Minnesota Sports Forum

Denver scores on 12 of their last 14 possessions.

That is after Jazz scored 8 of their last 12 possessions on Monday.

This is also a reason why we should not pay Naz this offseason and let him walk, he's not starting caliber and you don't pay centers if they are not starting caliber

and why was this team looking for threes. Jokic has 5 fouls. Make the refs make a call.

They need Rudy.

Opposing centers last 2 games averaging 25.5 pts and 16 rebs with Rudy out. Just to easy against Naz and Garza/Knight

Ant needs to be better, D-Lo needs to be better, and the Timberwolves need to get healthy. They probably should have won this game without their two All-NBA players and a quality rotation player. Execution remains a question, especially in late game situations. Any idea what Minnesota was running offensively down the stretch? Seemed like the idea was to defer to Ant and whatever he created was what they were prepared to live or die with. Would have liked to have seen more structure, especially coming out of timeouts. Also needed to get the ball out of Jamal Murray's hands once he heated up. Feels like he didn't miss in the fourth quarter. Difficult ask when he shares the floor with Nikola Jokic.

A lot to clean up, but the team fought hard tonight against a really good team. Far from a bad loss, but one they would have liked to have won, and could have won.

Anthony Edwards shot 2-9 in the second half tonight. Not blaming him for the loss or anything like that because there's shared responsibility to go around, but it's tough to win in the NBA when your top player(s) don't perform or have an off night. He'll be better. Not worried about that kid.

Dlo had a really weird game tonight. Wolves short handed tonight and he finishes 7th on the team in shots when he is paid to score (he shot 50%) and lead the team in turnovers and they were all so lazy, he should of had another passing the ball back to slow Mo before he crossed half court.

Just a weird seemingly uninterested game from him. He was not the problem tonight (Ant struggled and Naz is one of the worst center defenders in the NBA) but he was weird tonight

The better team won tonight. Credit the Wolves for hanging in there. This game wasn't about defense. This was an offensive battle and the Wolves just needed to score more points. McDaniels stepped up offensively tonight. If Ant had simply hit his scoring average, the Wolves would have outscored Denver. If Russell had been hot and scored 20+ points, which he's perfectly capable of doing, the Wolves would have won. If KAT had played and was healthy, the Wolves would have outscored the Nuggets.

I want to see Garza starting at center until Rudy returns. Just want to see how that works out. He's a scoring machine and I don't think he's worse than Naz defensively.

lipoli390 wrote:The better team won tonight. Credit the Wolves for hanging in there. This game wasn't about defense. This was an offensive battle and the Wolves just needed to score more points. McDaniels stepped up offensively tonight. If Ant had simply hit his scoring average, the Wolves would have outscored Denver. If Russell had been hot and scored 20+ points, which he's perfectly capable of doing, the Wolves would have won. If KAT had played and was healthy, the Wolves would have outscored the Nuggets.

I want to see Garza starting at center until Rudy returns. Just want to see how that works out. He's a scoring machine and I don't think he's worse than Naz defensively.

One thing about this year's squad is that while it's a relatively deep team, we don't have a singular top-end talent. There might be only four or five teams in the league where we would clearly have the best player on the floor at tip-off time. Every other match up it's the other team with the best player. Ant just isn't there yet, but hopefully he will be some day.

crazysauce wrote:Ice in his veins yet can't hit the rim on a wide open shot

There's a lot to criticize about Russell's overall game, but I'm not going to blame him on this shot. It was far from wide open, and he essentially caught a grenade from a teammate (Naz?). He didn't make the shot, but I'll give him credit for getting to the right spot and recognizing the clock was running down.

But I'm more comfortable ripping DLo than praising him, so I'll mention three things I found maddening about his game last night:

1) Careless lazy passing...he was credited with 4 turnovers, but I counted at least 5

2) Lazy transition defense. Typically the PG has to be the first guy back on defense (unless he is caught under the offensive backboard), and DLo has always struggled with this. Most frustrating was his loafing after the sideline backcourt inbound by Jokic that resulted in an easy layup at a critical juncture of the game. The camera caught Finchie's expression, and it was as angry as I ever seen him. It's quite telling that there were several times that I noted Naz getting back on defense far ahead of DLo...unacceptable.

3) His continuing to prefer hanging around (generally ineffectively) in the paint on defense rather than focusing on his man or rotating on the perimeter.

Look, I'm not at all blaming this loss on DLo...far from it. We put up a good fight despite missing four players against a very good team, and DLo's shooting and 7 assists helped. But the above three flaws are too noticeable to anyone who understands the game, and even worse, the second and third seem to happen almost every night.

FNG wrote:

crazysauce wrote:Ice in his veins yet can't hit the rim on a wide open shot

There's a lot to criticize about Russell's overall game, but I'm not going to blame him on this shot. It was far from wide open, and he essentially caught a grenade from a teammate (Naz?). He didn't make the shot, but I'll give him credit for getting to the right spot and recognizing the clock was running down.

But I'm more comfortable ripping DLo than praising him, so I'll mention three things I found maddening about his game last night:

1) Careless lazy passing...he was credited with 4 turnovers, but I counted at least 5

2) Lazy transition defense. Typically the PG has to be the first guy back on defense (unless he is caught under the offensive backboard), and DLo has always struggled with this. Most frustrating was his loafing after the sideline backcourt inbound by Jokic that resulted in an easy layup at a critical juncture of the game. The camera caught Finchie's expression, and it was as angry as I ever seen him. It's quite telling that there were several times that I noted Naz getting back on defense far ahead of DLo...unacceptable.

3) His continuing to prefer hanging around (generally ineffectively) in the paint on defense rather than focusing on his man or rotating on the perimeter.

Look, I'm not at all blaming this loss on DLo...far from it. We put up a good fight despite missing four players against a very good team, and DLo's shooting and 7 assists helped. But the above three flaws are too noticeable to anyone who understands the game, and even worse, the second and third seem to happen almost every night.

I think it's these things that do not show up in a box score anywhere that ultimately leads to DLO not being on the team next season. Whether it's through a trade or letting him walk this offseason, I can't imagine him coming back.

To your point, he's not the sole reason we lost and he's not the sole reason we are under .500. But the focus on him is deserved since his contract expires and he's our starting PG.

Ant has flaws, some of which are frankly similar to DLO's. He coughs up the ball too much, sometimes chucks up ill-advised shots, isn't as efficient as we'd like him to be, falls asleep on defense at times. But the reality is he's our future. So we need a guy next to him that largely plays mistake-free basketball and does all the little stuff well.