Minnesota Sports Forum

over the past 8 games our record has been 2-6. That is not very good.

Here are Love's numbers over those 8 games.

MIN FG% 3P% REB AST BLK STL TO PTS
35.8 .403 .304 13.5 3.4 .25 1.25 3.5 21.1



Teams that have leading scorers that are inefficient at scoring lose more games than they win. We have done just that.

Love has to do better in order us to start winning consistently. Should he continue to score this inefficiently, we will continue to lose.

Love still hasnt found a way to score consistently around the basket unless hes drawing fouls or putbacks. Hes making his living on the perimeter and at the line. He hasnt progressed as a shot creator which will always limit him offensively and in crunch time.. Its not stopping him from taking the shots , there just not very good ones.

Ricky isnt exactly without fault with this teams downward trend.. When your second best player is shooting 36% and avg 8pts a game hes as much of the problem as he is the solution. For all the talk about his glowing defense I cant help but notice that the opposing pgs have been absolutely killing us this year.

PorkChop wrote:Ricky isnt exactly without fault with this teams downward trend.. When your second best player is shooting 36% and avg 8pts a game hes as much of the problem as he is the solution. For all the talk about his glowing defense I cant help but notice that the opposing pgs have been absolutely killing us this year.

i have thought about this also, it looks like Ricky is great in reading opponents offense as he has huge bball IQ, he gets plenty of steals by jumping into passing lanes but he is not the best 1on1 defender which hurts us when we play against good scoring PGs, also there is a factor that PEK is not great PnR defender as he is not hedging hard enough and doesn't have length to contest shots

What love needs to do is to stop actively looking for the 3 ball that much. Teams have been defending him and denying him clean looks at the 3. Knowing full well that love doesn't have a counter move nor is he quick enough to blow by the defenders when they are denying or contesting him the 3.

Love needs to go inside the paint, draw fouls and instead of almost always poping out in pick and roll situations, he should look to roll to the basket more.

His mid range game is almost non existent at the moment. 2 seasons ago, he was starting to hit that mid range bank shot ala duncan. Its been inside buckets and 3 ball attempts from him. He needs to work on that bank shot and that hook shot of his. If the 3 ball is there, then take it, if not then don't force it.

Im sure he will bounce back and he wont be shooting 40% for the rest of the season, but he has to work on getting closer looks. He is the teams best player and we need him to further improve to get us into the playoffs.

worldK wrote:What love needs to do is to stop actively looking for the 3 ball that much. Teams have been defending him and denying him clean looks at the 3. Knowing full well that love doesn't have a counter move nor is he quick enough to blow by the defenders when they are denying or contesting him the 3.

Love needs to go inside the paint, draw fouls and instead of almost always poping out in pick and roll situations, he should look to roll to the basket more.

His mid range game is almost non existent at the moment. 2 seasons ago, he was starting to hit that mid range bank shot ala duncan. Its been inside buckets and 3 ball attempts from him. He needs to work on that bank shot and that hook shot of his. If the 3 ball is there, then take it, if not then don't force it.

Im sure he will bounce back and he wont be shooting 40% for the rest of the season, but he has to work on getting closer looks. He is the teams best player and we need him to further improve to get us into the playoffs.

worldK wrote:What love needs to do is to stop actively looking for the 3 ball that much. Teams have been defending him and denying him clean looks at the 3. Knowing full well that love doesn't have a counter move nor is he quick enough to blow by the defenders when they are denying or contesting him the 3.

Love needs to go inside the paint, draw fouls and instead of almost always poping out in pick and roll situations, he should look to roll to the basket more.

His mid range game is almost non existent at the moment. 2 seasons ago, he was starting to hit that mid range bank shot ala duncan. Its been inside buckets and 3 ball attempts from him. He needs to work on that bank shot and that hook shot of his. If the 3 ball is there, then take it, if not then don't force it.

Im sure he will bounce back and he wont be shooting 40% for the rest of the season, but he has to work on getting closer looks. He is the teams best player and we need him to further improve to get us into the playoffs.

He also has a pretty good first step. I wish sometimes he would catch the ball for three, do his pump fake that he likes so much, but then put the ball on the floor and drive. He'd likely either get fouled or get close enough to use his right hand. I do agree that he should roll to the basket more. Don't know why he hasn't been doing it as much.

Camden wrote:

worldK wrote:What love needs to do is to stop actively looking for the 3 ball that much. Teams have been defending him and denying him clean looks at the 3. Knowing full well that love doesn't have a counter move nor is he quick enough to blow by the defenders when they are denying or contesting him the 3.

Love needs to go inside the paint, draw fouls and instead of almost always poping out in pick and roll situations, he should look to roll to the basket more.

His mid range game is almost non existent at the moment. 2 seasons ago, he was starting to hit that mid range bank shot ala duncan. Its been inside buckets and 3 ball attempts from him. He needs to work on that bank shot and that hook shot of his. If the 3 ball is there, then take it, if not then don't force it.

Im sure he will bounce back and he wont be shooting 40% for the rest of the season, but he has to work on getting closer looks. He is the teams best player and we need him to further improve to get us into the playoffs.

worldK wrote:What love needs to do is to stop actively looking for the 3 ball that much. Teams have been defending him and denying him clean looks at the 3. Knowing full well that love doesn't have a counter move nor is he quick enough to blow by the defenders when they are denying or contesting him the 3.

Love needs to go inside the paint, draw fouls and instead of almost always poping out in pick and roll situations, he should look to roll to the basket more.

His mid range game is almost non existent at the moment. 2 seasons ago, he was starting to hit that mid range bank shot ala duncan. Its been inside buckets and 3 ball attempts from him. He needs to work on that bank shot and that hook shot of his. If the 3 ball is there, then take it, if not then don't force it.

Im sure he will bounce back and he wont be shooting 40% for the rest of the season, but he has to work on getting closer looks. He is the teams best player and we need him to further improve to get us into the playoffs.

He also has a pretty good first step. I wish sometimes he would catch the ball for three, do his pump fake that he likes so much, but then put the ball on the floor and drive. He'd likely either get fouled or get close enough to use his right hand. I do agree that he should roll to the basket more. Don't know why he hasn't been doing it as much.

Im not sure about his first step. The difference between love and a guy like dirk is that dirk is a good ball handler and he has counter moves when he does that pump fake from 3. He can hit a runner or a pull up jumps shot or fade away jumpers. Love cant do those. That makes dirk an effective volume 3 pts shooter. Defenders have to guard and consider his counter moves.

Love doesn't roll much to the basket because he has fallen in love with the 3 ball. He needs to roll more. Get that hook shot down and duncan bank shot more.

Those suggesting that Ricky isn't a good one-on-one defender haven't been watching him very closely. He's a very good on-ball defender. And he actually gets a lot if not most of his steals from on-ball defense, not from jumping passing lanes. Corey is the guy who gets nearly all his steals from jumping passing lanes. Ricky is an excellent defender. He also contributes substantially on the offensive end through his assists and rebounding as he is one of the better rebounders at his position. Is his shooting deficient? Yes. But he's been far more of a net positive than Love the past 8 games. I know that's a pretty low bar, but ...

Our problem is that only 2 of our 5 starters are good defenders, while our rotation players off the bench are terrible on both the offensive and defensive ends. The Wolves are currently a lottery-bound team. I wouldn't say it's Love's fault or Ricky's fault. Nor is it Martin's or Brewer's fault. They are what they are. They all have serious holes in their games and none can honestly be viewed as a star.

I still expect Ricky's shot to improve. It's certainly possible. But Love won't be come longer or more athletic and he won't develop a dribble drive game. Martin won't start blowing by defenders in crunch time and scoring consistently in the paint. At age 28, Brewer won't suddenly become a reliable perimeter shooter or decent ball-handler. Pekovic won't become a rim protector or someone Ricky can target for alley-oops. And we won't see Love, Martin or Pekovic become good defenders at this point in their careers.

So I'm not blaming Love, Ricky, Martin, Brewer or Pekovic. And I won't blame JJ, Hummel, Price or anyone else who comes in off the bench. As I mentioned, they are what they are. It seems obvious, but it bears repeating-- the blame for our current predicament lies with the front office people who assembled this team. And the owner responsible for hiring those front office people.

I guess we can be thankful the Wolves are not the Knicks or Nets.

HA. Lip's feelings about this team sway from win to loss. This last one hit him way too hard apparently. Enjoy your posts, but boy oh boy are you too negative on this team right now my man.

Are you blaming Kahn or Flip? I'll agree with you if it's Kahn but not ready to give Flip much blame yet. Signing Brwer and Martin were excellent moves. I am very thankful AK is gone and we don't have McCollum. Once we get into Jan the schedule lightens up and we will rack up some wins