Minnesota Sports Forum

It's a good thing I didn't write this last night after the game. Suffice to say I'm a lot calmer this morning than after watching another bitter, disappointing loss. Minnesota sports are earning the "loserville" name tag we hoped was going to be a thing of the past. In roughly 24 hours the Vikings, Wild, and Wolves all lose painful, close contests. It would hurt worse if I wasn't so used to it. So again we must pick ourselves up off the mat and try to find some positives to keep our sanity. So here's the "when is it going to be our turn" 2 + 1:

1) How many big leads are we going to blow this year? And what is causing this? Is it youth, coaching, leadership, talent, or some combination of all of these? The hardest thing for me to understand is usually when a team has good veteran leadership like we do, you shouldn't be so erratic. I'm not going to go off into an anti-Sam rant on this. We know what he is. He was a below average player, he's a below average head coach. But there has to be more to this. The one thing I can pinpoint is this: it seems when our offense goes into a funk, the defense relaxes at the same time. We become lethargic on both ends of the court simultaneously. That's why the leads evaporate so rapidly. I know one thing that needs to happen. When we are struggling, our best players have to touch the ball on offense. You can't have Ricky taking elbow jumpers on consecutive possessions, and follow that up with a Prince post up. KAT and Wiggins need to touch the ball to stem the tide. If nothing else they will get to the line and stop the momentum of the other team. And defensive intensity must be maintained when the opponent goes on a run. We can't just collapse like a house of cards as soon as we face a run.

2) The Pick 'n Roll is basketball at its' purest. It's a fundamental play used by teams at all levels. What I don't like is the way it's used at the NBA level. How many high pick and rolls did you see last night? It seemed like every trip down the court, especially for Denver. How many times did you see the screener on pin-down action roll to the hoop and get a pass going to the basket? I don't remember any. I like it when pick and rolls occur during the flow of a well run, motion offense. You just don't see that in the NBA anymore. All we see are these Iso-Pick and rolls, and IMO it's not a very aesthetic form of basketball.

Plus 1 - I've actually seen some semblance of the fast break occurring during the last couple games. We don't run it well, but at least it seems like we are starting to recognize the opportunities. Last night I saw both Ricky and Zach push the all more than I'm accustomed to. The problem is it's still not very coordinated and not everyone is advancing as they should. Buy hey, it's a start. I still believe with the collection of players we have , we can be lethal if we run an organzed, well executed break. When we go searching for a head coach, I would find somebody who has a fast break pedigree.

And that's Cool's 2 things I I didn't like tonight Plus 1.

Regarding not wanting Rubio taking shots, the fact he doesn't do it well typically means he's the only Wolf wide open. I'm no fan of Porkchop's non-stop ranting about Rubio, but he's not wrong that in late game situations his weakness is magnified into a team weakness. Rubio is IMO a net positive in every situation other than late in close games, but then that's a huge hole!

Nice wrap up cool. I'm with you on the pnr, painful to watch on every possession. Have we had any alley oops? Are they even trying? Back cutting? Good to hear we're running more.

Here is where disaster hit again:

Q3 6:28 - Min 65 - Den 47
Q3 1:21 - Min 74 - Den 69

So in a period of 5 minutes, we scored 9 points and they scored....gulp....22.

The issue with these epic collapses is defense. Our offense put up 9 points in 5 minutes, which isn't exactly on fire, but it certainly should have been adequate enough to hold a double-digit lead - may be not 18 points, but at least 10 heading into the 4th quarter. Here are the players who took shots from the Wolves during those 5 minutes:

Martin - 2
Rubio - 1
KAT - 1
Bjelica - 1
Wiggins - 4

I definitely agree we should run more stuff for KAT, but Wiggins had his fair share of looks during this stint. He was 3-4 too. The problem is Denver was raining down 3's while we were merely making 2's (although the one 3-pointer we did make during this stint was from Rubio of all people).

The Portland collapse was similar, where they reeled off something like 11 made baskets in 12 possessions, including a bundle of 3's of course.

The funny thing is we defended beautifully in the first half of both those games, bottling up the likes of Lillard, McCollum, and Gallo.

By the way, these collapses happen mostly while our best defensive players are out on the floor. So this isn't just a player-rotation issue. To me, it's mental discipline and attention to detail. For whatever reason, once a team goes on a little run, we completely lose our focus and that little run becomes a huge run. Then we're playing on our heels the rest of the way.

Teams are going to go on runs Q. It's the nature of basketball. It's over simplifying things to look at one 5 minute window in a single game in the middle of a season of blown leads. It's not shocking to think that during a run, the opponent can shave 10 points off of a lead. It happens all the time. The key is how you stop that run, and what you do once the run is over. The fact is we haven't been able stop runs until we lose the lead, and then we've been incapable of going on our own run to rebuild the lead. So no, I don't like looking at 5 minutes in a vacuum and making any conclusions from it. Our problems occur on both ends of the floor when we're blowing these games.

22 points in 5 minutes is not a normal run. We have scored 106, 103, and 100 points (in regulation) in our last three losses. That should have been more than adequate to win a couple of those games.

Q12543 wrote:Here is where disaster hit again:

Q3 6:28 - Min 65 - Den 47
Q3 1:21 - Min 74 - Den 69

So in a period of 5 minutes, we scored 9 points and they scored....gulp....22.

The issue with these epic collapses is defense. Our offense put up 9 points in 5 minutes, which isn't exactly on fire, but it certainly should have been adequate enough to hold a double-digit lead - may be not 18 points, but at least 10 heading into the 4th quarter. Here are the players who took shots from the Wolves during those 5 minutes:

Martin - 2
Rubio - 1
KAT - 1
Bjelica - 1
Wiggins - 4

I definitely agree we should run more stuff for KAT, but Wiggins had his fair share of looks during this stint. He was 3-4 too. The problem is Denver was raining down 3's while we were merely making 2's (although the one 3-pointer we did make during this stint was from Rubio of all people).

The Portland collapse was similar, where they reeled off something like 11 made baskets in 12 possessions, including a bundle of 3's of course.

The funny thing is we defended beautifully in the first half of both those games, bottling up the likes of Lillard, McCollum, and Gallo.

By the way, these collapses happen mostly while our best defensive players are out on the floor. So this isn't just a player-rotation issue. To me, it's mental discipline and attention to detail. For whatever reason, once a team goes on a little run, we completely lose our focus and that little run becomes a huge run. Then we're playing on our heels the rest of the way.

Scoring 9 points in 5 minutes is below average, but not disastrous. It's giving up 22 in 5 minutes that is disastrous, and that's why we lost the game. Most of those 22 points came from the perimeter, and Sam had two of his best perimeter defenders on the bench (KG and Prince) and one of his worst (KMart) on the court. I was calling for Sam to substitute Prince for Martin after the lead was shaved in half, but he waited another couple minutes. Martin simply needs to be taken out when a team is on a run like that...he is going to do nothing to stop it.

LST, Portland scored 25 points between 9:40 and 4:37 in the third. Again, that's 25 points in 5 minutes! We scored 10, which isn't bad.

So these aren't super long scoring droughts by us; these are flat out blitzkriegs by the opposing team that we haven't been able to put a stop to until the game is basically even again.

We just don't have the firepower on this team yet to match these runs offensively.

Q12543 wrote:LST, Portland scored 25 points between 9:40 and 4:37 in the third. Again, that's 25 points in 5 minutes! We scored 10, which isn't bad.

So these aren't super long scoring droughts by us; these are flat out blitzkriegs by the opposing team that we haven't been able to put a stop to until the game is basically even again.

We just don't have the firepower on this team yet to match these runs offensively.

Haha, the lengths you will go to defend a point. Wow

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

Q12543 wrote:LST, Portland scored 25 points between 9:40 and 4:37 in the third. Again, that's 25 points in 5 minutes! We scored 10, which isn't bad.

So these aren't super long scoring droughts by us; these are flat out blitzkriegs by the opposing team that we haven't been able to put a stop to until the game is basically even again.

We just don't have the firepower on this team yet to match these runs offensively.

Haha, the lengths you will go to defend a point. Wow

I documented the Portland run in another thread after that game, so I remember it well. It's very easy to look up this stuff on the ESPN box scores. You should try it sometime.