Minnesota Sports Forum

Shabazz is the guy I think could earn a starting spot and should. I think it is time to move Martin to the bench. He just was great in December before going down and I think him and Wiggins would really be great together with Towns working into the mix.

If we had unlimited roster size, I'm all for keeping AB. However, we don't and what if the guy we would have kept on our roster becomes a star. What has changed for us to have any real hope that AB will become a good player in the league? What has he done this offseason? The guy should come in lean and chiseled and be outworking everybody on the roster. His career may be on the line and he should be as hungry as can be. And if not, let him go and use your resources on someone else.

TeamRicky wrote:If we had unlimited roster size, I'm all for keeping AB. However, we don't and what if the guy we would have kept on our roster becomes a star. What has changed for us to have any real hope that AB will become a good player in the league? What has he done this offseason? The guy should come in lean and chiseled and be outworking everybody on the roster. His career may be on the line and he should be as hungry as can be. And if not, let him go and use your resources on someone else.

Being lean and chiseled isn't AB's problem. It was focus and confidence. Who are the other guys that we may let go who have a chance to be a star? Payne, Hummel, Buddinger ....?

Sjm - great point. I would certainly agree all 3 of those guys have lower ceilings then AB.

I wondered if Neal was a guy Flip would pursue to fill out the backcourt. Guess not. Lorenzo is still the leading candidate!

Darren Wolfson ?@DWolfsonKSTP 8m8 minutes ago
FA Gary Neal won't take any visits -- he knows the teams already. Won't be back w/ the #Twolves. S-&-T possible.

60WinTim wrote:I wondered if Neal was a guy Flip would pursue to fill out the backcourt. Guess not. Lorenzo is still the leading candidate!

Darren Wolfson ?@DWolfsonKSTP 8m8 minutes ago
FA Gary Neal won't take any visits -- he knows the teams already. Won't be back w/ the #Twolves. S-&-T possible.

Neal didn't want to be a wolf when traded to us last season. His camp wanted a buyout, so I felt it was a forgone conclusion that he would be leaving us.

TeamRicky wrote:If we had unlimited roster size, I'm all for keeping AB. However, we don't and what if the guy we would have kept on our roster becomes a star. What has changed for us to have any real hope that AB will become a good player in the league? What has he done this offseason? The guy should come in lean and chiseled and be outworking everybody on the roster. His career may be on the line and he should be as hungry as can be. And if not, let him go and use your resources on someone else.

I don't think there are any other fringe rotation guys on the team or unsigned young free agents with the potential of Bennett that we'd be missing out on if we kept AB. Forget that he was the top pick. He was still a high lottery talent going into that draft. As crappy as he played last year, he showed improvement basically across the board in only 2 more MPG's. I think KG and Bjelica will get most of the minutes though and we've seen Bennett struggle when he gets table scrap minutes. I'm just gonna be pissed off when we trade Bennett for shit only to have him show even more improvement and possibly become a rotation player next year for someone else because people feel like they can peg a kid as a bad player when he's a 20 year old kid.

I am gonna do it...talk about Payne. He looks to be on the roster for the best 2 years and we now have a better idea what the front putt looks like with Towns and Bjelica on board so what does that mean for Payne? Keep in mind I am not a fan of his as a basketball player.

He may not get too many minutes even on the nights that Pek and KG don't play. He has the length to play as a center but got pushed around bigtime last year. A lot of teams don't play a true center off the bench anyway so he may be able to play there some anyway or pair with Dieng or Towns and figure out the best/worst case of who each guy should match up with.

What is to like about Payne?

1. Length and athletic ability. He has legit center length and his explosive athletic ability is well above average. Sadly a lot of times he doesn't seem to use these traits too well.

That's not quite it but I don't want to go overboard here either. The thing I think that MAY separate Payne from the length athletic guy you find in the D-league is he has a theoretical jumpshot so he has some sort of offensive weapon that some guys don't have. Last year it looked bad most of the time.

If you want to take an optimistic view of Payne you hope he finds his jumper and it's just enough to be effective. Lo would say he played hard and then offensively too fast and then he probably tried to slow down. He might have been a little less likely to crash around after taking out Dieng idk.

We have discussed his weaknesses pretty extensively but it will be interesting to see him in SL. It's just a few games in a contrived setting but I do think you can see growth of a player from one season to the next in what they do or don't do or can't do. It would be nice if he makes some sort of step forward and becomes halfway decent. Imagine if he could even be an Anthony Tolliver type impact guy? He has a ways to go to be even that good (kinda sad) but I'd take that right now.

Could our summer league team be the most talented ever? Towns, Zach, Payne, Bazz, Jones, Bjelica. It's not going to look much like a summer league team.

One other thing about Shabazz in the starting lineup. He is aggressive. I think he is one of those guys that won't settle for getting pushed around. We have a team of nice guys and we need a little edge in the mix too.