Minnesota Sports Forum

Always disappointing to lose, but it was a fun game to be at. The crowd was big, loud and really into the game. The Wolves played hard and showed some impressive mental toughness coming back from a 12-point deficit in the 3rd to make a game of it down to the wire.

Breaking down the loss you can point to Gasol's dominance over our bigs as he went for 27 highly efficient points. The Wolves had no one to match up effectively against him. You can point more generally to the Grizzlies nearly 58% FG percentage and attribute the loss to the Wolves' poor defense overall that allowed that sort qof shooting percentage. But we did hold other key Griz players like Randolph in check and played well enough defensively to win. I ultimately attribute the loss primarily to the fact that the Wolves missed 54 shots tonight. End of story. You can't miss 54 shots and expect to win in the NBA.

As for individual performances, I liked what I saw from Gary Neal. And Wiggins played really well. Dieng played admirably with double digit scoring and 9 boards.

Pek just can't stay healthy enough to remain on the floor or play at 100%. Ricky's shooting seems to be backsliding as it did tonight. But at least Ricky had 10 assists, 7 boards and 4 steals while getting to the line 6 times. What is completely unacceptable is our SG hitting only 5 of 18 shots with no trips to the line.

I still think we would have won if not for the ridiculous second technical on KG. But we did lose to one of the top three teams in the NBA. We played hard and battled to the end. Our soon to be NBA rookie of the year had another impressive game with 25 points. And Zach showed more flashes of why he will likely turn out to be an elite level player.

What happened to Pek? I just watched on league pass (live in Germany so have to watch the next day), and I just noticed Pek wasn't in the game down the stretch.

Missing all those shots hurt us, but thankfully we were forcing a ton of turnovers and getting to the line, so we were in it. But the killer was we didn't really have the size down the stretch to keep them from just killing us with their bigs. I like Payne's hustle and and competitiveness, and I like Dieng's length, but we really needed a beefcake in there at the end.

I did not watch the whole game, but noticed Pek's eye socket was bruised in the first quarter and he looked subdued the whole game. Maybe he got hit by someone.

Yet it is quite clear from these past two games that Pek just isn't the team's answer at the center position. Against good defence, his limited moves are easily guarded. And on defence, he just does not do enough and got dominated by the likes of Gasol and Noah (even though he didn't score as much, his presence was much more felt than Pek), while allowing opposing guards to stroll to the basket for easy points.

If the Wolves are to contend in the West, they need to have a dominant inside defence force. You can see Garnett's impact on the Wolves defence even in such a limited time role.

Besides, the team needs to work on its fundamentals. The Grizzlies's second unit's layup parade in the second quarter was bad enough. And it is the second straight game where I saw players just coughed up throw-ins.

Looking forward, I see Wiggins, Rubio and Lavine and keepers. Dieng and Bazz could serve as useful players on a contending squad. For the others, I am just not sure about.

wolvesfaned wrote:I did not watch the whole game, but noticed Pek's eye socket was bruised in the first quarter and he looked subdued the whole game. Maybe he got hit by someone.

Yet it is quite clear from these past two games that Pek just isn't the team's answer at the center position. Against good defence, his limited moves are easily guarded. And on defence, he just does not do enough and got dominated by the likes of Gasol and Noah (even though he didn't score as much, his presence was much more felt than Pek), while allowing opposing guards to stroll to the basket for easy points.

If the Wolves are to contend in the West, they need to have a dominant inside defence force. You can see Garnett's impact on the Wolves defence even in such a limited time role.

Besides, the team needs to work on its fundamentals. The Grizzlies's second unit's layup parade in the second quarter was bad enough. And it is the second straight game where I saw players just coughed up throw-ins.

Looking forward, I see Wiggins, Rubio and Lavine and keepers. Dieng and Bazz could serve as useful players on a contending squad. For the others, I am just not sure about.

If we have a top 3 pick I think they go with Okafor or Towns. I don't think Pek is the answer. His contract is very hard to trade though.

If we get the first pick, it'd be almost impossible not to take Okafor. The dude is basically a sure thing to be a low post stud in the NBA. I don't get how Towns can be mentioned in the same category. He's got some great physical tools, but hasn't really proven anything. I'm actually kind of wary of him.

In terms of possibly moving Pek, his contract is big, but not unmovable. If we got lucky and got Okafor, moving Pek would not be a big concern I think.

But let's be honest and set dreams about the future aside, outside of Pek, we don't have anybody who can put a big enough body on guys like Gasol. He's a limited player, gets injured too often, and he's been a disappointment this year, but he's still a beast down low and any team could use a guy like that.

I've been watching a bunch of Okafor video lately. The dude is boring to watch, but so insanely effective. He doesn't have the range Duncan had, so I don't see him being that good (at least at this point), but I think he's going to be really good. Better than the Al Jefferson comparisons suggest. He's deceptively mobile, although he only shows it when necessary. Wow, if we got the first pick this year I'd feel really good about moving forward with Wiggins and Okafor on this team.

SameOldDrew wrote:I've been watching a bunch of Okafor video lately. The dude is boring to watch, but so insanely effective. He doesn't have the range Duncan had, so I don't see him being that good (at least at this point), but I think he's going to be really good. Better than the Al Jefferson comparisons suggest. He's deceptively mobile, although he only shows it when necessary. Wow, if we got the first pick this year I'd feel really good about moving forward with Wiggins and Okafor on this team.

I wouldn't call him boring. His low post moves are outstanding. He doesn't have one or two go to moves, he has a billion of them and is almost impossible to stop down in the post. My problem with him is the lack of defense. I want a big man who can control the paint. Okafor hasn't shown that ability.

From the highlights I have seen, Okafor does resemble Al Jefferson to a certain extent. But he plays above the rim and should be a reliable scoring option in crunch time, which would give the team two go-to scorers in Wiggins and him (Maybe three if Lavine continues to improve).

But then the team at least still needs to find someone like Robin Lopez or Timothy Mozgov whose task on the court is basically just to man the paint.

I was worried this would happen with Pek. Flip tends to play him to many minutes and really shouldn't be playing him in back to backs. Is AB still coming back next week? Are we prepared to play Dieng/Payne big minutes at center this week?

Now we have 2 part time players in KG and Pek. Great!!