Minnesota Sports Forum

On Adelman - It's probably still too early to fire him. After all, we're barely at the halfway point and one good win streak puts us back in the mix again. However, he's the head coach and deserves as much of the blame as anyone else. He's running out of rope....

On Barea - Trade him. Even if we get zilch in return. At this point I see absolutely no downside to sliding Shved into the backup PG slot, as many here have suggested. He's played better of late and defensively he's more disruptive than Barea. I was on the Barea side of the Barea/Ridnour who-should-we-keep debate. In hindsight, the answer should have been "neither". By the way, I don't necessarily think Shved is the answer either, but he deserves a shot. Meanwhile, Trey Burke is breaking our hearts....

On Brewer - Love the person, not the player. He plays with a ton of energy and passion. But the poor shooting, gambling defense, and thin frame is now coming back to haunt us. He was brilliant to start the year, but opposing teams figured things out pretty quickly and he no longer poses much of a threat on either side of the ball. I mean, Kawhi Leonard absolutely destroyed him. Flip overpaid for a likeable, but highly flawed player. I advocated him as a starter because I thought he was best used as a low-usage, defensive minded wing. By playing with our top three scorers, he wouldn't have to jack up a lot of shots. This played out great to start the season, but it's time for a change.

On Luc - He is the one guy on our squad that can truly shut an opposing player down. May be not every night. But man, the guy has a knack for sticky defense. Players just never get a real clean look off of him. We saw that on full display last night against Derozan. Time to insert him into the starting lineup. He can guard multiple positions and has the combination of lateral quicks and strength to take on all comers. And while he's not good on offense, at least he knows it. He won't take shots unless he has to.

On Cunningham - Did anyone see him put the ball on the floor and drive to the hoop twice last night!? Amazing! Effing do this more often!!!!!

On the rookies - Lots of "what do we have to lose?" rationalizations for playing these two guys (Bazz and Dieng) in contested games, but I'm not there yet. If things keep going south, then absolutely, we need some strategic injuries and rest days to get these guys some burn without alienating the vets on the roster. But I'm just not there yet, especially with Budinger and Turiaf working their way back into shape. They deserve first dibs.

On Rubio - Not sure what he can do at this point other than fight through things. He really is a god-awful shooter/finisher outside of wide open 3-point shots (where he's at least mediocre). A lot of us were hoping for some incremental improvement this year with him being nearly 2 years removed from the knee injury, but he has actually gotten worse inside the arc. PG is actually one of the deeper positions in the NBA. The front office needs to be open-minded about potentially making a move here this offseason if they don't think Rubio can improve as a scoring threat. It saddens me to even think about this.....

Agreed with all that you said, Q. Good post.

About Luc, I've been on that train since we made the trade. Thought it made sense all around for the starting unit to get a legit defensive wing and put Corey's energy in the second unit. Now we're all here waiting for exactly that.

Q. agree with most of the thoughts here, although I fear that Adelman has lost the team and I would not object to bringing in some younger blood to lead and hopefully inspire this team. The lack of a natural leader on the roster makes the coach much more important than it would be on a team with leaders.

Also, I'm wondering what you have seen in Budinger so far that would warrant steady minutes. Take a look at the horrible shooting stats, and what else do you really get from Bud other than shooting? Even when healthy he is, at best, and average defender. His shot seems clearly broken to me, as it should be given his recent knee injuries...he'll be fine next year, I think, but he just doesn't look ready to me now. My call for Shabazz to get Bud's minutes isn't giving up on the season...I think Shabazz can deliver better than the 32% FG% Bud is giving us this year.

Great post Q!

I would disagree on Brewer in that he's been in the league long enough that teams had him figured out years ago. The difference between his nice run early in the year and now is that the team as a whole cannot get out of its own way. Within the framework of the team early when they were hitting on all cylinders he works, but once the rest of the players around him become plodding, below average players then his game no longer fits. His game doesn't stand on its own, but it's a very nice fit as a piece of a sound overall whole.

SP -- I think you and Q are both right. Some of Brewer's drop off is the decline in play of the team around him. But as Q suggested, teams have also adjusted to Brewer at least insofar as they have taken away his fast break Love connection. When you think about it, you realize that Brewer's play at the beginning of the season wasn't particularly special minus his fast break points. I recall pointing out early in some of my game reports that Brewer's defense was overrated, which is far more apparent when you see him live. Brewer's ball handling and hands have been characteristically bad from the beginning and his shooting regressed to the mean pretty early in the season.

Camden wrote:Agreed with all that you said, Q. Good post.

About Luc, I've been on that train since we made the trade. Thought it made sense all around for the starting unit to get a legit defensive wing and put Corey's energy in the second unit. Now we're all here waiting for exactly that.

Yup, that's definitely not an original idea on my part. Others like you have been calling for this. I always try to take a coach's perspective, which means you rarely do things in a knee-jerk fashion. And the fact is that the starting unit was playing excellent ball for a good period of time. But they have started to falter over the course of the last couple of weeks. It's time for a change.

longstrangetrip wrote:Q. agree with most of the thoughts here, although I fear that Adelman has lost the team and I would not object to bringing in some younger blood to lead and hopefully inspire this team. The lack of a natural leader on the roster makes the coach much more important than it would be on a team with leaders.

Also, I'm wondering what you have seen in Budinger so far that would warrant steady minutes. Take a look at the horrible shooting stats, and what else do you really get from Bud other than shooting? Even when healthy he is, at best, and average defender. His shot seems clearly broken to me, as it should be given his recent knee injuries...he'll be fine next year, I think, but he just doesn't look ready to me now. My call for Shabazz to get Bud's minutes isn't giving up on the season...I think Shabazz can deliver better than the 32% FG% Bud is giving us this year.

LST, Budinger is actually a solid rebounder and passer too. I want to give him time to work himself back into shape and regain his shooting stroke. That simply won't happen if he doesn't play, so it's a catch-22. I agree it's frustrating watching him struggle on D and miss the open shots we need him to make. But he deserves the benefit of the doubt. Just because he's shooting 32% to date doesn't mean he'll shoot 32% going forward.

I have mentioned before, but the Budinger signing was simply a bad decision. As someone mentioned, it seems we bid against ourselves. I would be OK with it if he stood out in ANY area. Most tout him as a "shooter" off the bench. The reality is, he is a fairly pedestrian shooter over the course of his career. He shoots 36% on 3's over the course of his career, which puts him at #92 in the NBA this season and similar in other seasons. This means that we paid a "specialist" $5M to probably be the 3rd or 4th best 3 pt option on a decent team. What? Oh, and the other thing that makes him a passable overall player would be his athleticism, which I think we can all agree has been compromised with his injuries over the past couple years.

Same can be said for paying Brewer. Again, you paid a 3 & D guy $5M to be far less than adequate at those skills they were brought in to display.

Both Brewer and Bud were and are still $2M per players. If others were bidding more, you simply need to make the better business decision and walk away. This is a problem in the NBA in general, but we just wasted our cap space this off season on too many of these deals. Disappointing.

Hicks123 wrote:I have mentioned before, but the Budinger signing was simply a bad decision. As someone mentioned, it seems we bid against ourselves. I would be OK with it if he stood out in ANY area. Most tout him as a "shooter" off the bench. The reality is, he is a fairly pedestrian shooter over the course of his career. He shoots 36% on 3's over the course of his career, which puts him at #92 in the NBA this season and similar in other seasons. This means that we paid a "specialist" $5M to probably be the 3rd or 4th best 3 pt option on a decent team. What? Oh, and the other thing that makes him a passable overall player would be his athleticism, which I think we can all agree has been compromised with his injuries over the past couple years.

Same can be said for paying Brewer. Again, you paid a 3 & D guy $5M to be far less than adequate at those skills they were brought in to display.

Both Brewer and Bud were and are still $2M per players. If others were bidding more, you simply need to make the better business decision and walk away. This is a problem in the NBA in general, but we just wasted our cap space this off season on too many of these deals. Disappointing.

I agree, Hicks.

Would Memphis take Bud for C Lee this offseason?. If I had to pick 2 between Bud, Brewer and LRMAM, I would take the latter 2 just because Bud and Martin will never be able to share the floor together defensively while Brewer and LRMAM could at least play good enough D to make up for the lack of offense. Memphis on the other hand has defense to go around Bud and the would welcome his shooting and cutting on the wings. At the end of the day, we paid three wing players that don't fit together. We need to remedy that this offseason.

In the short term, I agree with swapping Brewer and LRMAM in the starting lineup. I would then use Ricky more with the second unit of Bud and Brewer. I would also try Shved out with the starters a little bit as the primary ball handler. At this point Adelman needs to start tinkering in an open way instead of turtle-ing up and trying to restrict the lineups for the sake of consistency. Consistency is out the window, so we need to try some different lineups to find some better chemistry. We're trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole rather than trying to find a round object that will fit into the hole.