Minnesota Sports Forum

Mikkeman wrote:

kekgeek1 wrote:
You also realize the RPM takes into consideration of years past numbers. Its not a single season stat. In no way do I think Gibson is apart of our long term future but he was by far our most consistent player on the team last year.

Kek, where have you got that information? I'm pretty sure it is based on only of stats from one season. The fact that Dieng ranked in defensive RPM to top 6 in 2016-17 among centers and bottom 6 in 2017-18, makes me to think that it wouldn't be possible if it would consider also previous seasons. Some other players have had similar dramatic changes in their ranking too. For example Kosta Koufos dropped from 8th in DRPM among all centers to 50th between 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons. Still I wouldn't take too seriously those one year RPM numbers just because they seem to be so noisy. It is difficult to trust for stat that gives so polarizing numbers for some players.

I also think that getting Gibson and Butler were really good moves even if they both would leave after this season. I cannot think single player in past 30 years that would have missed playoffs in his first four seasons and then won championship as team's top 2 player. Of course this is mostly because almost all championship teams have had at least one top 5 player in league and they tend to be so good that their team cannot fail to get playoffs. But it is pretty surprising that even the top players of teams like Boston and Detroit that were not build through draft had got some playoffs experience in their early years. So I think playoff experience from last year might end up being more important for this franchise than another first round draft pick.

Maybe i'm understanding it wrong but here is where I found some info and I have heard that in the past

https://cornerthreehoops.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/explaining-espns-real-plus-minus/

In section 2:

"For instance, I mentioned earlier that RPM uses data from previous seasons in its priors. If my primary goal is to evaluate how well a player did this season, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to use data from other seasons. However, if I want to predict what will happen in the future, the older numbers can help me differentiate between players who have been consistently good (and will likely keep being good) and players who are merely going through a hot streak (and will likely regress to their mean)."

KG4Ever wrote:

kekgeek1 wrote:

KG4Ever wrote:

kekgeek1 wrote:

KG4Ever wrote:Gibson was mediocre in the plus/ minus stats and was worse than Belly last year. Dieng as a starter in previous years was vastly superior in plus/minus stats. Gibson certainly wasn't horrible but he's old and not a building block for the future. I just think he was a waste of money and took minutes away from younger guys.

You realize that the Wolves were 6.2 pts/per 100 possessions better when he was on the court when compared when he was off. What was in the 82nd percentile in the NBA. Also the Wolves were 4.5 pts better then there opponents when he was on the court what was in the 78th percentile in the NBA.

Compared to Belly were the wolves were 2.4 worse with Belly on the court compared to off what was in the 38th percentile. Then the wolves were 1 pt better then there opponents, what was in the 59th percentile.

Comparing the Gogui 2 years ago, we were decent, The wolves were 4.4 pts better when he was on the court compared to off. They outscored there opponents by .5 pts when Gogui was on the court.

In terms of RPM, Gibson wasn't all that great. You realize Gibson played with Butler and KAT and so this inflated his on court numbers compared to the reserves who played with Crawford, Bazz and Rose some of the worst plus minus guys in the league. Gibson was a tad above average, but I would rather not have had him. He's old and irrelevant to making a serious title run. I'd rather accumulate young talent and miss playoffs than fight for 7th or 8th seed.

You also realize the RPM takes into consideration of years past numbers. Its not a single season stat. In no way do I think Gibson is apart of our long term future but he was by far our most consistent player on the team last year.

So you're saying Gibson "helped us" lose the opportunity to draft Porter and perhaps also "helped" save Thibs's job. And yet has no value for our long term future. Too funny.

It's worth pointing out the Wolves were fighting for the 4 seed and were a game away from having that spot last season. They weren't JUST fighting for the 7th/8th seed.

Also now we have a first round pick for the next draft that could end up being a valuable player even if it isn't a lottery pick.

monsterpile wrote:

KG4Ever wrote:

kekgeek1 wrote:

KG4Ever wrote:

kekgeek1 wrote:

KG4Ever wrote:Gibson was mediocre in the plus/ minus stats and was worse than Belly last year. Dieng as a starter in previous years was vastly superior in plus/minus stats. Gibson certainly wasn't horrible but he's old and not a building block for the future. I just think he was a waste of money and took minutes away from younger guys.

You realize that the Wolves were 6.2 pts/per 100 possessions better when he was on the court when compared when he was off. What was in the 82nd percentile in the NBA. Also the Wolves were 4.5 pts better then there opponents when he was on the court what was in the 78th percentile in the NBA.

Compared to Belly were the wolves were 2.4 worse with Belly on the court compared to off what was in the 38th percentile. Then the wolves were 1 pt better then there opponents, what was in the 59th percentile.

Comparing the Gogui 2 years ago, we were decent, The wolves were 4.4 pts better when he was on the court compared to off. They outscored there opponents by .5 pts when Gogui was on the court.

In terms of RPM, Gibson wasn't all that great. You realize Gibson played with Butler and KAT and so this inflated his on court numbers compared to the reserves who played with Crawford, Bazz and Rose some of the worst plus minus guys in the league. Gibson was a tad above average, but I would rather not have had him. He's old and irrelevant to making a serious title run. I'd rather accumulate young talent and miss playoffs than fight for 7th or 8th seed.

You also realize the RPM takes into consideration of years past numbers. Its not a single season stat. In no way do I think Gibson is apart of our long term future but he was by far our most consistent player on the team last year.

So you're saying Gibson "helped us" lose the opportunity to draft Porter and perhaps also "helped" save Thibs's job. And yet has no value for our long term future. Too funny.

It's worth pointing out the Wolves were fighting for the 4 seed and were a game away from having that spot last season. They weren't JUST fighting for the 7th/8th seed.

Also now we have a first round pick for the next draft that could end up being a valuable player even if it isn't a lottery pick.

Exactly. People act like we were trash and backed into the playoffs. We were 2 games out of the 3 seed. Going into the last night we were in play of the 4 seed. We now have a pick 2019. And now can trade our 2019 or 2020 pick, something we couldn't do if we made the playoffs

KG4Ever wrote:

kekgeek1 wrote:

KG4Ever wrote:The trade was even worse as Butler kept us from getting another lottery pick that could have gotten us Michael Porter. Also, keeping pick would have given us an opportunity to draft Donovan Mitchell who I would take any day over Butler.

Also we use so much hindsight on not drafting Mitchell. We were never drafting Mitchell. If we didn't do the trade we had our SG on the future in Lavine. We had a weakness in PF. Markannann was always going to be the pick.

Also it is not Butler fault for us not getting the pick. It is flips fault for trading a pick for Payne who was out of the league before his rookie contract was up.

"We were never drafting Mitchell"

Is that an indictment on Thibs as a talent evaluator? If Mitchell is the BPA you draft him. Top organizations draft BPA. The Wolves historically have only taken the BPA twice: KG and KAT and I thought both those were obvious picks. If we want to win a title we need to draft more BPAs.

No. If Mitchell gets picked Mitchell rarely plays, and thus, you'd have no clue whether he was the best player available because he'd be in a crap situation for him. Hell, Mitchell wouldn't be the guy he is now if Gordon Hayward elects to stay with the Jazz.

and at the end of the day they'd still lose in the short term, which would still keep this team awful.

KG4Ever wrote:

kekgeek1 wrote:

KG4Ever wrote:The trade was even worse as Butler kept us from getting another lottery pick that could have gotten us Michael Porter. Also, keeping pick would have given us an opportunity to draft Donovan Mitchell who I would take any day over Butler.

Also we use so much hindsight on not drafting Mitchell. We were never drafting Mitchell. If we didn't do the trade we had our SG on the future in Lavine. We had a weakness in PF. Markannann was always going to be the pick.

Also it is not Butler fault for us not getting the pick. It is flips fault for trading a pick for Payne who was out of the league before his rookie contract was up.

"We were never drafting Mitchell"

Is that an indictment on Thibs as a talent evaluator? If Mitchell is the BPA you draft him. Top organizations draft BPA. The Wolves historically have only taken the BPA twice: KG and KAT and I thought both those were obvious picks. If we want to win a title we need to draft more BPAs.

I'll answer this one. Yes, if Thibodeau wasn't going to draft Mitchell, that would be an indictment of him as a talent evaluator. Although, to be fair, Markannen could turn out to be a very good player. He had a terrific rookie season.

The argument that criticisms of Thibodeau rely too much on hindsight is misplaced. We are all judged with hindsight because it's only through hindsight that we see the results of our decisions. Any employer with its salt will judge employees by results. Employers look at the sales numbers and fire sales managers who don't hit the company's goals no matter how good the sales manager's decisions looked at the time. Professional sports is no different and shouldn't be. There's plenty to criticize Thibodeau even without the benefit of hindsight, but hindsight should ultimately determine his fate as it does for most of us and other head coaches throughout professional sports.

lipoli390 wrote:

KG4Ever wrote:

kekgeek1 wrote:

KG4Ever wrote:The trade was even worse as Butler kept us from getting another lottery pick that could have gotten us Michael Porter. Also, keeping pick would have given us an opportunity to draft Donovan Mitchell who I would take any day over Butler.

Also we use so much hindsight on not drafting Mitchell. We were never drafting Mitchell. If we didn't do the trade we had our SG on the future in Lavine. We had a weakness in PF. Markannann was always going to be the pick.

Also it is not Butler fault for us not getting the pick. It is flips fault for trading a pick for Payne who was out of the league before his rookie contract was up.

"We were never drafting Mitchell"

Is that an indictment on Thibs as a talent evaluator? If Mitchell is the BPA you draft him. Top organizations draft BPA. The Wolves historically have only taken the BPA twice: KG and KAT and I thought both those were obvious picks. If we want to win a title we need to draft more BPAs.

I'll answer this one. Yes, if Thibodeau wasn't going to draft Mitchell, that would be an indictment of him as a talent evaluator. Although, to be fair, Markannen could turn out to be a very good player. He had a terrific rookie season.

The argument that criticisms of Thibodeau rely too much on hindsight is misplaced. We are all judged with hindsight because it's only through hindsight that we see the results of our decisions. Any employer with its salt will judge employees by results. Employers look at the sales numbers and fire sales managers who don't hit the company's goals no matter how good the sales manager's decisions looked at the time. Professional sports is no different and shouldn't be. There's plenty to criticize Thibodeau even without the benefit of hindsight, but hindsight should ultimately determine his fate as it does for most of us and other head coaches throughout professional sports.

If you are going by results in hindsight I don't really know how you can be critical of a coach/POBO who made a trade that improved the team by 16 wins in one off-season. That's GM of the year type of improvement.

New poster... I like what you guys have to say. Keep up the good work.

but Donovan Mitchell was never going to be the pick at 7. Total hindsight. If you want to use donovan in the equation against the butler trade... then why not go back and mention all the other poor draft choices of the past. Like draft Giannis, or Gobert, or klay, or steph, or hayward/cousins/pg13... or all the other guys in previous years that we now know are better than all the jamokes that the wolves took instead.

It actually could be spun as a reason in favor of taking butler over the 7th pick, because he was a known quantity vs another likely swing and miss for the wolves like all those other years.

If you want to argue that the wolves need to draft better, I dont think anyone would disagree with that statement. They are awful at drafting outside of a couple of hits over the years.

If kat leaves and cites butler as the reason... then the butler deal was bad. Until then, I do the deal every time.

I just think bringing a perfect draft choice into the equation is unrealistic.

Lavine/dunn/markkanen vs butler and Patton should be the comparison. And considering the lavine price tag that has been mentioned... I'm hoping the butler kat combo will survive the bumps. Thibs tho... hopefully he realizes that kat is the player he needs to keep out of all of these guys. I'm hoping for the best.

khans2k5 wrote:

lipoli390 wrote:

KG4Ever wrote:

kekgeek1 wrote:

KG4Ever wrote:The trade was even worse as Butler kept us from getting another lottery pick that could have gotten us Michael Porter. Also, keeping pick would have given us an opportunity to draft Donovan Mitchell who I would take any day over Butler.

Also we use so much hindsight on not drafting Mitchell. We were never drafting Mitchell. If we didn't do the trade we had our SG on the future in Lavine. We had a weakness in PF. Markannann was always going to be the pick.

Also it is not Butler fault for us not getting the pick. It is flips fault for trading a pick for Payne who was out of the league before his rookie contract was up.

"We were never drafting Mitchell"

Is that an indictment on Thibs as a talent evaluator? If Mitchell is the BPA you draft him. Top organizations draft BPA. The Wolves historically have only taken the BPA twice: KG and KAT and I thought both those were obvious picks. If we want to win a title we need to draft more BPAs.

I'll answer this one. Yes, if Thibodeau wasn't going to draft Mitchell, that would be an indictment of him as a talent evaluator. Although, to be fair, Markannen could turn out to be a very good player. He had a terrific rookie season.

The argument that criticisms of Thibodeau rely too much on hindsight is misplaced. We are all judged with hindsight because it's only through hindsight that we see the results of our decisions. Any employer with its salt will judge employees by results. Employers look at the sales numbers and fire sales managers who don't hit the company's goals no matter how good the sales manager's decisions looked at the time. Professional sports is no different and shouldn't be. There's plenty to criticize Thibodeau even without the benefit of hindsight, but hindsight should ultimately determine his fate as it does for most of us and other head coaches throughout professional sports.

If you are going by results in hindsight I don't really know how you can be critical of a coach/POBO who made a trade that improved the team by 16 wins in one off-season. That's GM of the year type of improvement.

But he still has a losing record for the Wolves and trading young guys for a quick fix in Butler and overplaying starters to pad the short term wins and worsening the future is a fireable offense in my book. Don't forgot he is grossly overpaid too. We can't get rid of Thibs fast enough.

KG4Ever wrote:
But he still has a losing record for the Wolves and trading young guys for a quick fix in Butler and overplaying starters to pad the short term wins and worsening the future is a fireable offense in my book. Don't forgot he is grossly overpaid too. We can't get rid of Thibs fast enough.

If Minnesota hadn't made Butler trade, theywould have for sure missed playoffs last year, still wouldn't have had even more cap space this year as they had, they might even close to luxury tax by paying Lavine the money he got or they would have lost him without any compensation. In coming season Butler and Patton have combined salary of 22.5 million, When Dunn, Markkanen, Lavine and another high pick would have had combined salary of 32 million. Even if they would have made last summer bargain signing by getting someone lie Patterson instead of Taj, Wolves would have been over cap in coming season. And unlike now, they would have had payroll more than 100 million also in next season. Now if Butler leaves, Wolves payroll is just 67 millions that would leave plenty of cap space to sign KAT and some help for him and Wiggins. In option with not trading for Butler, they would be over luxury tax by just resigning KAT. Then all salary would have been tied for unproven players and Wolves only hope would have been that someone of that group would have grown to be worth of his salary.

My personal nightmare would have been that they would have kept both Lavine and Wiggins, payed them the money they got and then have more than 45 millions salary per year tied to unproven players that have shown only little improvement during their first four years and that would have prevented them to get any proven players to help KAT to get even playoffs.

Perfectdraft wrote:New poster... I like what you guys have to say. Keep up the good work.

but Donovan Mitchell was never going to be the pick at 7. Total hindsight. If you want to use donovan in the equation against the butler trade... then why not go back and mention all the other poor draft choices of the past. Like draft Giannis, or Gobert, or klay, or steph, or hayward/cousins/pg13... or all the other guys in previous years that we now know are better than all the jamokes that the wolves took instead.

It actually could be spun as a reason in favor of taking butler over the 7th pick, because he was a known quantity vs another likely swing and miss for the wolves like all those other years.

If you want to argue that the wolves need to draft better, I dont think anyone would disagree with that statement. They are awful at drafting outside of a couple of hits over the years.

If kat leaves and cites butler as the reason... then the butler deal was bad. Until then, I do the deal every time.

I just think bringing a perfect draft choice into the equation is unrealistic.

Lavine/dunn/markkanen vs butler and Patton should be the comparison. And considering the lavine price tag that has been mentioned... I'm hoping the butler kat combo will survive the bumps. Thibs tho... hopefully he realizes that kat is the player he needs to keep out of all of these guys. I'm hoping for the best.

Welcome...good thoughts here.