Minnesota Sports Forum

To me, this is the best evidence that Thibs has so far not added any value to this team, and in fact, has added negative value:

Here is how last year's starting 5 that we ended the year with did as a unit:
Offensive Rating - 113.5
Defensive Rating - 109.6
Net Rating - +3.9

Here is how these same 5 guys do this year as a unit, at least three of which are supposed to still be improving year-over-year:
Offensive Rating - 101.1
Defensive Rating - 111.8
Net Rating - -10.7

That is a 15 point swing! Unbelievable!

Their net rating of -10.7 as a unit is the second worst of all 5-man units that have played more than 100 minutes together (there are 21 total). That's right, our STARTING 5 is currently one of the worst 5-man lineups that has played any amount of significant minutes. These are the same exact guys that were quite good last year.

Whatever Thibs is doing, it hasn't worked. The question is whether his plans takes us two steps back, followed by multiple more steps forward. We shall see, but this is downright depressing.

EDIT: nba.com literally just updated their stats as I was writing this. I changed a few things from my original post to reflect the latest data.

Here is Net Rating by individual player. I'm including only those that have seen fairly regular minutes:

Tyus Jones - +13.9
Cole Aldrich - +6.9
Shabazz Muhammad - +5.6
Nemanja Bjelica - +3.2
Kris Dunn - +2.4
Gorgui Dieng - -1.6
KAT - -1.8
Wiggins - -1.9
Zach LaVine - -5.0
Ricky Rubio - -11.2

Again, this is about the exact opposite of what one would expect. Our starting 5 are all in the negative and our bench is all in the positive.

Anyone pointing the finger at Rubio right now certainly has a case backed up by these numbers. His On/Off numbers are by far the worst of his career. That being said, he's shown for multiple prior seasons that he's usually at the top of the heap in this type of stat.

We'll see how these numbers evolve as they continue to pile up more minutes and games. On paper, our bench seems weak and our starters seem a lot better, but that's not how it's played out so far.

queue up (no pun intended) the Thibs haters in 3..2..1....

I think these stats match the eye test in watch Zach and Rubio's D this year. These two have looked awful on the defensive end so these stats do not surprise me at all.

BizarroJerry wrote:queue up (no pun intended) the Thibs haters in 3..2..1....

I was not a Thibs hater nor am I ready to pass judgment yet, but this certainly gives Thibs haters a ton of fodder.

My hope is that these numbers is a circumstance of small sample size along with the adjustment phase of a new coach. But if they continue down this path, then the finger needs to be pointed squarely at him at some point. No way should a team this young and talented go literally backwards when there are very few injury issues.

thedoper wrote:I think these stats match the eye test in watch Zach and Rubio's D this year. These two have looked awful on the defensive end so these stats do not surprise me at all.

Hard for me to lay blame on any one or two guys defensively given the interdependency required to defend in today's NBA. But if you are going to point the finger at those two, you absolutely also have to point the finger at KAT and Dieng for not protecting the paint. We've seen multiple times this year KAT back off a cutting player because it appears he was afraid to pick up a foul. And Dieng has never been good when someone gets a body on him in the paint. Wiggins is Wiggins....he's OK in isolation, but often falls asleep in transition, rarely gets deflections, and never takes charges.

The stats indicate our starters are worse than our pathetic bench. So I wonder how useful that metric is. Fair question?

Q12543 wrote:

BizarroJerry wrote:queue up (no pun intended) the Thibs haters in 3..2..1....

I was not a Thibs hater nor am I ready to pass judgment yet, but this certainly gives Thibs haters a ton of fodder.

My hope is that these numbers is a circumstance of small sample size along with the adjustment phase of a new coach. But if they continue down this path, then the finger needs to be pointed squarely at him at some point. No way should a team this young and talented go literally backwards when there are very few injury issues.

Agreed. I'm not giving him a pass, but I'm also not ready to point it solely at him. Can you tell us where the starters rank in avg. minutes? That's the area ( like most others) where I'm critical of Thibs.

By all accounts our starters worked hard during the offseason to improve their individual games. They also came to camp early for an extended training camp. Did they work themselves into becoming worse than they were last season, including the the post-allstar period when they were playing near .500 ball? Does anyone really think they somehow lost their competitiveness or work ethic over the summer? Did their individual basketball IQs go down in the summer sun?

So if we don't blame the head coach, then we blame the players. But it's the same players as last season. The difference? A different head coach and coaching staff. To blame the players for the dramatic decline from last season illustrated by Q's stats you have to assume the absurd answers invited by my rhetorical questions above. It's not tenable. I recall Bill Clinton's political mantra: "It's the economy stupid!" Well, applied here, "it's the head coach...!

It's certainly possible that the horrible results thus far are simply part of the process of the players learning a substantially different approach to the game -- a one step back two steps forward process that hasn't yet produced any steps forward. That's the only positive spin that would actually be credible. It's early enough in the season that I'm still wide open to that possibility.

As I've written several times, the touchstone for me will be how this team is playing mid-December. So I'll be interested to see how we're playing 2 to 3 weeks from now. The comeback against the Suns was encouraging. I'm trying to stay positive and hoping for the best.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:The stats indicate our starters are worse than our pathetic bench. So I wonder how useful that metric is. Fair question?

The stats indicate that our starters are worse on a relative basis to our bench. Keep in mind when these 5 guys are all playing together, they are invariably playing against opposing teams' starters. When our bench is in the game, they are playing mostly against other bench players. What these stats tell us is that our starters are getting whipped by their peers and our bench is holding their own against their peers.

It's still early and these numbers could certainly reverse themselves in another 10 or 15 games. But in trying to explain our crappy start to the season, the finger needs to be pointed directly at Thibs and our starting 5. Take your pick which deserves more blame....