Minnesota Sports Forum

Four preseason games down. Three to go. Regular season starts in two weeks. Here's a thread for over reactions and observations. My two cents:

Good: Towns, Dieng and Bjelica.

Dieng has a PER of 26.8. Towns PER is 26.6 and Bjelica 20.7. All look better than I had hoped. Not to say we can't nit pick on specific weaknesses (like many do). But there are certainly more troubling spots to focus on....

Bad: LaVine, Muhammad, Payne.

LaVine's PER (6.6), Bazz (5.9), Payne (7.0) show they haven't looked too good so far. It's still a very small sample. But this is what we have to chew on at this point.

Ugly: Team Defense.

They finally kept a team under 100 points and got their 1st win. But the first three games they gave up an average of 116 points which was very disappointing considering the focus on defense we heard about/saw in their first practice.

Haven't seen a second of preseason.

To be fair, that's not much different than the past 26 years of Wolves fandom for me.

I haven't seen a game either but it sounds like we can add Tyus Jones to the good category?

I'll add that Payne needs to stop creating/committing the stupid offensive foul away from the ball. Everybody loves his energy, but he needs to control his movement better.

I am more interested in "progress" than "overall stats". We don't have Rubio in the mix, yet, but the team defense is improving. And this is what I would expect with a new defensive philosophy -- these guys should be learning and getting better every game.

The guy who has not shown much improvement, if any, is Bazz. Based on play thus far, both Prince and Rudez are beating him out!

Zach has struggled as well, but played a good 4th quarter last night, hitting a 3 and a little shot in the paint. Hopefully that is a turning point for him.

As Q mentioned, we have to be happy that Sam's offense seems to create more 3 point shot attempts than Flip's "an open long two is good, too" offense. He even commented after the game that they will let Dieng shoot that corner 3...

http://m.startribune.com/sports/wolves/332988411.html?section=sports/wolves

BizarroJerry wrote:I haven't seen a game either but it sounds like we can add Tyus Jones to the good category?

As a Tyus Jones skeptic, I have to say, the dude knows what the hell he's doing when it comes to running a team, especially the pick and roll. I mean he seems to have all the little crafty nuances down, like a 10-year vet. If he can keep hitting the outside shot, he can definitely challenge Miller for some minutes at the 1 this year. We for sure aren't keeping Brown at this point.

Defensively, it's a different story. He sucks and it's hard to ever see him being a plus defender because of his physical limitations (the effort is there). Then again, Miller can no longer defend and Brown wasn't that great at it either. It just adds to the problem we have as an overall team. We don't have enough talent on the defensive side of the ball.

TXviking wrote:I'll add that Payne needs to stop creating/committing the stupid offensive foul away from the ball. Everybody loves his energy, but he needs to control his movement better.

It is such a contrast watching Payne recklessly flop around out there while Bjelica calmly does his thing.

To your point, Payne works and hustles his ass off. But my god, there has to be a teaspoon or two of basketball intelligence in the mix, otherwise it's just wasted energy. So far, I have seen nothing from him that indicates progress in this regard. We'll see....

60WinTim wrote:I am more interested in "progress" than "overall stats". We don't have Rubio in the mix, yet, but the team defense is improving. And this is what I would expect with a new defensive philosophy -- these guys should be learning and getting better every game.

The guy who has not shown much improvement, if any, is Bazz. Based on play thus far, both Prince and Rudez are beating him out!

Zach has struggled as well, but played a good 4th quarter last night, hitting a 3 and a little shot in the paint. Hopefully that is a turning point for him.

As Q mentioned, we have to be happy that Sam's offense seems to create more 3 point shot attempts than Flip's "an open long two is good, too" offense. He even commented after the game that they will let Dieng shoot that corner 3...

http://m.startribune.com/sports/wolves/332988411.html?section=sports/wolves

Yes, it appears that Mitchell has a much less regressive view of the 3-point shot. I don't call it progressive because launching 20 3-pt attempts per game is still below league average. It's even hard to call it good coaching because it's practically table stakes these days. I'm just relieved he's not living in the 1990s. He's got us up to 2006! We're less than a decade behind now, whoo-hoo!

Defensively.....We'll see. I'm a big believer that a team can be more easily coached up on defense than offense, so to me that is the true test of his coaching abilities. I'm not expecting miracles, but can we get out of the bottom 4 or 5 teams? I'd actually consider that a success given our personnel and youth.

Q12543 wrote:

BizarroJerry wrote:I haven't seen a game either but it sounds like we can add Tyus Jones to the good category?

As a Tyus Jones skeptic, I have to say, the dude knows what the hell he's doing when it comes to running a team, especially the pick and roll. I mean he seems to have all the little crafty nuances down, like a 10-year vet. If he can keep hitting the outside shot, he can definitely challenge Miller for some minutes at the 1 this year. We for sure aren't keeping Brown at this point.

Defensively, it's a different story. He sucks and it's hard to ever see him being a plus defender because of his physical limitations (the effort is there). Then again, Miller can no longer defend and Brown wasn't that great at it either. It just adds to the problem we have as an overall team. We don't have enough talent on the defensive side of the ball.

I'm still a cautiously optimistic Tyus Jones fan.

I remember posting after the first Duke vs. Wisconsin game last year that I'd never seen a guy that young with so much poise. He's been groomed to be a PG for a long time. He's played vs. guys that were more athletic than him every summer. And last year at times in college.

He's thrived at every level. The NBA is a big leap. But you don't lose the craftiness and steady hand and poise...



[Note: Yes. Defensively, there' very little to hope for there... sans plus defenders protecting him. A team can easily overcome one or two sieves. But the Wolves have several.]

I think Bazz may have lost too much weight. From my eyes, and you guys may disagree, he hasn't been getting great position in the post, and that's where he really eats. He used to just run to his spot, anchor down and normal-sized wings couldn't move him out of there. He's having to work a lot harder so far in pre-season. I think he lost that weight to get quicker and fight for SG minutes, but that's never been his game and I liked him as a bully ball wing on offense creating a mismatch.