Minnesota Sports Forum

I think Josh Okogie should be worried about getting another NBA contract. Looks like a lot of overseas basketball in his future.

Bolmaro is going to get his chance soon

Q12543 wrote:LOL, Nowell. I mean, it's one thing to clank 3's off the backboard, but now point blank dunks!?

I only came back on the site tonight to say EYefhart has ascended to super sayin Eyechart

BloopOracle wrote:Bolmaro is going to get his chance soon

I've watched him in the G-League quite a bit. Still don't know what to think of him. Not sure he can impact an NBA game much, but probably won't kill you either. The question is could he knock Okogie or Prince out of the rotation? That's a pretty damn low bar and yet I'm not sure.

I thought Anthony Edwards didn't want to be in the arena tonight. He looked disengaged from the jump. Need him especially to be much better tomorrow night. On to the next game.

Sure hope everyone shows up in Philly tomorrow nite because they sure didn't tonite.

D'Natagal wrote:Sure hope everyone shows up in Philly tomorrow nite because they sure didn't tonite.

Well, one guy we know is not going to show up in Philly tonight is PatBev, and I think we saw last night what he means to this defense. "Oh, thank God PatBev isn't on the court tonight making us play defense so we can go back to playing the kind of basketball we enjoy more" said...almost everyone on our roster except Vando, Jaden and JO. But especially DLo and Beasley, two guys who have looked much improved on D this season...until last night.

I think most of us expected a defensive let down after PatBev went down, but I don't know that any of us thought we would immediately revert to last year's Wolves defense. The Hornets' feed kept flipping over to Beverley on the bench, and he looked like he was going to cry watching our lack of effort. DLo set the table with his immature mugging after a made three as Rozier went down the court for an uncontested dunk. And after a lazy Ant pass led to another dunk, Finch's veins were bulging out of his neck as he called for a timeout. And it didn't get any better. Charlotte is a very good offensive team even missing their starting center, but we decided not to guard the perimeter last night and news flash...NBA players know how to make uncontested threes. With Beverley out, Finch couldn't find a way to hide both DLo and Beasley on defense, and Charlotte scored 23 points more than their season average. Painful to watch.

A few positive takeaways though: Beasley seems to have regained his shooting touch. Jaden McDaniels on-ball defense against the marvelous LeMelo Ball was terrific . And Finch's anger at our lack of defensive intensity hopefully will lead to a little more effort tonight. We're simply not going to be as good on defense with PatBev out, but we have to be better than last night to have any chance of challenging for the play-in.

The defensive effort last night was lacking from every Wolves player that checked into the game, including the oft-praised Jarred Vanderbilt and Jaden McDaniels. It just wasn't their night and they came out flat. One game is negligible, but a similar effort tonight would be a bit more concerning.

I actually thought Jaden was terrific on defense last night. He's a different kind of defender than PatBev, JO and Vando, who all are disruptive through more frenetic activity. Jaden is more from the Ben Simmons school of defense...using length, smarts and footwork to consistently be effective on defense. And he was the only guy who could stay in front of Ball last night. His offense regressed again as he didn't help us much on that side of the ball. But he never disappoints me on defense.

This game is obviously in the books and was pretty forgettable from an effort standpoint, but in hindsight, I wonder if Charlotte is a team we should have gone back to playing drop coverage and a switching scheme with, i.e. the way we defended last year.

The reason I say that is they played really small up front and Ball isn't the type of guy you worry as much about coming at you down hill versus someone like Luka Doncic or Ja Morant. I think changing up our scheme would have led to fewer 3 attempts.