Minnesota Sports Forum

So why did we lose last night? The underlying reason could be tired legs from the night before coupled with the loss of Jeff Teague. I also clearly think it was the lack of ball-movement in the 4th quarter, which as Abe pointed out played right into Milwaukee's hands given how they defend.

But looking on the surface for the direct causes, it's obvious.

First, we scored less than 100 points. As I've said all season, the Wolves have to score at least 100 points to win and generally it has to be at least 105 and often 110. This team needs to play some defense of course, but to win this team needs be an offensive machine because we're a team of scorers. Adding Teague to replace Rubio made us even more of a scoring versus defending team.

Second, we relied too much on Crawford. He ended up shooting 4-13 from the field and 0-5 from behind the arc. I he makes just 2 of his 5 three-point attempts, the Wolves likely win the game. I love the guy and what he's brought to the team. He's that instant-offense scoring machine every good team needs -- a guy who will fearlessly shoot and make shots from anywhere. But like many shooting specialists, he runs hot and cold and missing shots doesn't deter him from continuing to take shots. With a big lead in the 3rd quarter, Crawford jacking up shots was the last thing we needed. I understand why he was in there. With Teague out, the Wolves needed Crawford in there for ballhandling.

Third, we didn't make our free throws. The Wolves shot 26 free throws, but missed 7 of them.

Put it all together and you can see the road map to our loss last night -- missed free throws, and Crawford's poor shooting coupled with over-reliance on Crawford. Put another way, if we had made just 3 of our 7 missed free throws and Crawford had hit just one of his 5 missed threes along with only 1 of his 5 missed twos, the Wolves would have scored 104 points and won the game.

lipoli390 wrote:So why did we lose last night? The underlying reason could be tired legs from the night before coupled with the loss of Jeff Teague. I also clearly think it was the lack of ball-movement in the 4th quarter, which as Abe pointed out played right into Milwaukee's hands given how they defend.

But looking on the surface for the direct causes, it's obvious.

First, we scored less than 100 points. As I've said all season, the Wolves have to score at least 100 points to win and generally it has to be at least 105 and often 110. This team needs to play some defense of course, but to win this team needs be an offensive machine because we're a team of scorers. Adding Teague to replace Rubio made us even more of a scoring versus defending team.

Second, we relied too much on Crawford. He ended up shooting 4-13 from the field and 0-5 from behind the arc. I he makes just 2 of his 5 three-point attempts, the Wolves likely win the game. I love the guy and what he's brought to the team. He's that instant-offense scoring machine every good team needs -- a guy who will fearlessly shoot and make shots from anywhere. But like many shooting specialists, he runs hot and cold and missing shots doesn't deter him from continuing to take shots. With a big lead in the 3rd quarter, Crawford jacking up shots was the last thing we needed. I understand why he was in there. With Teague out, the Wolves needed Crawford in there for ballhandling.

Third, we didn't make our free throws. The Wolves shot 26 free throws, but missed 7 of them.

Put it all together and you can see the road map to our loss last night -- missed free throws, and Crawford's poor shooting coupled with over-reliance on Crawford. Put another way, if we had made just 3 of our 7 missed free throws and Crawford had hit just one of his 5 missed threes along with only 1 of his 5 missed twos, the Wolves would have scored 104 points and won the game.

While true... it's a two-way street.

Couldn't Milwaukee fans retort with "if we just made the two dunks we missed"...

After watching this team collapse on consecutive nights, it seems obvious what is happening. As important as Butler is to this team, he shouldn't be bringing up the ball. We went from a beautiful exciting ball moving offense getting one easy bucket after another, to watching Jimmy "Hero ball", and when I say watching I not only mean the fans but the other 4 wolves on the court as well.

This team has three problems that I see. The first I just mentioned above, the second being Thibs loves him some hero ball. The third is that Wiggins has the exact opposite approach of Jimmy. When he is on the floor with the second unit he still fades away on the weak side. He needs to be taking control in that situation. Playing with Jimmy is having an adverse effect on Wiggins. He simply has no desire to insert himself into the offense. Unlike most NBA players, Wiggins doesn't seem to care whether he scores points or not.

I think Hicks posted after last nights game that Butler won't be able to get away with the hero ball tactics against better teams. IT is just too easy to stop him. Butler routinely dribbled himself into a double team on the baseline, or threw up an off balanced fade-away jumper. Sure those are going to fall on some nights, but I doubt that will be the norm. This loss had very little to do with the bench, simply because they never got their hands on the ball until there was 5 seconds or less on the clock.

Having a ball moving offense throughout the second half would have helped our team conserve energy as well. Butler's D was less than stellar, watching guys walk around him like he was a cone. Maybe a little less hero ball and more team play would have helped him on a back to back last night.

I'm not even upset about this loss and I have no issue with the minutes distribution against Denver. I feel in a b2b if you're in game 1 you go for it, get the win in hand and not handicap your chance to win one with an eye towards winning two. Combine that with a depleted roster, no teague much of the Denver game or at all against the Bucks, no Tyus for much of the Bucks game, and a Belly not rounded into shape. Had he dialed back the starters minutes against Denver they'd very likely have lost that game with no guarantee of victory the next night against the Bucks.

And now back to your regularly scheduled Thibs and Wig hate.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

lipoli390 wrote:So why did we lose last night? The underlying reason could be tired legs from the night before coupled with the loss of Jeff Teague. I also clearly think it was the lack of ball-movement in the 4th quarter, which as Abe pointed out played right into Milwaukee's hands given how they defend.

But looking on the surface for the direct causes, it's obvious.

First, we scored less than 100 points. As I've said all season, the Wolves have to score at least 100 points to win and generally it has to be at least 105 and often 110. This team needs to play some defense of course, but to win this team needs be an offensive machine because we're a team of scorers. Adding Teague to replace Rubio made us even more of a scoring versus defending team.

Second, we relied too much on Crawford. He ended up shooting 4-13 from the field and 0-5 from behind the arc. I he makes just 2 of his 5 three-point attempts, the Wolves likely win the game. I love the guy and what he's brought to the team. He's that instant-offense scoring machine every good team needs -- a guy who will fearlessly shoot and make shots from anywhere. But like many shooting specialists, he runs hot and cold and missing shots doesn't deter him from continuing to take shots. With a big lead in the 3rd quarter, Crawford jacking up shots was the last thing we needed. I understand why he was in there. With Teague out, the Wolves needed Crawford in there for ballhandling.

Third, we didn't make our free throws. The Wolves shot 26 free throws, but missed 7 of them.

Put it all together and you can see the road map to our loss last night -- missed free throws, and Crawford's poor shooting coupled with over-reliance on Crawford. Put another way, if we had made just 3 of our 7 missed free throws and Crawford had hit just one of his 5 missed threes along with only 1 of his 5 missed twos, the Wolves would have scored 104 points and won the game.

While true... it's a two-way street.

Couldn't Milwaukee fans retort with "if we just made the two dunks we missed"...

Yes, they could retort with that. But I'm focused on the Wolves. And I'm focused on what the Wolves need to do to win. As a relatively poor 3-point shooting team, the Wolves need to get to the line more than other teams and then hit a high percentage of those free throws. The Wolves got to the line plenty last night, but hit only 73% of their free throws. That's not a winning formula for the Wolves. The Wolves also play more isolation ball than most teams and rely heavily on Crawford jacking up a lot of shots off the bench. So when Butler has a mediocre scoring night for him and Crawford puts up a lot of shots as he did last night, shooting 30% from the field and missing all 5 of his threes, then we're not likely to win. My cure for the latter would be less isolation basketball and less reliance on Crawford. But that's another discussion. Finally, while some teams can win scoring 90-100 points, the Wolves aren't one of them because of our defense.

When we push the pace and move the basketball we are almost unstoppable. For some reason we can't always handle that prosperity and resort to things counter to it. Lip is right that our winning formula is scoring more than the opponent, and we should be able to do that most nights. I'm going to say it - I hate Crawford's game. Sure there are nights he's going to go off and be an X factor. But he's like a shooting guards version of Bazz. He's focused on getting up as many shots as possible and mostly ignoring the defensive end. He's a 41% career shooter and has played on a lot of bad teams.

And there is no doubt our tired legs played a part in last night's loss. The energy level between the teams in the 4th quarter was evident. And Wig was dragging himself up and down the court on that ankle. I like his toughness, but he probably shouldn't have been out there.

lipoli390 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

lipoli390 wrote:So why did we lose last night? The underlying reason could be tired legs from the night before coupled with the loss of Jeff Teague. I also clearly think it was the lack of ball-movement in the 4th quarter, which as Abe pointed out played right into Milwaukee's hands given how they defend.

But looking on the surface for the direct causes, it's obvious.

First, we scored less than 100 points. As I've said all season, the Wolves have to score at least 100 points to win and generally it has to be at least 105 and often 110. This team needs to play some defense of course, but to win this team needs be an offensive machine because we're a team of scorers. Adding Teague to replace Rubio made us even more of a scoring versus defending team.

Second, we relied too much on Crawford. He ended up shooting 4-13 from the field and 0-5 from behind the arc. I he makes just 2 of his 5 three-point attempts, the Wolves likely win the game. I love the guy and what he's brought to the team. He's that instant-offense scoring machine every good team needs -- a guy who will fearlessly shoot and make shots from anywhere. But like many shooting specialists, he runs hot and cold and missing shots doesn't deter him from continuing to take shots. With a big lead in the 3rd quarter, Crawford jacking up shots was the last thing we needed. I understand why he was in there. With Teague out, the Wolves needed Crawford in there for ballhandling.

Third, we didn't make our free throws. The Wolves shot 26 free throws, but missed 7 of them.

Put it all together and you can see the road map to our loss last night -- missed free throws, and Crawford's poor shooting coupled with over-reliance on Crawford. Put another way, if we had made just 3 of our 7 missed free throws and Crawford had hit just one of his 5 missed threes along with only 1 of his 5 missed twos, the Wolves would have scored 104 points and won the game.

While true... it's a two-way street.

Couldn't Milwaukee fans retort with "if we just made the two dunks we missed"...

Yes, they could retort with that. But I'm focused on the Wolves. And I'm focused on what the Wolves need to do to win. As a relatively poor 3-point shooting team, the Wolves need to get to the line more than other teams and then hit a high percentage of those free throws. The Wolves got to the line plenty last night, but hit only 73% of their free throws. That's not a winning formula for the Wolves. The Wolves also play more isolation ball than most teams and rely heavily on Crawford jacking up a lot of shots off the bench. So when Butler has a mediocre scoring night for him and Crawford puts up a lot of shots as he did last night, shooting 30% from the field and missing all 5 of his threes, then we're not likely to win. My cure for the latter would be less isolation basketball and less reliance on Crawford. But that's another discussion. Finally, while some teams can win scoring 90-100 points, the Wolves aren't one of them because of our defense.

Fair enough. But while we're on the topic of Crawford's inefficiency... shouldn't we give him a pass for two of those shots considering the guy(s) passing him the ball channeled Wolves-Mike Miller and gave it to him 28 feet away with only a couple of seconds on the shot clock?

Two of the attempts were desperation heaves at the end of the clock.

That aside, yes, I thought he played poorly overall. And I get your point.



[Note: I am probably a lot less Wolves-centric than most here. I try to follow the NBA beyond the Wolves so I probably come at my critiques/analysis with that in mind quite a bit... for both good and bad.]

If 73% of FTs is bad...kinda shows how good of a FT shooting team this is despite Wiggins struggling there.

I personally didn't think Crawford was that bad. There was a state CJ where he Wiggins and Butler took some bad shots and that let the Bucks back in the game. That happens even with good teams though. Again Crawford having to play minutes as THE backup PG without being prepared for it doesn't help. He was being asked to do too much.

I think Lip is right we didn't score enough points...the Bucks scored more than we did. Lol just kidding. I do agree that the offense let the team down. I think Robison is right though when he tweeted the team let up defensively when they were rolling. I think they also stopped playing that good ball they have been playing early in the last 2 games offensively. There are some good signs though. Wiggins hitting 3's changes everything doesn't it?

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

lipoli390 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

lipoli390 wrote:So why did we lose last night? The underlying reason could be tired legs from the night before coupled with the loss of Jeff Teague. I also clearly think it was the lack of ball-movement in the 4th quarter, which as Abe pointed out played right into Milwaukee's hands given how they defend.

But looking on the surface for the direct causes, it's obvious.

First, we scored less than 100 points. As I've said all season, the Wolves have to score at least 100 points to win and generally it has to be at least 105 and often 110. This team needs to play some defense of course, but to win this team needs be an offensive machine because we're a team of scorers. Adding Teague to replace Rubio made us even more of a scoring versus defending team.

Second, we relied too much on Crawford. He ended up shooting 4-13 from the field and 0-5 from behind the arc. I he makes just 2 of his 5 three-point attempts, the Wolves likely win the game. I love the guy and what he's brought to the team. He's that instant-offense scoring machine every good team needs -- a guy who will fearlessly shoot and make shots from anywhere. But like many shooting specialists, he runs hot and cold and missing shots doesn't deter him from continuing to take shots. With a big lead in the 3rd quarter, Crawford jacking up shots was the last thing we needed. I understand why he was in there. With Teague out, the Wolves needed Crawford in there for ballhandling.

Third, we didn't make our free throws. The Wolves shot 26 free throws, but missed 7 of them.

Put it all together and you can see the road map to our loss last night -- missed free throws, and Crawford's poor shooting coupled with over-reliance on Crawford. Put another way, if we had made just 3 of our 7 missed free throws and Crawford had hit just one of his 5 missed threes along with only 1 of his 5 missed twos, the Wolves would have scored 104 points and won the game.

While true... it's a two-way street.

Couldn't Milwaukee fans retort with "if we just made the two dunks we missed"...

Yes, they could retort with that. But I'm focused on the Wolves. And I'm focused on what the Wolves need to do to win. As a relatively poor 3-point shooting team, the Wolves need to get to the line more than other teams and then hit a high percentage of those free throws. The Wolves got to the line plenty last night, but hit only 73% of their free throws. That's not a winning formula for the Wolves. The Wolves also play more isolation ball than most teams and rely heavily on Crawford jacking up a lot of shots off the bench. So when Butler has a mediocre scoring night for him and Crawford puts up a lot of shots as he did last night, shooting 30% from the field and missing all 5 of his threes, then we're not likely to win. My cure for the latter would be less isolation basketball and less reliance on Crawford. But that's another discussion. Finally, while some teams can win scoring 90-100 points, the Wolves aren't one of them because of our defense.

Fair enough. But while we're on the topic of Crawford's inefficiency... shouldn't we give him a pass for two of those shots considering the guy(s) passing him the ball channeled Wolves-Mike Miller and gave it to him 28 feet away with only a couple of seconds on the shot clock?

Two of the attempts were desperation heaves at the end of the clock.

That aside, yes, I thought he played poorly overall. And I get your point.



[Note: I am probably a lot less Wolves-centric than most here. I try to follow the NBA beyond the Wolves so I probably come at my critiques/analysis with that in mind quite a bit... for both good and bad.]

I agree with you that Crawford was put in a tough spot a couple times with last minute desperation passes that forced him to take bad shots with the clock expiring. But that just comes back to the lack of movement off the ball and overall poor offensive system. We've been ending up with way too many tough shots near the end of the shot clock all season so far.

Wiggins shot still looks absolutely broke to me. I think he had a hot few games. The rotation and his release are still so bad in my opinion. I don't see this continuing. I hope so because it would drastically changes things.