Minnesota Sports Forum

Lots of talk about what our record will be, the 12-13 season is a great on because we could see what a Loveless team looked like. Lets pretend everything averages out across the league so the teams we face in the coming year have gotten no better than what we faced two years ago overall - basically the league as a whole stayed the same.

Points/Rebound/Steals/Blocks

12-13
C Pekovic 16/8.8/.7/.8
Steamer 4/3/.6/1.1
vs
Pekovic 20/10 /.5/.6
Dieg


PF D Williams 12/5.5/.6/.5
Cunningham 8/5/1/.5
vs
Young 15/7/2/.5
Bennett


SF Kirilenko 12/6/1.5/.8
Budinger 9/3/.6/.3
Hot garbage
vs
Wiggins
Brewer 10/2/1.5/.3
Muhammad


SG Ridnour 11/2.5/1/.1
Cold Garbage
vs
Martin 19/3/1/0
Levine


PG Rubio 10/4/2.4/.1
Barea 11/2.8/.4/.0
vs
Rubio 10/5/2.5/1
Williams 10/1.5/.5/0



We won 31 games with that

I suspect Dieng will far outperform Steamer both offensively and defensively. I think with fewer minutes on Pek he will play more games and will be more efficient.

I have said before, I have only watched Young play a handful of times but he HAS to be better than Williams on both sides. I have high hopes for Bennett to be better than Cunningham but we will see - it comes down to this years spring Bennett or last years rookie season version.


Kirilenko was great on both sides, I dont know if Wiggins does better than Kirilenko. Brewer and Muhammad will be better than anything we had in 12-13.

Martin is far better than Ridnour and Levine should give us something better off the bench than 12-13.

Rubios shooting % has gotten better every year, can he make another .020% jump? That would still put him at the bottom, that is how bad he is at shooting. That said, he will be better than 12-13 with another year removes from his injury. Mo will be better than black hole Barea.

I think we are a lot closer to where we were last year than 12-13. That puts us a long ways from the playoffs but I think we are much closer than we think.

Interesting. I think the only real significant upgrade is Young over the other PFs and then better wing depth. Young is a pretty drastic upgrade over Williams and Wiggins and Brewer should be upgrades from Luke and the garbage twins you mentioned. Lol Turiaf is a solid bench guy that's probably about what you can expect from Steimsma who is actually a decent bench center. I won't look at what the west was like then but I suppose it could be said its tougher this year. Either way 31 wins with that team is sort of encouraging considering the roster should be at least somewhat upgraded of what we had. Good post.

Good analysis, Apollo, and a solid optimistic take. I would argue that the 27 1/2 wins currently projected by the online bookies is a better number though, for two reasons:

1) The Western Conference is substantially better than it was in 12-13, and the Wolves will play most of their games against the West

2) The Wolves' chance of success this year is more dependent on rookies and 2nd year players than in 12-13, and rookies generally need some time to adjust to the NBA.

For those that think this year's team will be better than the 2012-13 Wolves, hurry over to online bookies and put some money down on over 27 1/2 :thumb: .

Vegas has it about right. I have them at 25 wins.

Good comparison Apollo, and thanks for posting the early online wins LST. 27.5 is low if we're using that comparison and honestly I think it will be over 30. I don't use the online gambling sites, can you make a run to Vegas for all of us and thrown down some money on the over (if it opens at 27.5 at one of the casinos).

We'll all come out to Vegas to collect in June and have a Wolves party!

Q12543 wrote:Vegas has it about right. I have them at 25 wins.

Yikes. We usually are closer in agreement about things. That number is way off. I've said since the day Love was traded that this is a 56-loss team.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Q12543 wrote:Vegas has it about right. I have them at 25 wins.

Yikes. We usually are closer in agreement about things. That number is way off. I've said since the day Love was traded that this is a 56-loss team.

Ha! Since Q is saying 25 wins and you're saying 56 losses, I'm trying to figure out which one game you guys differ on. Maybe you have the Wolves winning the home game against the Cavs, and Q has it as a loss?