Minnesota Sports Forum

As usual I'm always out here for NY area games. Man, the energy in that building was so different. Great crowd, very into it. I hope the Nets one day bring the city some joy. We need it.


As for the game, we saw everything we love and hate about this team. I think Brooklyn played subpar and like us, they were trying out new things. I haven't seen Towns play defense like that since Kentucky. It's hard to say anyone had an awful night. Everyone had at least one solid shift out there.


Towns made it look effortless. The crowd threw their hands up and sighed when he shot. That's what franchise players do. They make you feel defeated and that's what he did on both ends.

Maybe they're easing RoCo in, but it felt like he was invisible the entire 2nd half until OT. He came through though.

The Nets got zero out of their bench. We let their starters come alive without Kyrie. That was kinda discouraging. Kyrie coulda scored 60 if he wanted to.

The guard play was solid. Teague played like he had a plan on offense which was refreshing. Napier also. Getting torched by Kyrie sucks but it happens.

Jake Layman in the first half... wow. The bench needs better shooters. Like I said earlier, they took good shots that didn't fall. All in all, I like what the bench did. Culver was solid in the first quarter, didn't overdo things. In the 2nd half there was a point where he hesitated to shoot and it led to a miss. The team got a steal and this time Culver shoots a wide open 3 and air balled it. Napier definitely was looking out for him and trying to teach him what to do, but those were all opening night jitters. He'll be better.


Treveon Graham was the kind of X factor we sorely need. We watch other teams have one all the time against us. It felt good to have someone know where to be and what to do.

As for Wiggins, I don't know how many times I yelled for a sub and in the 3rd quarter, Ryan kept him out there too long. His jumpers were awful. He was in the paint almost afraid of contact, and I thought Okogie needed some of his minutes.

He did 2 things I absolutely loved tonight. First, 8 rebounds which helped and most importantly, every time they got a basket to go ahead or tie, Wiggins would go right back and attack and keep the game afloat. That was awesome because he shut me up.

One more thing, Josh Okogie was so unsung tonight. He was all energy and really attacked well. The offense tonight left me thinking "man if we had shooters this offense would be a well oiled machine."

I ran into Karl Sr. and flat out told him his son is a problem. He walked outta there cheesing like a proud dad should and saluted me and said "that's what my son do!" I'm sure tonight was extra special for Karl in front of family. Give me 81 more games of this version of Towns and they can't deny him all NBA. The rest of this team is still a work in progress but tonight was fun. A W is a W. Enjoy it.

Great report.

Thanks for the report. I wasn't able to watch the game tonight. Not even sure it was televised.

The box score supports your take on Towns tonight - 36 points, 50% from the field, 7 of 8 free throws, 7 of 11 from behind the arc, 14 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 steals and 3 blocks. Wow!

The box score also confirms your take on Okogie - 11 points, 3 rebounds, 3 assists and 1 steal in only 14:26 minutes. He got to the line 8 times in that short stint and made all but two of his free throws. He has to get a lot more minutes going forward. Culver had slightly more minutes but wasn't nearly as productive as Okogie. While Okogie's shot is inconsistent, Culver's is broken.

I accept your observation that Graham was solid tonight. But his shooting was atrocious - 4 for 13 from the field, 0-3 from behind the arc and only one free throw attempt. He did, however, have 6 rebounds, 4 assists and 1 steal so his stats show effort and productivity in other areas of the game beyond scoring.

I like Layman's stat line - 10 points on 57% shooting from the field, including 2-4 from behind the arc.

Wiggins stat line looks typical except for his 8 rebounds - 0 assists, 0 steals, 50% from the line on only 2 free throw attempts and 37% shooting from the field. Classic inefficient scoring from Andrew.

Abe's late-late DVR Review...

- 1 - 0... cool.

- Towns is like really good and stuff.

- Deandre Jordan fouls on every play now. I guess that's his thing as he ages not-so-gracefully.

- Graham made a lot of hustle plays. Okogie makes hustle plays. That's great. But it doesn't appear either guy can shoot. That will be a problem more often than not. Hustling aint gonna be enough in this league. But it's good to have two aggressive wings willing to mix it up. Both were fun to watch down the stretch.

- Jeff Teague. Oh. No. It's gonna be a long year. I don't like watching him 76.2% of the time. We all know about the passive dribbling. But sometimes, he just does really dumb stuff. Tonight, with the Wolves up big heading into the half... and everybody including Jim Peterson... talking about not letting them back in the game... Jeff Teague fouls the league's hottest shooter Kyrie Irving 25 feet from the hoop for no apparent reason... TWICE.

He literally just gave them points ... because?

- Wiggins was... well... Wiggins. He was 6 - 21 at one point and ended the game in regulation stepping into a 21 foot shot moments early in the shot clock in a tie game. WOE. I don't know what else to say about that.

But he was working downhill in OT and finished strong with some big buckets. So... status quo, right down to the offense stagnating to Wiggins isos in late key situations.

- Noah Vonleh was put in the game to grab a rebound at the end... then was literally pushed 10 feet to the side by a guard. WOE. I know very little about him. But now... I know he's soft. I assume Dieng gets off the bench eventually.

- Hopefully Culver pans out. The Wolves need creators, badly.

-

Most enjoyable part of this game was watching kat operate defensively. He was making since good reads and he was very quick on his feet.

I only saw the second half which was unfortunate because they gave up the 12 point lead to go to OT. Towns was great in every facet except a couple small plays (didn't box out well down the stretch and was leaving his feet too much for missed blocks leaving open easy offensive rebounds). Layman and Covington must have done all their work in the first half because they gave us nothing in the second half. Graham also was not impressive until he made some great hustle plays in the 4th to help us get the win. Wiggins was only impressive when he got to the rim, but he had some nice finishes when he got there.

I thought our best offensive lineup was when we ran out both Teague and Napier in the beginning of the 4th. We have a lot of guys now that need to be setup for open looks off penetration because they can't create themselves. Having 2 PG's on the court kept the offense flowing and then as soon as they came out we were struggling for buckets reverting to Wiggins PnR's.

My biggest criticism is we just get tossed around with our small lineups. Guys weren't boxing out and we were getting killed on the boards. Also I don't think we set a single effective screen in the entire second half. They were jumping screens with ease and not needing to put in any effort to fight through the screen. Someone please come in and teach these guys how to set illegal screens like Allen did all night. We have no mass to deter guys so you just have to stick that outside foot way out and almost trip the defender to at least be a nuisance. Also get these guys some pizzas and thicken them up. Everyone is rail thin and get pushed around with ease. If we go small we need some more bulk since we don't have elite length to make up for it.

Just once I'd like a team that was the bully rather than get bullied all game long. Get physical and push some people around. Set some questionable screens. Play with an edge.

I'll take the win, but Brooklyn lost this one at the FT line (58%) so I wouldn't put a lot of stock in it. Fix the 3rd Quarter issues already. -17 in a quarter in a professional game is a joke.

Kahn's - Thanks for the second half review. Getting bullied and getting killed on the boards are familiar carry-overs from last season when we were one of the two or three worst rebounding teams in the League. Setting screens has also been another weakness for the Wolves the past few seasons. I'll take the win. Brooklyn is a decent team and it's always had to win on the road especially in the home team's season opener.

Great win, but I didn't see anything that made me feel like this team is going to outperform expectations. On offense, we clanked tons of 3s and were overly reliant on Wiggins to create shots. On defense, we played an outstanding 1st half, but then totally collapsed in the 3rd quarter and struggled to keep them off the boards. Sound familiar?

Having said that, it's clear that we have some guys willing to compete and play hard with the likes of Okogie, Graham, and RoCo. RoCo had a quiet second half, but we know he is capable of being all over the place defensively. The other two have that hard-nosed intensity about them too. This team needs that, because other than KAT, we are short on talent. We are going to need to out-grit and grind teams to eek out some wins.

Lastly, Culver looked like the rookie he is. He looked tentative to me and his outside shot looks horrible. I like working him in the rotation for brief stretches, as it appears that he won't hurt us a ton out there, but he is a long ways off from the shot maker and play maker we so desperately could use on the wing.

https://youtu.be/neJAQLY6gm4

Every made shot in the game. Pretty fun watch.

Looking back, man the nets are good at illegal screens when they made 3s.

Good hard fought win.

Any win we can get while this team is trying to get used to each other is a bonus. In Tim's Clunk-o-meter this would definitely be a +1.