Minnesota Sports Forum

Week #1 has come and gone, and what a week it was. Lots of good and bad mixed in creating a ton of story lines. The board has been pretty active with the usual number of insightful posters providing their analysis and critiques. All in all it's been fun to be back in-season again. So let's do a 2+1 for the week:

1) Here is an excerpt from the previous edition:

Poor KAT. He's not a good defender to begin with, but what they are doing to him from a roster standpoint is criminal. What are we going to do if he has to miss any time? I can answer that - Lose. He is going to have to take on every big in the league. He's going to get beat up which is going to make him less effective on the offensive end. I can't begin to speculate on how fast he is going to tire of this.

Well that didn't take long. Due to the roster construction, any chance we have of competing for a play-in spot is directly related to how many games KAT will miss. It's simply a loss we can't overcome in the intermediate or long term. It's not KAT's fault, it's not the players fault and it's not Ryan's fault. Rosas created this vulnerability by not having the foresight to ask what if, and then have a plan for the inevitability of it happening. Yes I get it, any team losing it's best player is going to suffer. But most won't at the level we are going to experience. The head of a billion dollar organization just cannot make this type of egregious error, especially when you've traded away your #1 draft pick.

2) Just 3 games in and we've already seen the good, the bad, and the ugly from D'Angelo Russell. He took a much deserved beating in the game thread, so I'm not going to rehash what has already been said. Instead I want to mention something a bit lost in last nights game discussion. You go into a game against the defending champs. You're missing your best player, and the other veterans on the team lack the playing status to provide true leadership. You need your other max player to step up and at least set an example for the young guys to follow. Let's just say I sure hope the Culvers, Edwards', and Okogies aren't watching too closely. One thing that drives me crazy, and I'm glad Abe has mentioned it, is his propensity to point and try to direct traffic on defense. As a former player I know how quickly this gets old, especially from a guy not giving true effort on that end of the floor. Stay tuned folks, this is the beginning of a story that won't end well.

Plus 1 - The Wolves are 2-1 with our only loss coming against the Lakers in a game without our best player. We're right where we hoped to be at this point. I think we have something in Edwards, and Culver looks to have taken a step forward. We have a lot of depth at the guard/wing positions and some of our players look to have some "dog" in them. I actually stayed up to watch the end last night and enjoyed watching McDaniels hit a couple threes and continue to show promise on defense. I'm going to try and enjoy this season realizing there will be highs and lows. It's been entertaining so far.

And that's CoolBreeze's 2 things I didn't like last week plus 1.

Great job, Cool! I've always enjoyed your 2+1s, but this is one of your best. It's insightful, balanced and right on the mark in my view.

lipoli390 wrote:Great job, Cool! I've always enjoyed your 2+1s, but this is one of your best. It's insightful, balanced and right on the mark in my view.

Awesome Lip. I'd like to get your take on what you would do while KAT is out.

I love the format of what sounds like is going to be a weekly feature here, CoolBreeze. The "2" pays homage to the general pessimism I've quickly learned is inherent in this board ;-) , while the "+1" reflects those fleeting feelings of Wolves optimism we occasionally experience when our resistance is down. I'm looking forward to future editions.

And I completely agree with this week's content. As for KAT's injury, we just have to hope it doesn't have him on the bench for too long...we saw how this team played last year after his season ended, and it wasn't pretty. I'm somewhat hopeful that his time on the shelf will be relatively short, because it's his non-shooting hand. But then again these are the Timberwolves, and a stubbed toe put Jake Layman out for the season last year (mostly kidding here about Sunshine- I've heard how painful that injury can actually be, and his poor start this season might mean he's still recovering).

And D-Lo has been dissected and filleted completely after last night's debacle. The "good" D-Lo can be such a force on offense- able to get a shot off at any time with reasonable accuracy. But I'm afraid frequent appearances by the "bad" D-Lo and Ryan's belief that he can play PG may prove to be disastrous this season.

But then there's the +1, and I couldn't agree more that several players on this roster have a lot of "dog" in them. Certainly Josh and Beasley, Culver in an understated quiet way, and surprisingly Edwards all seem to have that quality guys like Wiggins will never have. And even KAT looked to have a little dog in him in the Utah game. There's some room for optimism for this team, but it's misplaced if KAT doesn't return soon.

FNG, you catch on quick. We DO have our optimists here as well. I've actually gone both ways (no, not that) but have been mostly negative since Rosas took over. 60 Win Tim is the extreme optimist and KekGeek tends to look at the bright side more often than not. Most of us are ready to jump on the bandwagon if the team gives us a reason to.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

lipoli390 wrote:Great job, Cool! I've always enjoyed your 2+1s, but this is one of your best. It's insightful, balanced and right on the mark in my view.

Awesome Lip. I'd like to get your take on what you would do while KAT is out.

I don't have a good answer for what to do with KAT out. I don't think the answer is on our roster and that's the problem. Rosas left us so thin in the front court that it's hard to put together a meaningful mitigation strategy.

With limited options, I'd do two things. First, I'd fill our open roster spot with the best free agent big available on a one-year deal, using up to what's left of our cap room under the luxury tax threshold (around $3M). I'm thinking Taj Gibson, RHJ or Skal Labissiere. Second, I'd give a lot of minutes to Vanderbilt. We can't make up for Towns scoring, but Vanderbilt is the one guy on this roster who can make up some of the rebounding we lose with KAT out.

Unfortunately, Rosas paid Juancho $7 million a year. So we'll probably see a lot more Juancho. That's not good in my view.

lipoli390 wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

lipoli390 wrote:Great job, Cool! I've always enjoyed your 2+1s, but this is one of your best. It's insightful, balanced and right on the mark in my view.

Awesome Lip. I'd like to get your take on what you would do while KAT is out.

I don't have a good answer for what to do with KAT out. I don't think the answer is on our roster and that's the problem. Rosas left us so thin in the front court that it's hard to put together a meaningful mitigation strategy.

With limited options, I'd do two things. First, I'd fill our open roster spot with the best free agent big available on a one-year deal, using up to what's left of our cap room under the luxury tax threshold (around $3M). I'm thinking Taj Gibson, RHJ or Skal Labissiere. Second, I'd give a lot of minutes to Vanderbilt. We can't make up for Towns scoring, but Vanderbilt is the one guy on this roster who can make up some of the rebounding we lose with KAT out.

Unfortunately, Rosas paid Juancho $7 million a year. So we'll probably see a lot more Juancho. That's not good in my view.

You laid out my issue with roster construction perfectly.

We have zero leeway.

How a GM and Owner allow that is beyond me.

KAT goes down, we tank. Yet, we do not even hold our own pick in a crowded West.

Thank you again Cool for the 2+1. One of the highlights on this board.

The only thing I'll point out is using the Laker game as any sort of indicator of how this team will play in KAT's absence. It was the second game of a back-to-back on the road against the World Champs. The team found out that day that KAT was going to be sidelined awhile. And while a sliver of hope was provided by Anthony Davis's absence, that was quickly erased by his replacement, Kuzma, who could not miss from 3-point land in the early going, even when contested. It just set the tone for the entire game.

One thing on DLO: I have not watched a lot of him, but I think part of his problem is mental. He does not handle adversity well, which leads to him imploding and resulting in a terrible performance. Can he grow out of that? I don't know. But another solution is to avoid adversity! ;-)

While I am not expecting a win tonight, I do hope we see a more competitive performance now that everyone has had time to digest the reality of losing KAT and Okogie for awhile. We need our shot makers to hit shots, which they did not do in the Laker game.

60WinTim wrote:The only thing I'll point out is using the Laker game as any sort of indicator of how this team will play in KAT's absence. It was the second game of a back-to-back on the road against the World Champs. The team found out that day that KAT was going to be sidelined awhile. And while a sliver of hope was provided by Anthony Davis's absence, that was quickly erased by his replacement, Kuzma, who could not miss from 3-point land in the early going, even when contested. It just set the tone for the entire game.

One thing on DLO: I have not watched a lot of him, but I think part of his problem is mental. He does not handle adversity well, which leads to him imploding and resulting in a terrible performance. Can he grow out of that? I don't know. But another solution is to avoid adversity! ;-)

While I am not expecting a win tonight, I do hope we see a more competitive performance now that everyone has had time to digest the reality of losing KAT and Okogie for awhile. We need our shot makers to hit shots, which they did not do in the Laker game.

What's wrong with Okogie and how long will he be out?

Answering my own question, Okogie apparently has a strained hamstring. Why the Wolves put out a false report about cramping is beyond me. And let's not be too charitable hear. There's no way the Wolves medical staff mistook a strained hamstring for cramping, is there? If so, they're not very good.