Wolves at Hawks GDT

[KG4Ever]

Also here comes 1-3. Denver is going to hand us our lunch.

Not sure about that. Wolves should be come out fighting and have something to prove. I'd probably take the Wolves if the point spread is generous. Again, I could be foolishly overoptimistic, but Denver is ripe for the taking.

[WildWolf2813]

Also here comes 1-3. Denver is going to hand us our lunch.

Not sure about that. Wolves should be come out fighting and have something to prove. I'd probably take the Wolves if the point spread is generous. Again, I could be foolishly overoptimistic, but Denver is ripe for the taking.

I'll just do what I always do when the Wolves go up 10. Bet the other team's moneyline and profit.

[KiwiMatt]

Haven't posted in a while. I watched the first two quarters of the game, then work got busy and missed the entire 3rd. I couldn't believe when I turned it back on early in the 4th and we had gone from being 20 odd up to 10 down in the space of the a quarter I wasn't watching. Unbelievable, but unfortunately not surprising with this team. This team has a history of 3rd quarter collapses.

Yes culture is a very important factor in any professional sporting team. We lack one, and also lack an identity. As mentioned probably a personnel issue.

I can't really say what went wrong as I didn't see the 3rd quarter, but it sounds like it was a combination of Murray getting hot and our whole team going cold. You have to make buckets and you have to get stops. It seems we failed at both and the team imploded.

To me the KAT / Gobert combo just isn't clicking and likely never will. Towns offensive game has been utterly compromised by the lack of spacing when he's playing next to Rudy. There really isn't a fix. Also I noted that KAT didn't attempt a 3 till very late in the game. That is inexcusable.

[Carlos Danger]

Updated VORP after three games:

Top guys (each have 0.1)
* Naz
* Rudy
* Edwards
* SlowMo

Note: Conley dropped off list and Edwards moved up/onto it.

Bottom guys (each has negative 0.1)
* NAW
* Shake
* TBJ
* KAT

Note: No changes from previous game except KAT is now down to negative VORP for first time.

[KG4Ever]

I prefer plus/minus stats as they are clean stats over the various derivative stats. Here are the stats after three games:

Kyle +14
Ant +12
Naz +10
Nix +4
Garza +4
Conley +3
Shake +1
Jordan 0
Minott -3
KAT -3
TB -4
Miller -7
McDaniels -8
Rudy -10
NAW -18

[BloopOracle]

I'm about done with Finch, offensive genius but the lack of fire on the bench has always irked me. Instead of laying into the team when they're being stupid he's sulking along with them!

[Carlos Danger]

I prefer plus/minus stats as they are clean stats over the various derivative stats. Here are the stats after three games:

Kyle +14
Ant +12
Naz +10
Nix +4
Garza +4
Conley +3
Shake +1
Jordan 0
Minott -3
KAT -3
TB -4
Miller -7
McDaniels -8
Rudy -10
NAW -18

Thanks for posting this. I look at plus/minus as well, but I find it less reliable - at least at face value. Example, looking at your list Garza would be one of our top five guys this year. He's literally played one minute. You know that and I'm not suggesting you would ever say he's one of our top 5 guys so far this year. I'm just providing an example of why I prefer VORP over plus minus because it factors that in.

Also, it would be a tough sell to say that Rudy has been the second worse player on the team so far this year which is what +/- is showing.

Again - not meaning to insult. Everyone has their preferred stats. I'm just pointing out why I prefer VORP to +/- as an overall performance indicator. But I do look at both.

[KG4Ever]

Carlos, I get it. We each have our preferred stats. RPM used to be my favorite stat, because in theory it was plus/minus but made adjustments to account for who you were playing with and the level of opposition. However, over the last two years, I some strange anomalies with that stat that were almost completely counter to pure plus/minus and so now I gravitate back to raw plus/minus stat and its easy to access on NBA.com unlike RPM which ESPN doesn't publish early on during the season. I not only assess a player's plus/minus, but also can easily see where they rank within the team and also how big a sample it is. So I assume most of us are watching or following the games and are smart enough to put context to Garza's plus minus as being a garbage time event on a small sample size.

[Carlos Danger]

Carlos, I get it. We each have our preferred stats. RPM used to be my favorite stat, because in theory it was plus/minus but made adjustments to account for who you were playing with and the level of opposition. However, over the last two years, I some strange anomalies with that stat that were almost completely counter to pure plus/minus and so now I gravitate back to raw plus/minus stat and its easy to access on NBA.com unlike RPM which ESPN doesn't publish early on during the season. I not only assess a player's plus/minus, but also can easily see where they rank within the team and also how big a sample it is. So I assume most of us are watching or following the games and are smart enough to put context to Garza's plus minus as being a garbage time event on a small sample size.

Thumbs up (when is Tim going to add that! . )

Both lists do agree on several players:
Top players so far (from both lists): SlowMo, Naz and Edwards
Worst players sor far from both lists include: NAW, TBJ and KAT

This all means basically nothing since it's only three games - ha! I'm a passive NBA fan right now until the Vikings are eliminated. That's why I like to just go check VORP to see who's doing what. I just don't have the context that you do from actually being more plugged in at this point. Now - back to NFL rumors to see what the Vikings are doing at the trade deadline....

[Lipoli390]

It doesn’t make much sense searching for individual stat rankings on the Wolves roster. The problem is the entire roster - the mix and mindset of the roster as a whole. The Wolves lost their opener to what is now a 1-3 Toronto team. The Wolves then allowed a depleted Miami team on the second game of back to backs to stay even for over three quarters on the Wolves home court in front of a capacity crowd. And then last night we witnessed the Wolves epic collapse against a decent but not especially good Atlanta team.

Ant’s stats might seem impressive, but he was just as culpable for last night’s collapse and the loss to Toronto as any other player on the team. It’s a bad mix or players, all of whom lack mental toughness and have failed to form an identity. These are the factors I mentioned to explain my 44-win projection in spite of the team’s collection of impressive individual talent. I haven’t seen anything to change my mind. This team’s roster is fundamentally flawed. The team’s individual talent will probably get them 44 wins and a playin birth, but this highly paid and substantially hyped roster wasn’t intended to be a playin team.

We had a 46-win team two years ago with very young far less impressive versions of Ant and Jaden. But we had a better mix of players. We also had mentally tough, highly competitive players like Pat Bev and Vando. We had an identity as a high energy, fast moving offensive powerhouse that played pretty well on the defensive end with an aggressive athletic style. I’m not suggesting we should have stayed entirely with that roster. But we should have built on what we had - preserving the team’s style, identity and complementary mix of players tailored to succeed in the modern NBA. It wasn’t necessarily about retaining Vando and Beverley; it was about either keeping them or replacing them with the same type of player, preferably upgraded versions. And it was about adding other complementary players to surgically improve the team top to bottom.

It’s really not that hard. When I you have something good, you build on it. When you have an allstar soon-to-be max salary center who is clicking with your young talent, you don’t add another max salary center, especially one like Rudy. I say that while acknowledging Rudy has arguably been our best player in these first three games. But again, it’s not about Rudy or any individual Wolves player. It’s about a poorly constructed team and a major reckless move last summer by a new PBO who hadn’t even been here more than a couple months. I fault ownership for using the Rosas screw up as a way to replace him when the team was ascending. I blame ownership again for allowing their new PBO to make the huge move he made after only 2 months or so on the job. I blame TC and his front office minions for the reckless move they made last summer and the failure to build intelligently on what they inherited with a focus on putting a team on the floor with the right mix of players - players with with mental toughness and a roster with a clear identity.

This is the story of a poorly run franchise. For Wolves fans it’s always Groundhog Day.