Game Report - Wolves v. Thunder

[Lipoli390]

Great game and equally great crowd tonight. Not a full arena with slightly less than the head count opening night, but tremendous energy from the crowd all night. The crowd fed off the team and the team fed off the crowd. Too bad everyone on this board couldn't be there tonight.

Yes, the Thunder were depleted, playing without their second best player. But they had Durant, Ibaka, Perkins and Sefolosha in their lineup and fully healthy. Yet the Wolves blew them away and completely dominated on both ends from the opening tip until the third string scrubs came in. More about the scrubs in a minute. Bottom line is that when this team plays with energy and passion, they are very good. Our opening night performance made you wonder whether they'd make the playoffs. Tonight's performance helped solidify my 6th seed prediction. A few more performances like this one and I may have to revise my prediction upward.

Now I know I need to dial down a bit. You can't get to high over this one any more than you can allow yourself to get too low after a performance like the one we saw Wednesday night -- although even Wednesday night's game produced a gutty overtime win.

It's hard to find anything negative in the Wolves performance tonight -- until the last 6 minutes of the game that is. I'd say there were only three disappointments among the regular rotation players -- Dante, Alexey and Kevin Martin -- athough Alexey wasn't that bad, getting 6 shots at the line and making 5 of them. Dante couldn't hit his typical short jumper tonight. When he's not hitting that shot, he looks pretty bad because even though he hustles, he's not a very good defender and he's a mediocre rebounder at best. The biggest disappointment among the rotation guys tonight was Kevin Martin. For the second night in a row, he looked slow. In a nutshell, he looked bad defensively and easily defended. He ended up with only 9 points on 4-11 shooting and no three-pointers. We have to hope his game will elevate substantially pretty soon.

On the long list of positives for the Wolves tonight was their team defense, ball movement and great energy. Individually, you have to pay tribute to Kevin Love again as he pulled down 12 boards, had two steals and still scored 24 points on 58% shooting from the field, including 3 of 5 from behind the arc and 7-8 at the stripe. But you also have to pay tribute to Ricky. The Ricky we saw tonight is the Ricky we thought we'd eventually see when the Wolves drafted him back in June of 2009. Tonight he did everything you'd expect to see from an elite NBA PG. The stats speak for themselves -- 14 points, 10 assists, 5 steals and only 1 turnover. Dante's 5 missed close-range shots were 5 more assists Ricky would have had. Then there's Corey Brewer. Corey's defense on Durant was terrific. Corey still can't shoot, but he's all energy and all heart when he's on the court. And he's really improved dramatically in his decision-making, court-awareness and body control compared to his initial time in a Wolves uniform. He used to play with reckless energy. Now he plays more with controlled energy. It was a pleasure to watch him play tonight.

Among those worthy of praise tonight, the one guy I want to single out for special praise is Derrick Williams. He played a heck of a game tonight with 10 points, 7 boards, 2 blocks and a steal. What you might not have seen on TV was how active he was tonight on the offensive end without the ball. He was moving and cutting the way he needs to in Adelman's offense. And he was all effort on the defensive end as well. He could have hung his head after what transpired Wednesday night and all the things that have been said about him. But instead he put his game face on tonight and played his heart out -- and did so within the team concept. Of course we all know that Derrick is sort of a tease. He'll give you a performance like tonight's, then revert to the old ineffectual, ineffective Derrick the next night. But maybe, just maybe, tonight's performance is indicative of what we can expect to see from Derrick consistently the rest of the season. If so, then we should expect to see him as a major part of our regular rotation at 25-30 minutes per game. That would be huge for this team.

Now I guess it's time to talk about the scrubs. In describing their performance tonight, words like dismal, horrible and even comical come to mind. However, no matter what word you use, the bottom line is that our scrubs looked like they'd have a hard time getting playing time on a D-League team. Dieng looked completely overmatched and lost. He's going to be far more of a project than I thought. Shabazz tried -- oh how he tried. But his performance left me with the same impression I had watching him in the summer league. He is simply overmatched physically - even by the Thunder's scrubs and summer league competition. He appears to be a below-average athlete who used to excel on his physical strength but now finds himself physically overmatched. And oh what a horrible ball-handler he is. He seems like a PF trapped in SG's body but without a SG's quickness or athleticism. Hummel wasn't bad, but he wasn't good either.

I haven't heard any details on Turiaf's injury. It looked horrible and I fear the worst. But Dieng's play tonight was a reminder of why Flip signed Turiaf and why we need Turiaf in the rotation. If Turiaf is down for any extended time frame, Flip may regret not keeping CJ.

Anyway, a great win that this team can build on. We have two tough road games around the corner. It would be nice to come out of the Garden with a win and a 3-0 start to the season. That's all for now.

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

Perfectly said Lip. Had I wrote a game report, it would be very similar to one like this. If Turiaf is out for a long period of time, I could see Flip getting a back-up big if he feels like Dieng isn't ready right now. Plenty of them available still.

[longstrangetrip [enjin:6600564]]

The joint must have been rockin' tonight, lipoli...had to be a fun Friday night!

I agree that the only negatives were the play of our three rookies and Turiaf's injury. They are saying that Turiaf has an elbow contusion, but he's a tough cookie if nothing is broken. The fall looked horrible on TV, and Jim Pete said the fall didn't "sound good"...I don't like that. Let's see what the x-rays say, but I don't expect he will be ready for the Knicks game.

Which ties into the poor performance of our rookies, because Turiaf will have to log some minutes backing up Pek. I'm not too concerned. Although all three looked terrible tonight, there are things I like about each of Hummel, Dieng and Muhammad, and tonight might be just be first game jitters. I think Dieng will give us 15 solid minutes backing up Pek Sunday, as long as he doesn't try to do too much other than play solid defense and rebound.

It was nice to see Derrick moving without the ball in the first half, and he was rewarded with two nice passes that resulted in easy dunks. Wouldn't it be nice if Derrick could learn from tonight's experience? He has teased us before, though, so I'm going to temper my enthusiasm.

The first half was one of the best halves I have ever seen from a Wolves team. They played loose and showed excellent ball movement, but incredibly only had one turnover by halftime!

I thought Corey's defense and Pek and Love's physicality set the tone early. Corey was effective in denying Durant the ball, and OKC just doesn't have many other options with Russell out. Perkins, Ibaka and Durant seemed to recognize they were overmatched early in this game, and they had all checked out by the middle of the second quarter.

Kevin Martin's shooting has not been sharp the first two games, but I'm not worried about Kevin. He has always been a deadly shooter, and as long as he stays healthy, he should get 20 most nights in this offense.

Finally, it was nice to see nobody play 30 minutes tonight. It's a long season, and occasional blowouts will allow Adelman to control the minutes of his stars. Everyone except Turiaf should be fresh for the Knicks game.

We're not going to go 82-0, but wouldn't a win be sweet on Sunday?

[markkbu [enjin:6588958]]

Lip, excellent report. Thanks! This is always a great read when I miss the game.

[Lipoli390]

Long -- My concern about Martin is that he's having a hard time getting his shot off much less making shots when he does get it off cleanly. And his defense has really been horrific. As for Dieng, he looks like he'll have a hard time rebounding. He doesn't seem to have particularly good rebounding instincts and he doesn't seem to have anything close to the strength he needs to hold his position. Shabazz should probably be sent off to our D-League affiliate. Hummel has some game and I think he'll help us before the season is over.

[longstrangetrip [enjin:6600564]]

Long -- My concern about Martin is that he's having a hard time getting his shot off much less making shots when he does get it off cleanly. And his defense has really been horrific. As for Dieng, he looks like he'll have a hard time rebounding. He doesn't seem to have particularly good rebounding instincts and he doesn't seem to have anything close to the strength he needs to hold his position. Shabazz should probably be sent off to our D-League affiliate. Hummel has some game and I think he'll help us before the season is over.

I worry about Martin's defense also. It's difficult to evaluate defense on TV...one of the reasons I really value your live reports...but when I have focused on Kevin, he has seemed lost on defense. And yet, Sefolosha only had 4 points tonight. Did you happen to observe if Martin was on Lamb a lot also, because he scored 16.

I wasn't pleased with Dieng's rebounding tonight, but again I'm attributing it to first game jitters. In every other game I have watched him play, he has appeared to be twice the rebounder that Steamer was. Even as a raw rookie, I feel better about his minutes backing up Pek than I did about Steamer.

I agree that Hummel is more game ready than Shabazz, despite the egg he laid tonight. But I want to keep Shabazz on the squad. I know that it is often argued that a player benefits more from playing in the D-League than warming the bench, but I think Shabazz will benefit by being around this club and learning in the practices. I'm not giving up on Muhammad yet, and based on the effort he puts out every night, I see him making some contributions this year.

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

So basically, Camden's pre game analysis was terrific and we all knew what to look for because of it. :D

Lol on a serious note, I think with Turiaf being banged up, we could actually see more D-Will than Dieng in coming games if Ronny has to play lesser minutes. Love play that stretch five position and pull a Tyson Chandler away from the rim, opening up even more room for guys to operate. Something to keep an eye on.

LST, when I watched the game Lamb was scoring the majority of his points when Martin was out of the game. Lamb started getting warm (not hot) in garbage time when the key rotation guys were out. Don't be too worried about that. I actually don't think Martin was bad on defense tonight at all. He even jumped a passing lane and got an easy transition bucket because of it.

Lip, I'm not worried about K-Mart. Gotta remember that in the last two games, he's been guarded by Afflalo, Oladipo and Sefalosha. Tough defenders for anyone to go off on and he still scored 24 and 9 (24 minutes) in the two games. Think he'll draw Shumpert's attention on Sunday, which is another tough assignment. Hopefully he plays like the efficient SG he is known to be. *Would also like to note that he's not getting the benefit on some foul calls. ORL game he was robbed of several and-1s or fouls. Tonight he was robbed two fouls for sure. One of them he got tech'd up on and the other he made a crazy mid-range one hander that should have been an and-1.

I do think Shabazz needs to go to the D-League. Here's why. I think Hummel is better suited out of the two to give us valuable minutes. While Shabazz can watch and learn, he'd be better off learning hands on in game situations against real competition. The D-League isn't for bums. That's the third most talented league in the world behind the NBA and Spanish League. Really good example of the D-League's use is a player for OKC tonight, Jeremy Lamb (who I love as a young player, liked him at UCONN). OKC sent him to DL last year and he absolutely went off and had a great year. I think it's helped him a ton coming into his sophomore year. Flip should have a sitdown with Shabazz and explain all that I just said so Shabazz knows it's not punishment, it's just to help his progression and quicken his learning process if you will.

[Eitan]

Lip, great report, thank you! I didn`t see the game (only highlights).

Sounds like, almost, a prefect game from the Wolves. Very glad to hear that Love, Ricky and Brewer had a very good game together. Where can I see the game (reply)?

I don`t think we have to be so hard on our rookies. It`s only their first game (6-14 minutes) in the N.B.A. and we should give them some time. Too soon to evaluate them.

Before the game I thought it is going to be a tough game for us against the Thunder, but eventually it developed to a one sided game in our favor. Is it because we had great defense (Brewer & team defense) in the game? or because this is year the Thunder (at least without Westbrook) are not good enough?

Lip, in your last game report you said that Williams was isolated on the bench (very bothering). Have you seen any changes on this one?

[WildWolf2813]

Nothing to worry about with the rookies. Hummel and Muhammad played 6 minutes at the end of a blowout. Nothing eye popping was gonna show up in that time. Dieng in all honesty was impressive defensively. Really held his own against Ibaka filling in for Turiaf. Let's be concerned when our rookies struggle in a big spot, not at the end of a blowout.

The Wolves play in NY next, so that means I'll definitely supply a game report for that one.

[Mstermisty [enjin:6864008]]

Good report...and I'll keep my analysis short and to the point: the Wolves look like a team to be reckoned with this season. That was a hungry team I saw tonight.