Minnesota Sports Forum

Last Year we went 31-51.
We essentially are adding Love and Budinger coming back from season long injuries, as well as Rubio not being himself for the majority of the year. Take into account that we had point guards playing the shooting guard position, adding Martin and Brewer as well as Pek developing into a elite center, I see no reason to expect anything less than 50 wins. Thoughts?

You're making an assumption that we made last year on this... That the team stays healthy. I hate to say it, but I think we have to asterisk all of these predictions because that's not a safe assumption anymore.

Yes. This is assuming everyone stays healthy. But at the same time, like Flip was saying yesterday, we are better positioned with roster balance to weather some injuries. Last year was out of the ordinary injury-wise. (knock on wood)

I think the key players on this team won't be forced to play as heavy minutes as they've had to in the past. This team is really deep and shouldn't have to lean on Love/Rubio/Pek 40 minutes a night. That in itself will help with the injury concerns. Back to this team's depth, that's another reason not to be worried about injuries. If one man goes down, Flip has constructed this team to be able to have a "next man up" ability in the rotation.

I expect 50+ wins as well. I'm thinking 6th seed or higher.

Let's also remember that this is another year for DWill and Shved. DWill has gotten better every year. No reason to think he won't be better this year as well. Shved apparently looked really good the other day in practice. I know it's just practice, but still. And there's Shabazz and Dieng that will give production off the bench. Flip's put together a really impressive off-season from the draft, free agency, handling trade rumors and also gaining good relationships with Kevin and Ricky.

I know there's people that rip Flip because they don't agree with some of the moves he's done. I'm not one of them. Tip of the cap to Flip. Well done.

I agree that this team is far more balanced than in any Wolves team in recent memory, which is a good reason why I agree that we're primed to improve. With that said, I can't come to make a prediction based on recent year's injuries. One nice thing is that this team has shooters, scorers, passers, rebounders, guys with length, guys with strength, guys that excel at offense, guys that excel at defense, etc. Adelman can get all sorts of creative with the team that we have now depending on if we need stops or if we need instant offense.

And everyone seems to be fully healthy, which we weren't at this time last year.

Oh, one other thing..the West is STACKED right now. It's so stacked that I see the Wolves looking at a 6-7 seed, while there are teams like the Lakers who might be on the outside looking in at the playoffs. The East is stacked at the top, but the 6-8 seeds in the East will be WEAK.

The west is so good. I wouldn't be shocked to see the 4-8 seeds being separated by just a few games..

Camden wrote:Let's also remember that this is another year for DWill and Shved. DWill has gotten better every year. No reason to think he won't be better this year as well. Shved apparently looked really good the other day in practice. I know it's just practice, but still. And there's Shabazz and Dieng that will give production off the bench. Flip's put together a really impressive off-season from the draft, free agency, handling trade rumors and also gaining good relationships with Kevin and Ricky.

I know there's people that rip Flip because they don't agree with some of the moves he's done. I'm not one of them. Tip of the cap to Flip. Well done.

Camden, you sound more like Tim than Tim does.

50 wins? Ah, the optimism of July does indeed run warm. Start with a break-even figure, then maybe 45. Twenty games of improvement will be a Herculean task for OUR Wolves. The pill of reality sometimes doth indeed taste bitter. Nothing wrong with dreaming, though.