Minnesota Sports Forum

I don't see this happening, but I don't see how it's a bad fit for each team as long as both players stay healthy. I realize that's always key to a trade, but it's still worth mentioning. Bill Simmons has often talked about the Wolves trading Kevin Love to the Chicago Bulls, but perhaps this isn't the right trade for these two teams. Chicago would have to give up more than they'd want; Minnesota doesn't want to trade their star player. Both reasons are more than understandable.

What's holding these two teams back from swapping Pekovic and Noah, though? Pek is 27. Noah's 28. Relatively the same contracts. Chicago desperately needs more help on the offensive end and Minnesota could use a rim protector badly. Chicago would still have Taj Gibson as a rim protector and I believe Thibs could more than help Pek with his help defense.

The Bulls are in a tough situation. Deng could walk this off-season, though he's hinted that he wants to come back. Rose is now marked as injury prone. They could use a trade to shake up their team, but I could understand if they decide to keep the same core for one clean playoff run. Still something to think about.

Noah is a very nice compliment to Love defensively, but now we are bereft of offensive talent outside of Love and Martin - and Martin is aging quickly.

Again, I think the mission is to improve the bench instead of shuffling the deck chairs in the starting lineup, where these sorts of trades help us defensively but cripple us offensively since the defense now only needs to game plan around two guys, with the other three - Brewer, Noah, and Rubio - having serious limitations offensively.

The good news is that defensively, we have some bench assets that can help - Turiaf, Dieng, and Luc. My biggest criticism of Adelman is his unwillingness to feed Dieng minutes along side Love. Then bring Cunningham in for Love when Pek is ready to enter the game.

Our biggest gap right now is offensively efficient guard and wing play off the bench. Barea, Shved, and Hummel just aren't getting the job done. At least we have two bigs that can score efficiently (Love and Pek). That means guys like Turiaf, Dieng, and Cunningham can always be paired with one of them. But on the wing we have one single threat - Martin. Barea should be another, but he's having his worst year since being a rookie and I'm starting to wonder if he's worn out his welcome in Minnesota.

I was thinking along the same lines as Cam. But I agree with Q. At this point we need to improve the bench and Adelman needs to a better job of mixing the right combinations.

I was hoping we would have drafted Noah over Brewer to play with KG. I like him her now too. I think he would bring leadership to the team that Pekovic doesnt.

The comment on the bench. Was it a nightmare or did Phil Jackson some how get a bench full of scrubs to play as a solid unit for the Lakers. Has Adelman ever been able to coach a second unit?

Adelman = The main problem! His rotations suck, his development of players sucks! He's never won a big game in his life with some really good teams.