Minnesota Sports Forum

Camden wrote:

FNG wrote:

lipoli390 wrote:I'll pose this question. If the Wolves and Bucks had swapped DLO and Jrue Holiday last summer, would the Wolves have advanced to the second round of the playoffs? The easy answer in my view is yes. I know there wasn't any change of that swap last summer. Nor is there any hope for that swap in the future. My point is that we don't need DLO to be a star. We just need a third core player at Holiday's level, which is a significantly higher level than where DLO's at.

The next question is whether there's a Holiday-caliber player the Wolves can conceivably acquire this summer to replace DLO as our third guy at around $30M per year? I can't think of anyone right now, but that's a question worth pondering.

https://twitter.com/DaneMooreNBA/status/1523095672785756162?s=20&t=vbIkSs6dE9TYLO_ymUSnpQ

Revisionist history, Lip, I know, and a topic we have beaten into the ground. But I also think we would have won the Memphis series if we hadn't done this deal I never supported.

Minnesota wouldn't have won 46 games this season, won the play-in game, and even been matched up with Memphis in a playoff series if that trade wasn't made. We'd be prepared for yet another draft lottery and possibly talks of completely blowing the team up. But yeah, somehow we'd be better off with Andrew Wiggins dragging this team to the cellar as we saw for much of the six years he played in Minnesota. Great take.

You're so delusional. We also very likely would have had a higher pick than kuminga as we were the only team around us not tanking.

FNG wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

Camden wrote:

FNG wrote:

lipoli390 wrote:I'll pose this question. If the Wolves and Bucks had swapped DLO and Jrue Holiday last summer, would the Wolves have advanced to the second round of the playoffs? The easy answer in my view is yes. I know there wasn't any change of that swap last summer. Nor is there any hope for that swap in the future. My point is that we don't need DLO to be a star. We just need a third core player at Holiday's level, which is a significantly higher level than where DLO's at.

The next question is whether there's a Holiday-caliber player the Wolves can conceivably acquire this summer to replace DLO as our third guy at around $30M per year? I can't think of anyone right now, but that's a question worth pondering.

https://twitter.com/DaneMooreNBA/status/1523095672785756162?s=20&t=vbIkSs6dE9TYLO_ymUSnpQ

Revisionist history, Lip, I know, and a topic we have beaten into the ground. But I also think we would have won the Memphis series if we hadn't done this deal I never supported.

Minnesota wouldn't have won 46 games this season, won the play-in game, and even been matched up with Memphis in a playoff series if that trade wasn't made. We'd be prepared for yet another draft lottery and possibly talks of completely blowing the team up. But yeah, somehow we'd be better off with Andrew Wiggins dragging this team to the cellar as we saw for much of the six years he played in Minnesota. Great take.

I don't understand why. Wiggins is a better player than DLO. Add the #1 pick and it's not even debatable. Why wouldn't we have won 46 games this season?

Couldn't agree more. A starting five of Bev/Ant/Wig/Vando/KAT would have been very formidable, and Kuminga would have been a great asset off the bench. Heck, he's now starting in the playoffs for a team that has a chance to be an NBA finalist! Two 2022 all-stars plus an exciting future all-star in Ant and a gritty winner like PatBev. Combine that with the unbelievable good fortune we had avoiding our opponents' best players, and 46 wins would have been achieved...probably more. And this is coming from a guy who thought DLO easily had his best season! But concluding that DLO is better than the 2022 version of Wig/Kuminga is a difficult argument to make.

Anyway, revisionist history. And we still had a very entertaining season!

Exactly. We were very fortunate to win 46 games this year. And obviously we would have acquired another guard to balance the rotation too. How someone, not to mention multiple people, can say that Dlo is a win over Wiggins and kuminga is insane to me.

D-Mac wrote:

FNG wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

Camden wrote:

FNG wrote:

lipoli390 wrote:I'll pose this question. If the Wolves and Bucks had swapped DLO and Jrue Holiday last summer, would the Wolves have advanced to the second round of the playoffs? The easy answer in my view is yes. I know there wasn't any change of that swap last summer. Nor is there any hope for that swap in the future. My point is that we don't need DLO to be a star. We just need a third core player at Holiday's level, which is a significantly higher level than where DLO's at.

The next question is whether there's a Holiday-caliber player the Wolves can conceivably acquire this summer to replace DLO as our third guy at around $30M per year? I can't think of anyone right now, but that's a question worth pondering.

https://twitter.com/DaneMooreNBA/status/1523095672785756162?s=20&t=vbIkSs6dE9TYLO_ymUSnpQ

Revisionist history, Lip, I know, and a topic we have beaten into the ground. But I also think we would have won the Memphis series if we hadn't done this deal I never supported.

Minnesota wouldn't have won 46 games this season, won the play-in game, and even been matched up with Memphis in a playoff series if that trade wasn't made. We'd be prepared for yet another draft lottery and possibly talks of completely blowing the team up. But yeah, somehow we'd be better off with Andrew Wiggins dragging this team to the cellar as we saw for much of the six years he played in Minnesota. Great take.

I don't understand why. Wiggins is a better player than DLO. Add the #1 pick and it's not even debatable. Why wouldn't we have won 46 games this season?

Couldn't agree more. A starting five of Bev/Ant/Wig/Vando/KAT would have been very formidable, and Kuminga would have been a great asset off the bench. Heck, he's now starting in the playoffs for a team that has a chance to be an NBA finalist! Two 2022 all-stars plus an exciting future all-star in Ant and a gritty winner like PatBev. Combine that with the unbelievable good fortune we had avoiding our opponents' best players, and 46 wins would have been achieved...probably more. And this is coming from a guy who thought DLO easily had his best season! But concluding that DLO is better than the 2022 version of Wig/Kuminga is a difficult argument to make.

Anyway, revisionist history. And we still had a very entertaining season!

Exactly. We were very fortunate to win 46 games this year. And obviously we would have acquired another guard to balance the rotation too. How someone, not to mention multiple people, can say that Dlo is a win over Wiggins and kuminga is insane to me.

It's not just this board. I've spoken with a lot of Wolves fans who just wanted to move on from Wiggins and didn't really care what it took to do it. He gets all the blame for us not winning during his tenure here, but he's 3 times more mature than Towns is, and is proving he can be a vital cog on a championship caliber team. He's a damn good player, and much better than the fan base ever gave him credit for. I'm really happy for the success he's having. He will never be as good as the hype he had coming out of high school. I say so what?

I want to say Wiggins does not suck, he is a solid NBA player. He is proving he can be the 5th option on a possibly title team. When Wiggins becomes a free agent in a year I wouldn't mind Wiggins coming back to MN. But lets not kid ourselves that Wiggins success with the warriors is that he is playing with 3 future HOF. Especially Steph.

Like since Wiggins got to the warriors the Warriors are 10-24 when Wiggins plays but Steph doesn't and 4-1 when Steph plays and Wiggins doesn't (small sample size)

If the Wolves could of added a HOF PG, One of the best defensive players of all time and an elite 3 and D player maybe the Wolves could of been successful with Wiggins.

Wiggins wasn't the problem with the wolves but he wasn't the solution but he was paid like it. They needed to move on. Rosas went with a more playmaking solution in Dlo and it has worked when Dlo and Kat have played together. Wolves might need to move on from Dlo also because the context of the current Wolves roster is changing. At the end of the day Dlo and Wiggins are both probably 17-23 million dollar per year players. The trade has helped both teams the only way the trade goes bad in my opinion is if Kuminga becomes an all star caliber.

FNG wrote:

Q-was-here wrote:

FNG wrote:

Q-was-here wrote:There is no way Ant was the "obvious choice" if we had kept Wiggins. He was by no means the obvious choice among many astute draft observers on this board. In hindsight, I think we're all glad we got him, but that wasn't the case at the time. They overlap positions, as both play a lot of wing and both (at the time) were known as scorers first and foremost. Wiseman or Ball likely would have been the pick.

In my mind, this trade was mutually beneficial. It gave Golden State an athletic wing and primary defender and it gave Minnesota a playmaker and FOK (friend of KAT). Kek has exhaustively demonstrated that when DLO and KAT play together we easily have a winning record. That was simply not the case with KAT and Wiggins. Had it been, we would have never traded him.

All of that being said, we may eventually need to move on from DLO. And that's OK too. But no one can doubt that he was a major contributor to a great season and helped this franchise take a big step forward.

Q, it would have been an obvious choice for me...I saw Ant as head and shoulders above the other two guys. There was no video on Wiseman other than him dunking on much shorter AAU guys (and a few much shorter guys in college) during an abbreviated pre-season...WAY too risky for a #1 pick. And although I was not here during the draft discussion, I wonder if there were many LaMelo supporters on the board...I admit he's been a pleasant surprise, but I certainly was wary of the whole "Ball Experience". I get that they are both wings, but I have always seen Ant as a SG and Wig as a SF. I would have left a bag of dog poop on Rosas's doorstep if he had drafted one of those other two guys. (although I guess I wouldn't have been as furious if he had made a nice trade down) But he did some other things that made me scratch my head, so who knows.

It may have been an obvious choice for you and congrats on your prescience, but that did not mean it would have been an obvious choice for the front office if Wiggins were still on the roster. You are making an assumption which may not be true.

Ha, I'm not so prescient...I remember being excited about Derrick Williams and Wes Johnson! But this one seemed easy to me at the time (although I'll admit that with hindsight Ball is much better than I thought)...I just couldn't see chancing a #1 pick on a guy like Wiseman who had only played a handful of pre-season games against mostly substandard competition. He may still turn out to be servicable or he may turn out to be Greg Oden...but whatever his final destiny, I didn't have enough data points on him to consider him for #1- unlike Ant who we had hours of video on from a full year of college basketball against good competition.

But it seems like we've veered away from the original point that Dane Moore made this morning...the irony of Wig and Kuminga starting and playing so well against a team that Finchie had to bench DLO against in a critical 4th quarter. But we do tend to veer a little on this board!

FNG I don't know how you can spew +/- stats all year and then say Dlo sucked in the playoffs when he was #2 on the wolves in playoff +/- (for the record I think Dlo sucked) and Kuminga is a 14th out of 14 players on the warriors on +/- this playoffs so far. So by your standards what you should love Dlo and be upset with Finch that he benched him

kekgeek1 wrote:I want to say Wiggins does not suck, he is a solid NBA player. He is proving he can be the 5th option on a possibly title team. When Wiggins becomes a free agent in a year I wouldn't mind Wiggins coming back to MN. But lets not kid ourselves that Wiggins success with the warriors is that he is playing with 3 future HOF. Especially Steph.

Like since Wiggins got to the warriors the Warriors are 10-24 when Wiggins plays but Steph doesn't and 4-1 when Steph plays and Wiggins doesn't (small sample size)

If the Wolves could of added a HOF PG, One of the best defensive players of all time and an elite 3 and D player maybe the Wolves could of been successful with Wiggins.

Wiggins wasn't the problem with the wolves but he wasn't the solution but he was paid like it. They needed to move on. Rosas went with a more playmaking solution in Dlo and it has worked when Dlo and Kat have played together. Wolves might need to move on from Dlo also because the context of the current Wolves roster is changing. At the end of the day Dlo and Wiggins are both probably 17-23 million dollar per year players. The trade has helped both teams the only way the trade goes bad in my opinion is if Kuminga becomes an all star caliber.

And that is indeed the money line right there. And you have done an excellent job documenting a trend that looks the exact opposite when DLO is in or out of the Wolves lineup.

Again, I view this trade as a mutually acceptable one. It was good for both franchises.

The good news is we have picks, expiring contracts, and a rising star in Ant. DLO will ultimately not be the lynchpin (or albatross depending on how you look at it) that this franchise revolves around.

kekgeek1 wrote:

FNG wrote:

Q-was-here wrote:

FNG wrote:

Q-was-here wrote:There is no way Ant was the "obvious choice" if we had kept Wiggins. He was by no means the obvious choice among many astute draft observers on this board. In hindsight, I think we're all glad we got him, but that wasn't the case at the time. They overlap positions, as both play a lot of wing and both (at the time) were known as scorers first and foremost. Wiseman or Ball likely would have been the pick.

In my mind, this trade was mutually beneficial. It gave Golden State an athletic wing and primary defender and it gave Minnesota a playmaker and FOK (friend of KAT). Kek has exhaustively demonstrated that when DLO and KAT play together we easily have a winning record. That was simply not the case with KAT and Wiggins. Had it been, we would have never traded him.

All of that being said, we may eventually need to move on from DLO. And that's OK too. But no one can doubt that he was a major contributor to a great season and helped this franchise take a big step forward.

Q, it would have been an obvious choice for me...I saw Ant as head and shoulders above the other two guys. There was no video on Wiseman other than him dunking on much shorter AAU guys (and a few much shorter guys in college) during an abbreviated pre-season...WAY too risky for a #1 pick. And although I was not here during the draft discussion, I wonder if there were many LaMelo supporters on the board...I admit he's been a pleasant surprise, but I certainly was wary of the whole "Ball Experience". I get that they are both wings, but I have always seen Ant as a SG and Wig as a SF. I would have left a bag of dog poop on Rosas's doorstep if he had drafted one of those other two guys. (although I guess I wouldn't have been as furious if he had made a nice trade down) But he did some other things that made me scratch my head, so who knows.

It may have been an obvious choice for you and congrats on your prescience, but that did not mean it would have been an obvious choice for the front office if Wiggins were still on the roster. You are making an assumption which may not be true.

Ha, I'm not so prescient...I remember being excited about Derrick Williams and Wes Johnson! But this one seemed easy to me at the time (although I'll admit that with hindsight Ball is much better than I thought)...I just couldn't see chancing a #1 pick on a guy like Wiseman who had only played a handful of pre-season games against mostly substandard competition. He may still turn out to be servicable or he may turn out to be Greg Oden...but whatever his final destiny, I didn't have enough data points on him to consider him for #1- unlike Ant who we had hours of video on from a full year of college basketball against good competition.

But it seems like we've veered away from the original point that Dane Moore made this morning...the irony of Wig and Kuminga starting and playing so well against a team that Finchie had to bench DLO against in a critical 4th quarter. But we do tend to veer a little on this board!

FNG I don't know how you can spew +/- stats all year and then say Dlo sucked in the playoffs when he was #2 on the wolves in playoff +/- (for the record I think Dlo sucked) and Kuminga is a 14th out of 14 players on the warriors on +/- this playoffs so far. So by your standards what you should love Dlo and be upset with Finch that he benched him

Great observation, kek, and one that I noted too! Keep in mind, as we have always talked about before: ALL stats are tricky things, and need to be analyzed over larger sample sizes than a 6-game series. Over a tiny sample size, perception is often more important than stats. Take Ben Simmons 2021 playoff performance, for example. He had one of the greatest on/off line during the playoffs I have ever seen...Philly was absolutely dominant throughout the playoffs when he was on the court. But what do most NBA fans remember when they talk about Simmons in last year's playoffs? His pass at a critical moment when he could have made a wide open dunk. Similarly, what are most Wolves fans going to remember about DLO in the Griz series...his positive on/off over a very small sample size, or the fact that Finchie deemed him unplayable when the series was on the line?

That's what I love about basketball. Stats are terrific for telling you a lot about a player's value over a career, and even over a season. But if you are an astute observer, you're going to deemphasize stats in a short series and rely more on what you see. You're going to rely on your own eye test more. And I think almost everyone here has the same impression of how DLO played overall during this year's playoffs. And at least for me, how a guy shows up under the bright lights tells me much more about their overall value than how they play in less meaningful games during the regular season. I loved DLO all season and he looked great playing against wounded or tanking teams. But almost all of us here would agree (and I'll include Finchie in here) he was a completely different player when we really needed him in the playoffs against a healthy team that was interested in playing defense. And yes, that is an enormous factor to me as I evaluate whether or not we should try to move him this summer. I'm solidly in the camp of making every effort to move DLO this summer.

FNG - You've made a good case for moving DLO, but I'm not there yet. Yes, DLO failed under the bright lights of playoff intensity. But that's one playoff series. He had a terrific regular season and we can't say definitely that his poor showing in the playoffs this year would likely repeat itself in future playoff series. He hasn't had much playoff experience and he's still barely 26 years old. Future hall-of-famer, Chris Paul, has just had two terrible playoff games.

I'm in the camp of wanting to explore possible DLO deals this summer. But in my view, whether we move him has to depend on what we can get in return. So now I'll ask two questions. First, would you trade DLO (and maybe a couple 2nd round picks) for Simmons? I actually think the Nets would do that deal (probably without the 2nd round picks) in light of Ben's back surgery and the length of his contract. Second, if not a deal for Simmons, what realistic trade scenarios do you see out there this summer that you believe would be fair value for DLO and make the Wolves better next season, including the playoffs?

Lip, I think saying DLO had a terrific season is a stretch. He had a good run after the all star break, but didn't even finish the season all that strong. He played 65 games and was probably good in half of those. It's like our own playing careers, we tend to remember the good things we did and then push the not so good things back in to our memory bank. When he was good he was very good, but overall he had a pretty mediocre season.

lipoli390 wrote:FNG - You've made a good case for moving DLO, but I'm not there yet. Yes, DLO failed under the bright lights of playoff intensity. But that's one playoff series. He had a terrific regular season and we can't say definitely that his poor showing in the playoffs this year would likely repeat itself in future playoff series. He hasn't had much playoff experience and he's still barely 26 years old. Future hall-of-famer, Chris Paul, has just had two terrible playoff games.

I'm in the camp of wanting to explore possible DLO deals this summer. But in my view, whether we move him has to depend on what we can get in return. So now I'll ask two questions. First, would you trade DLO (and maybe a couple 2nd round picks) for Simmons? I actually think the Nets would do that deal (probably without the 2nd round picks) in light of Ben's back surgery and the length of his contract. Second, if not a deal for Simmons, what realistic trade scenarios do you see out there this summer that you believe would be fair value for DLO and make the Wolves better next season, including the playoffs?

Bright lights...I'm not dismissing anything else Russell did or didn't do especially in the Memphis series but are we just going to forget that Russell was terrific against the Clippers in the play in game that did absolutely matter?