Minnesota Sports Forum

Carlos Danger wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2024 9:53 am Good stuff Q - thanks for posting.

Towns...I fully admit my bias... He is a very good player. But for that salary slot, I feel like we could do better. If not with one individual replacement, certainly with a collective haul of players/picks. He was really hurting the team IMO until the last couple games. For max money, you need a super star. He's very good. But we won a lot of games when he was out this past season. I think they have to make him available - but in no way should they trade him unless it brings back a big haul.

Naz...again, I fully admit my bias. I love that guy. I'm so happy he achieved 6MOY. He's still young and improving. I feel like everyone wants to do similar as you and say "he's not as good as KAT". True. He doesn't have to be. I love him in his current role. If we can add additional bench fire power I think he will be even better since he was really the only scoring threat this past season on the second unit.

Edwards - I loved what I saw of this guy this past season. He looked to be in better shape/condition. Yes, he wore down. It can be exhausting carrying a team! I didn't watch many games start to finish this past year. But I saw plenty of clips. People want to give Towns a Burger King crown for marginally improving his shitty defense. Meanwhile nobody is talking about Edwards D? I thought he made enormous strides on that side of the ball.

Rudy - Your stats show it. He is a valuable part of this turnaround. The first year with him was clunky. But TC doubled down by replacing DLO with Conley. Everything seemed to fall into place after that move.

Going forward, I have concerns over Conley's age and the lack of firepower from the bench (aside from Naz). Fix those two things and let's run it back. I'm fine with keeping Towns. But sometimes teams really want a guy (Rudy) and are fine over paying to get him. If that happens this offseason - I'm totally fine moving him.

Q-is-here wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2024 9:20 am If you ONLY go by the stats and forget a minute about context, sample size, opponent, matchups, eye test, etc., there are some interesting takeaways:

- Holy shit was Rudy valuable! Despite the clumsy post touches and fumble fingers, the guy had a positive impact on both ends of the court.

- KAT was neutral to slightly positive. But...we need to think about who would take his minutes if he was not here. Naz was much worse!

- The bench let us down. If you combine the +/- stuff and the box score stuff it doesn't paint a good picture. Our bench was outperformed by other team's benches. And we have the regular season 6th man of the year and arguably a contender for 7th man of the year in NAW if there was such an award.

- If you looked at Ant's stats earlier in the playoffs - say midway through the Denver series - you would see him right up there with Jokic as the best playoff performer. But he fell off starting late in the Denver series and through most of the Dallas games. He still had an outstanding playoffs given his age, but he ended up in that second tier of playoff performers below the likes of Doncic, Jokic, and even SGA.

- Jaden absolutely leveled up his game in the playoffs versus the regular season. He still isn't good enough offensively to be a 2nd or 3rd option, but there was definitely progress and his 3-point shooting really came around. Very encouraging.

Coolbreeze44 wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2024 11:10 am Very interesting Q. Regarding a point I made earlier, I'm not sure how Rudy does it. He has little discernable basketball skill and he frustrates me to no end watching him play, but obviously he's effective on the floor. These stats aside, I can point to specific stretches in the Mavs series where he really hurt us with his play. Sometimes stats can lie but the case you make is pretty compelling.

Lipoli390 wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2024 11:21 am

Q-is-here wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2024 9:20 am If you ONLY go by the stats and forget a minute about context, sample size, opponent, matchups, eye test, etc., there are some interesting takeaways:

- Holy shit was Rudy valuable! Despite the clumsy post touches and fumble fingers, the guy had a positive impact on both ends of the court.

- KAT was neutral to slightly positive. But...we need to think about who would take his minutes if he was not here. Naz was much worse!

- The bench let us down. If you combine the +/- stuff and the box score stuff it doesn't paint a good picture. Our bench was outperformed by other team's benches. And we have the regular season 6th man of the year and arguably a contender for 7th man of the year in NAW if there was such an award.

- If you looked at Ant's stats earlier in the playoffs - say midway through the Denver series - you would see him right up there with Jokic as the best playoff performer. But he fell off starting late in the Denver series and through most of the Dallas games. He still had an outstanding playoffs given his age, but he ended up in that second tier of playoff performers below the likes of Doncic, Jokic, and even SGA.

- Jaden absolutely leveled up his game in the playoffs versus the regular season. He still isn't good enough offensively to be a 2nd or 3rd option, but there was definitely progress and his 3-point shooting really came around. Very encouraging.

This is great stuff, Q. It’s always good to look at the numbers to get a better sense of what different players are contributing. I’ll note that there isn’t a front office in the NBA that won’t be looking at these same stats and others. As we debate which (if any) of our three bigs the Wolves should consider trading, we tend to use these numbers to sort out who we’re rather keep. But we should keep in mind that these numbers will also inform what other teams are willing to give up for each of our three bigs.

So let’s put aside for a moment who we would prefer to keep and think about which of our three bigs would bring the best return value. These numbers alone suggest that Rudy would bring the best return in a trade and Naz the least with KAT in between. If you look at solely at their contracts, Rudy and Naz are more attractive than KAT because their terms are shorter - overall much smaller and shorter financial commitment. But KAT is a multi-year allstar in his prime who consistently draws double teams. The same can’t be said for either Rudy or Naz. Moreover, KAT can no longer be considered a defensively liability. So when you look beyond the numbers, KAT seems like the more valuable trade asset among the three.

The trade value of these three depends significantly on what teams will be looking to add a big this offseason. I suspect the Knicks would put a premium on KAT over the other two because they need offense and are in a win-now mode would likely elevate KAT over Naz in their valuation. Re-building teams would likely prefer Naz unless they’re looking for a vet leadership in which case they might be more interested in Rudy for a short two-season stint.

It will be interesting to see how all this plays out this summer.