Minnesota Sports Forum

I've noticed Ricky has been more willing to speak out recently on matters that need to be addressed...that's good and a sign that he wants to lead this team.

There's nothing groundbreaking in his quote...frankly, Wig's inactivity on offense has been discussed here many times. But it's a positive thing that Ricky is saying it out loud. I don't see this as a Kevin Love-like throwing a teammate under the bus with veiled comments. Rather, this is an acknowledgement of Wig's enormous potential if he chooses to work a little harder on offense. In many ways, I see Wig as the opposite of Kevin Martin, who generally works his butt off on offense but is often lackadaisical on defense. Wig has the potential to change though and be a true 2-way star. I'd like to see Ricky's words have an impact tonight. If Wig moves a little more on offense, Ricky will find a way to get him the ball.


http://www.startribune.com/wiggins-adjusts-to-new-role-but-now-he-needs-to-work-on-scoring/340560291/

I like Rubio is talking. He is obviously a smart basketball player. I liked listening to the audio of him when they asked about Wiggins bobble head doll it was funny.

Wiggins to me working for the ball and position is like a lot of young players especially post players. They don't get how hard they have to work or you become easy to defend. If I am a guy worried about someone scoring against me in the post I keep him as far away from the paint as possible. If they guy doesn't work hard and move around its not hard to keep him pretty far out there and make it much tougher for them. Good players figure that out pretty quickly and get deeper position. Wiggins will figure it out but he is going against NBA players not scrubs like me. Lol

In addition compared to some other other star potential players Early in their careers Wiggins doesn't have ball handling skills to fall back on. He has a nice base to improve but that skill won't bail him out at this point. He can't just get his shot by that means consistantly. Other guys may be able to fall back on shooting. Wiggins was able to do that some degree last year in the post when he was hitting. He isn't hitting shots so far in the regular season in some ways that may work out good for him making him work harder and smarter.

I think the word lazy is not 100% want Rubio meant, but more about his limited vocabulary. I do think he wants Wiggins to work harder for the ball and Rubio will reward him for it.

I have seen Wiggins make more baseline cuts off pick and roll action, which is a good thing. They also went back to that pick and roll play the other night that Flip always used to run with Wiggins, whereby Wiggins would set the pick and then get the ball from Rubio and go right to the basket with it.

The biggest issue with Wiggins over the first few games is his inability to make shots.

So Wiggins plays every game last year at almost 40 min per game with Rubio missing almost the whole season, and now 3 games into this season, Wiggins is the lazy one?

longstrangetrip wrote:I've noticed Ricky has been more willing to speak out recently on matters that need to be addressed...that's good and a sign that he wants to lead this team.

There's nothing groundbreaking in his quote...frankly, Wig's inactivity on offense has been discussed here many times. But it's a positive thing that Ricky is saying it out loud. I don't see this as a Kevin Love-like throwing a teammate under the bus with veiled comments. Rather, this is an acknowledgement of Wig's enormous potential if he chooses to work a little harder on offense. In many ways, I see Wig as the opposite of Kevin Martin, who generally works his butt off on offense but is often lackadaisical on defense. Wig has the potential to change though and be a true 2-way star. I'd like to see Ricky's words have an impact tonight. If Wig moves a little more on offense, Ricky will find a way to get him the ball.


http://www.startribune.com/wiggins-adjusts-to-new-role-but-now-he-needs-to-work-on-scoring/340560291/

shocking. Pretty sure if it was Love you'd of ripped him. Why can't Rubio of done this behind closed doors? Here's the Love quote by the way, sooo much worse.

We can't have two guys sitting at the end of the bench that play good minutes just sitting there and not getting up during timeouts," Love said, referring to the poor body language exhibited by veterans J.J. Barea and Dante Cunningham in the fourth quarter. "We all need to be in this together. That kind of pisses me off. We're supposed to be a team."

alexftbl8181 wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:I've noticed Ricky has been more willing to speak out recently on matters that need to be addressed...that's good and a sign that he wants to lead this team.

There's nothing groundbreaking in his quote...frankly, Wig's inactivity on offense has been discussed here many times. But it's a positive thing that Ricky is saying it out loud. I don't see this as a Kevin Love-like throwing a teammate under the bus with veiled comments. Rather, this is an acknowledgement of Wig's enormous potential if he chooses to work a little harder on offense. In many ways, I see Wig as the opposite of Kevin Martin, who generally works his butt off on offense but is often lackadaisical on defense. Wig has the potential to change though and be a true 2-way star. I'd like to see Ricky's words have an impact tonight. If Wig moves a little more on offense, Ricky will find a way to get him the ball.


http://www.startribune.com/wiggins-adjusts-to-new-role-but-now-he-needs-to-work-on-scoring/340560291/

shocking. Pretty sure if it was Love you'd of ripped him. Why can't Rubio of done this behind closed doors? Here's the Love quote by the way, sooo much worse.

We can't have two guys sitting at the end of the bench that play good minutes just sitting there and not getting up during timeouts," Love said, referring to the poor body language exhibited by veterans J.J. Barea and Dante Cunningham in the fourth quarter. "We all need to be in this together. That kind of pisses me off. We're supposed to be a team."

You beat me to it. Rubio's comments are no different than Love's comments. Only those that have unjustified hate towards the guy will argue that they're in any way different, even though both were through the media and both have value/good meaning behind them.

As mentioned, Ricky's use of the word "lazy" was a function of the fact that English is his second language. The point Ricky made was the same one Flip mad repeatedly in public - i.e., that Wiggins can't keep expecting to rely on the team calling plays for him. In other words, Wiggins needs to give more effort, creating his own points by crashing the offensive boards, calling for the ball (which I've never seen him do) and attacking smaller defenders in the post. You might also recall Milt Newton this summer talkng on the radio about Wiggins tendency to be passive and not give an all-out effort. Milt specifically described a practice last season when Flip ripped into Wiggins for lack of effort.

Of course, as discussed before, this tendency is nothing new for Wiggins. It's something widely reported about Wggins s coming out of college. In fact, Milt mentioned that fact in his interview this summer. So let's not bury our heads in the homer sand when talkng about Wiggins and let's be thankful the team's leader is calling out this issue.
Q
Wiggins poor shooting is troubling. But I'm more concerned that (1) he's settling too often for jumpers, (2) he hasn't improved his shooting, which makes me wonder how hard he worked on it this offseason, and (3) he hasn't proved his poor ballhandling - again making me wonder just how hard he worked on his game this offseason.

lipoli390 wrote:As mentioned, Ricky's use of the word "lazy" was a function of the fact that English is his second language. The point Ricky made was the same one Flip mad repeatedly in public - i.e., that Wiggins can't keep expecting to rely on the team calling plays for him. In other words, Wggins needs to give mor effort creating his own points by crashing the offensive boards, calling for the ball (which I've never seen him do) and attacking smaller defenders in the post. You might als recall Milt Newton this summer talkng on the radio about Wiggins tendency to be passive and not give an all-out effort. Milt specifically describe a practice last season When Flip ripped into Wiggins for lack of effort.

Of course, as discussed before, this tendency is nothing new for Wiggins. It's something widely pretend about Wggins s coming out of college. In fact, Milt mentioned that fact in his interview this summer. So let's not bury our heads in the homer sand when talkng about Wiggins and let's be thankful the team's leader is calling out this issue.
Q
Wiggins poor shooting is troubling. But I'm more concerned that (1) he's settling too often for jumpers, (2) he hasn't improved his shooting, which makes me wonder how hard he worked on it this offseason, and (3) he hasn't proved his poor ballhandling - again making me wonder just how hard he worked on his game this offseason.

Oh come on, like what he doesn't know the meaning of the word? Rubio has been in the states for long enough to pick up the language by now

Bleed and Lip- I think you guys are correct that this is a language issue with Ricky. I can't imagine that Wig would take offense at Ricky's comments. and hopefully he will listen and tweak his offensive game plan. I guess we'll see if Wig is any different tonight as he faces yet another substantially shorter defender. Ricky knows that if Wig improves, the team improves, and this is appropriate leadership on his part.