Minnesota Sports Forum

longstrangetrip wrote:Shumway, I just read Robson's latest piece on Thibs, and it made me rethink your assertion that our second half collapses may be due to tightness.


https://twitter.com/brittrobson?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

I found it to be a balanced review of Thibs early performance here, but one part stood out for me...the Wolves gave up almost 36 points per quarter in the 4 4th quarters of losses before the Chicago game. That's a defensive collapse, not an offensive collapse, and I would argue that tightness has much more of an impact on offensive performance than defensive. No, there's another reason why we can't stop anyone in the 4th quarter, and Thibs' reputation makes me continue to think it's due to his grueling practices along with excessive game minutes compared to our opponents...frankly, we're getting run off the court in 4th quarters.

I wouldn't even say that I'm completely sold on my own theory. Just trying to find some sort of explanation for the disappointments of this season. Speculating is what we do best as fans posting on message boards.

One of the reasons I've been a bit sceptical of pinning it on Thibs' overtraining is that it doesn't seem a consistent fade-out at the end of games. Early in the season, it was coming out of half time being flat. We'd seem to give up a big lead, and then stabilise at the end of the game after it was too late.

In my mind, I put that down to being mentally fragile. It seemed that the opposition would get a bit of a run-on and we'd 'play not to lose' instead of playing to win. Then once we'd given up the lead, we'd throw caution to the wind and make it close but fail to get over the line. In my mind, that all reinforces that it's a mental focus issue rather than a fatigue issue. Perhaps Thibs' approach is contributing to the mental issues that we're having (or at the very least, failing to fix them to date). I believe Lip was speculating early on that coming out after half time flat may have been a result of his constant negative tone pulling the wind out of them at half time.

As Britt alludes to, there have also been some disastrous 4th quarters recently. But again, it just seems an issue of inconsistency. We have patches where we go flat, and we fail to stem the bleeding when the opposition gets a run on.

As an optimist, I'm still hoping that is just a mental quirk that we need to fight over. The solution could be as simple as a couple of game winning streak to breed a bit of confidence.

Shumway wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:

Duke13 wrote:LST, are we out of the woods yet concerning our tired legs? Looked pretty fresh the first half. Or if they come out flat this half is it possible the effects of the long grueling practices take time to take hold of the young puppies?

Duke, if you had ever actually played the game, you'd know that a fatigued team might show up strong at the start of the game but won't be able to keep it up later in the game. That's why the Wolves have been so terrible in the second halves of most games this year. Let's see...how did the Thibsberwolves do in the 4th quarter and overtime tonight? Oh, they were outscored 44-29? But I thought the Rockets were on the back end of a BTB...why were they so much fresher than us at the end of the game? Hmm...interesting.

New night...same script.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not with this post.

The Wolves last two days of practices were more grueling than the Rockets playing a game in Houston last night?

I didn't see the game, abe, but yeah...apparently so. I always found 2 hours of full court practice to be more grueling than playing 25 minutes in a blowout win.

It's the 10th or 11th time this season that the Wolves have completely collapsed in the second half. Yes, some of the collapse is because of Thibs' bizarre choice to make Wig the PG late in games, but it's also evident that our opponents are invariably fresher at the end of games. While our opponents seem to be able to dial their defense up a notch at crunch time, the Wolves' defense goes the other direction...defensive rotations are notably slower, leading to open threes and uncontested layups that just don't happen as frequently in the first half of games.

I didn't see the game tonight, so I don't know that we looked more tired at the end of the game than Houston...but reading the GDT, it certainly sounds like it...yet again. Thibs was quoted in the paper that he was looking forward to having a break in the schedule so he could conduct a couple intense practices. As soon as I read that, it was pretty easy to predict another second half collapse. Many of you will pin the latest collapse on "our youth". But we were younger last year than we are now, and the biggest change from last year is the addition of a coach with a reputation for grueling in-season practices.

I think your bias is showing. Again.

Thibs can be ripped for this one. Take your pick... dumb last play. Running out of timeouts. Putting Wiggins in iso after iso late in the game again. Et al.

But practice? We talkin about practice? You're not an NBA player. These are 21 year old, finely tuned and perfectly conditioned athletes.

A practice didn't make Towns/Wiggins get confused on a half-hearted Ryan Anderson pick so both guys stuck with Harden... leaving Ryan Anderson wide open.

A practice didn't make Towns leave a wide open Ariza to stop Harden's too-easy drive... while up by 3 with only seconds left.



[Note: Playing dumb is how teams lose. The Wolves play dumb.]

Like I said, I didn't see the game...so maybe we didn't seem to be so weary at the end of this game as we have so many other times I observed this year. I'm just tired of the same old script, and trying to come up with a logical reason the same roster regularly collapses late in games this year when they weren't having the same collapses at the end of last year. And having read Noah's quotes about Thibs' grueling practices, it seems as likely a reason as any for why this keeps happening.

Am I prejudiced against Thibodeau? Yeah, I guess I am...I just didn't think he was the right guy to coach this young roster, but things are actually turning out much worse than I expected. But despite my prejudice, I'm open to other supportable theories about why we continue to collapse late in games...as long as those theories recognize this is a new phenomenon this year.

I'll offer a theory for you LST. And it fits the criteria of being a new phenomenon this year.

I speculate that the weight of expectations has had an effect on us early in the year and it has snowballed into a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. We've played great basketball for stretches in nearly every game, but have seemed to tense up when the pressure comes in and we've failed to execute. The mental side of sport is so important. We haven't learned the self control yet to grind out a result when the blowtorch is applied. That'd also go a long way towards explaining the Hero-ball tat we've seeemd to revert to when games tighten up.

Fortunately, it seems something that we may be able to snap out of at any time. A couple of wins in a row and the confidence comes and we learn to focus but relax. We seem to have the talent and the work ethic and attitude. Just gotta put it together 'upstairs'.

Shumway -- I agree with you that a part of this may be the weight of expectations. As you said, the mental part of the game is so important. And I agree that putting a few consecutive wins together could really turn this thing around. That's why last night's loss to Houston was so disheartening. We had the game in hand, outplaying the Rockets for all but the final 2 -3 minutes of the game, and then lost. In so doing, we lost what would have been our second win in a row and, I think, some nice momentum going forward into the Christmas Holiday and beyond. A real bummer!

longstrangetrip wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:Shumway, I just read Robson's latest piece on Thibs, and it made me rethink your assertion that our second half collapses may be due to tightness.


https://twitter.com/brittrobson?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

I found it to be a balanced review of Thibs early performance here, but one part stood out for me...the Wolves gave up almost 36 points per quarter in the 4 4th quarters of losses before the Chicago game. That's a defensive collapse, not an offensive collapse, and I would argue that tightness has much more of an impact on offensive performance than defensive. No, there's another reason why we can't stop anyone in the 4th quarter, and Thibs' reputation makes me continue to think it's due to his grueling practices along with excessive game minutes compared to our opponents...frankly, we're getting run off the court in 4th quarters.

Maybe. Or it has something to do with a team woefully inept at being aware on the basketball court.

We've been offering tangible examples of mind lapses at critical parts of games recently. Are the players overloaded with too much information and that's causing confusion and gaffes?

Or are they simply physically spent like you seem to be suggesting?

I'll entertain the first option. Not the second, if you're attributing that exhaustion to a walkthrough practice the day before.

Again, ripping Thibs for (xx) other things is cool with me. We can walk through them if necessary and all need to be at least considered. But to rip him for trying to teach a ridiculously unaware team how to play basketball... and to say that's too PHYSICALLY draining on 21 year old kids... ummmm... no.


[Edit: Oh oh. As I write this, word is that Thibs was so upset with the loss that he had every player show up at Target Center at 6:00 this morning to run "killers" for an hour without a water break.]

Ha, not fair, abe. My disappointment in this year and concerns about Thibs' style run so deep that my initial reaction to your humorous edit was "See, see...that's exactly what I was talking about!". Just like Thibs, I need to dial it back a few notches...

Your "killers" story reminds me of why I'm prejudiced against grueling day-before-game practices (and yes, I do think that a long full-court practice can be more taxing than a blowout game). My high school laid an egg in a game the day before Thanksgiving my junior year, and our coach called for a 3-hour practice the next afternoon (yes, Thanksgiving) which included what seemed like an hour of killers. Some of the guys had already eaten their holiday meal, and were barfing all over the court. "Killers" have been known as "Turkeys" at my school ever since. But more on point, we had a holiday tournament starting the next day, and everyone's legs were so shot from the day before that we lost by 20 to a team I still think we were better than.

We all have prejudice to some degree, but sometimes it helps to understand the back story...

That sucks. Seriously.

But despite never being in an NBA practice... I'm 99.999999999999% certain it's nothing like that.