Minnesota Sports Forum

Time for another edition of this thread. Let's add a couple ground rules. Limit items to things over the last year. And let's cap the number of rights or wrongs at 3. Here's mine:

Right About

- Rajon Rondo. I said without the big three in Boston you would see what kind of player he really is. We have.

- Andrew Wiggins would win rookie of the year. Said it before Parker went down.

- Chase Budinger would not be a factor this year. Said it during preseason when everyone was on his nuts

Wrong About

- Saw us winning a lot more games this year. Can't remember the exact number but I was in the middle of the pack. Didn't account for injuries like a couple of guys smartly did.

- Thought we would be more active at the deadline. Didn't think Kmart would still be here.

- Didn't see the Shabazz improvement coming this year. Never thought he would be terrible, but didn't think he would become a valuable part of our future.

-

Right About:
- Chase being done last year
-Bazz being a beast
- Wiggins being a top tier talent

Wrong about
- Thad being a great mentor and a long term piece of our team
- Us competing for a playoff spot

I should also mention to Abe - if you can't come up with any rights, were not going to exclude you from this. Feel free to do a list of wrongs, up to as many as 6.

RIGHT:

- LaVine aint no PG.
- Bennett aint no big thing anywhere.*
- The Wolves would suck balls this season.

WRONG:

- Kevin Love would thrive in Cleveland.*
- Muhammad finding a legit niche/role in the L.*
- Kevin Garnett ever returning to the court in MN.


* Those could still change.

Wrong About:

- Thought the Wolves would win 41 games this year. I accounted for Martin and Pekovic missing 15-20 each, but Rubio going down wasn't in my forecast and I thought we had enough to sustain competitiveness even with those two scorers going down at stretches. Losing Rubio so early absolutely destroyed my prediction.

- I said the Cavs would win 60 games this year. I thought Blatt was going to be at least an adequate head coach and use his Big Three to their strengths. It took him half the season to get LeBron and Kyrie comfortable and Love's still having to pick at their leftovers on offense. His touches were supposed to go down just because there are other good options on offense, but he even fell below Waiters/Smith in pecking order and that's unacceptable. LeBron dogging it for weeks didn't help my prediction either, nor did Varejao going down for the year. I still think they're going to win the championship, but 60 wins looks out of sight.

- Said Klay Thompson wasn't an upper-echelon type player. I still don't think he's the best SG in the NBA like a lot of Twitter people do, nor do I think he can get to that level, but his off the dribble game has improved so much. I always thought of him as a shooter instead of a scorer, but even without a good number of FTAs per game, he's very much a good scorer. All-Star talent. Thought he got overrated in the Love sweepstakes (and to some extent, he did), but kudos to Golden State for trusting their guy and keeping their core together.

Right about Wiggins. I was on his bandwagon well before the draft and pushed hard for him to be considered the #1 guy in this draft.

Right about Thad's deficiencies causing him to just not fit on this team. No rebounding and no rim protection was a recipe for failure next to Pek and as it turns out also Dieng. I didn't think he was a bad player going into the year, but I could see clear as day that he wasn't going to be a good fit on this roster as it was constructed coming into the year.

Wrong about Bazz developing much beyond the guy we saw last year. I just didn't see it. I thought he was simply too selfish to be much more than a bench scorer.

Wrong about this draft as a whole. I thought there were going to be a lot better performances than we have seen this year. Injuries have a lot to do with it, but Wiggins and Parker were the only two showing that they were starting to get how to play well in this league. I've been disappointed in pretty much everyone else in the top 10.

Wrong about: Chase Budinger. I believe I picked him as our most improved player this season. Egg on face

Right about: that large $7 pizza hut I had last night,.thinking I would pay for it later

- Wrong about Gary Harris, I haven't seen many Nuggets games but I have not heard anything about him this season. I thought he would be an above average rookie getting solid minutes behind Afflalo this season.

+ Right about the Wolves not being great this season. I knew injuries to Martin and Pek were to be expected and I thought there would be a few more to key players (Wiggins, Thad, Mo) but the absolute desolation of this team was unexpected. Still if Rubio wouldn't have missed as many games as he did I still think this team would have struggled.

+ Right about Frye and Meeks being grossly overpaid. Yeah, yeah the cap is going to jump in a couple years. So what? These guys are nice rotation pieces on rosters that have stars, the Pistons and Magic should not be paying these guys 7+ million to be average players.

- Wrong about the Cavs acquisitions of Mosgov and J.R. Smith. I thought Smith would continue the Waiters way of poisoning the locker room and Mosgov was acquired at too high of price (two first rounders!?!?!) But they have proved to be essential in the Cavs resurgence and I now believe that the Cavs are true title contenders.

+ Right about Budinger not raising his trade value. People here were saying that selling Budinger after last season would be a bad move as his value was low and he had a chance to raise it through solid play. Guess what? He still sucks and now we have to pay with picks if we want to move him.

- Wrong about Bennett. I bought in. I thought like some others did that injuries and health issues brought him down last year and his body transformation in the off-season would produce great results. Wrong, wrong, wrong. He is lost on the court and I don't understand why. It's like he missed all the film sessions, forgets all the set plays, and panics every time he touches the ball. I couldn't be more disappointed with his performance. You know what is worse? I still think he can be an solid player... it is D-Will all over again.

Wrong about most every "number of wins" prediction I make.

Right about Adreian Payne being a Timberwolf -- just had to wait a few more months!

I was wrong on my win prediction (37 I believe), but I chalk up most of that to RIcky missing half the season. I was wrong about Zach becoming a closer for this team, although there are still almost 30 games left, and he hasn't played much SG yet.

I was right about Thad not being a starting PF in this league, and that Flip's coaching would be eerily similar to Adelman's. I was right about Chase still sucking, and that Wiggins just needed a little time to get going.