do we need to discuss traditional plus-minus on this board, especially single-game values, for us to agree that necessary context is missing? Do I really need to start pointing out every game in which plus-minus doesn't match the eye test? Of course, it'll have to involve someone other than D'Angelo Russell for the stubborn few here to appreciate it because it's only mentioned when his box score indicates a negative. I didn't think D-Lo was particularly good Monday night, but I didn't need plus-minus to tell me that and had it said the opposite (positive) we would never hear about it. We didn't see a single thing about plus-minus when he was a team-leading +33 against Chicago. No mention of it anywhere. It's a lineup stat, not an individual stat. Use it appropriately.

Also I'm not sure how you can call yourself a student of the game and come to the conclusion that this team is better without Russell. We've seen some truly horrific basketball in many of the games he's missed and that's not by surprise. I think you're either relying too much on faulty data to form your conclusions, ahem, or you just don't understand the game as well as you think you do. It might be a combination of both. But most folks on here have worked themselves deep into their corners as it pertains to this specific player and that isn't changing. However, the team wins more games with him -- with him accounting for a large volume of minutes -- and loses more games without him. Sometimes it really is that simple. Not much else to say at this point.

WolvesFan21 wrote:

FNG wrote:Pretty unbelievable performance in this game...great win! Sure, Luka was ineffective, but the Wolves were missing their two best max players, two valuable bench players, and SloMo. And we still won easily! So many impressive performances:

Jaden- So much fun to watch him defend the opponent's best player every night, and he was especially good tonight. His rebounding numbers are going to be low when he has to defend out on the perimeter so much like this game, so I'm satisfied with 5 for a guy who essentially has to play like a guard on defense.

Ant- Wow, just wow...27-13-9 with just 1 TO! Love how he is getting to the line, and also how he is locking down his man in 1 on 1 defense.

Naz- 27-13 and quick feet on D

Rivers- Another fine defender, and since he changed his shooting mechanics (he said he was leaning back too much...I agree), a suddenly hot 3-point shooter (48.4 % his last 10)

Nowell- We needed him tonight, and I thought he was absolutely terrific.

But then there's Russell. I read through the GDT, and was surprised to not find one negative comment about his performance tonight. 9 points on 4 for 13 shooting and only 2 more assists than turnovers, and his -9 was 22 points worse than the second "worse" starter (Jaden at +13)...roll that around in your head for a moment! DLO has been hot over the past two weeks, so I would totally excuse an offensive game like this...IF, he was giving us anything at all on the other end of the court. But his defense continues to be alarmingly bad. Despite his recent great shooting, he continues to be last on the team in on/off among players with more than 400 minutes. The Wolves are 7 1/2 points per 100 possessions worse when DLo is on the court. And it has little to do with his offense...the Wolves are equally effective on offense whether he is playing or not. But his defense is atrocious...we give up 7.7 more points per 100 possessions when he is playing. Watch closely, and it's easy for any student of the game to see why. DLo so often prefers to drift and look for deflections or steals rather than focusing on the man he should be focusing on, and that leads to fat too many wide open shots when he is out there,,it frustrates the hell out of me. At times when I watch him, it seems like we have four men playing man-to-man while he is playing zone! He simply needs to work harder on defense, rather than pointing to tell his teammates where they should be while leaving his man far too open.

I don't want to throw a wet blanket over a really good night because it might have been our best game of the year, but DLo's defense last night was not a one-night problem. Almost all of us (including me) have been raving about Russell's shooting the past few weeks...he's been hot! But as Wolves fans who dearly want to see this team make a deep playoff run, we need to keep it real too, and acknowledge that it's difficult to stop another team from scoring when we're essentially playing 4 on 5, and we're going to struggle if a starter getting 32 MPG continues to get outscored when he is on the court. I believe DLO has the ability to be an average NBA defender, and I continue to think his improving on defense is the main key to our making a deep playoff run.

The reason DLO continues to be a net negative is even when he is hot he gives up points on the defensive end. His defense is too lazy, too slow. We would be much better off with a good defender instead of DLO who can simply hit the open three ball. Leave the ball handling and scoring to Ant, KAT, Nowell, JMac, Slo-Mo and others.

If DLO played good defense he'd be worth his contract, but the problem is that defense is part of basketball. You can't just be a shitty defender and part time hot scorer.

That's exactly it, WF...his occasional offensive brilliance is seldom enough to offset his defensive lapses, and that's why he has been a negative contributor when he's been on the court most of his career. I DVR games and play certain defensive possessions over and over again, and I often have no idea what Russell is doing...he literally seems to be guarding nobody! From a personality standpoint, DLo is one of my favorites on the roster...he seems like a really good guy and teammate, and also appears to have a solid basketball IQ. In addition he has good length for his position and reasonable athleticism. So that's why I'm so frustrated when I watch him on defense...I can't figure out what is going on his head. If I had to guess, I would say he prefers stepping into passing lanes for occasional deflections/steals than playing consistently solid team defense and recognizing and picking up the man the rotation dictates for him. As a guy who has coached defense before, I find it maddening. And it's going to hold back this team is we can't get him to play defense. There aren't going to be many nights like Monday when literally everyone on the team (other than him) is having a superb game, so we're going to need some defense from him in order to reach our potential. I'd love to see it start tonight.

FNG, I am not a DLO fan. But I don't think he's as big of a problem as you are making him out to be. I know you value plus/minus - and that's fine. There certainly is some merit to that stat. And nobody will ever claim DLO to be a lock down defender which as both you and WF point out are contributing factors to his poor showing in that stat.

But...I like VORP as I've stated many times. It seems to be the most reliable (for me anyway) with regard to measuring the individual player. Based on VORP, DLO tied with Edwards for second on the team (behind KAT) with 0.6. That's not awesome or worth his max salary. But to me, that's shows he's doing ok.

DLO is being DLO - I doubt he will change his game at this point aside from the normal hot/cold streaks we have experienced. For me, the key going forward is more the incremental growth of Edwards and McDaniels. I'm getting what I expected out of DLO. But I want to see more out of Edwards/McDaniels. Fortunately, Edwards has stepped up since KAT went down, so that's encouraging. But until those two guys blow past DLO in VORP, I can't really get on DLO too much myself.

Carlos Danger wrote:FNG, I am not a DLO fan. But I don't think he's as big of a problem as you are making him out to be. I know you value plus/minus - and that's fine. There certainly is some merit to that stat. And nobody will ever claim DLO to be a lock down defender which as both you and WF point out are contributing factors to his poor showing in that stat.

But...I like VORP as I've stated many times. It seems to be the most reliable (for me anyway) with regard to measuring the individual player. Based on VORP, DLO tied with Edwards for second on the team (behind KAT) with 0.6. That's not awesome or worth his max salary. But to me, that's shows he's doing ok.

DLO is being DLO - I doubt he will change his game at this point aside from the normal hot/cold streaks we have experienced. For me, the key going forward is more the incremental growth of Edwards and McDaniels. I'm getting what I expected out of DLO. But I want to see more out of Edwards/McDaniels. Fortunately, Edwards has stepped up since KAT went down, so that's encouraging. But until those two guys blow past DLO in VORP, I can't really get on DLO too much myself.

Carlos, I agree that I shy away from VORP even though many analysts swear by it...I think it is because it's a stat I can't calculate on my own and don't really fully understand. But yeah, it does seem to be a stat that Russell is performing well in this season. I actually don't look at +/- as much as I do some other stats except in the case of players who year in and year out tend to perform very well or very poorly in it. On the positive side, I marvel at guys like Tatum, Bridges and Jokic who consistently excel in this stat. Then there are other players who you think should be really good based on their skill level, but consistently get outscored compared to their teammates...Lavine and Russell are two that I often notice on the negative side. But for most other players, it's not a stat I focus on as much as some other stats. As for Monday night, it's difficult to wrap your head around how one particular starter can be at least 23 points behind the rest of the starters in +/- in one game...that's pretty remarkable and tough to ignore!

My main point though is pointing out DLo's indifference on defense, and it was on display and the major factor Monday in the Wolves getting outscored while he was on the court (as he is so often) despite a double digit win. I'm also focused though on the long term, and I agree that the growth of Edwards and Jaden is much more critical to this team than Russell's defense. But in the short term, I see DLo's need to improve on defense as a key to how far we can go this year. The competition gets tougher in the playoffs, and we will get torched if he performs like he did against Dallas. Let's hope for a better effort tonight...we're going to need it I think, especially if Hardaway Jr. is healthy and Russell needs to defend either him or Dinwiddie