Minnesota Sports Forum

After 10 games so far this season, there are only four players on the Wolves roster I trust to consistently play smart, hard and effectively: Rudy, Donte, NAW and Naz. That’s only half our 8-man rotation and only one of those four is among our starting five. So it’s no wonder we’re only two games over .500.

Ant is clearly our best player and he’s put up impressive stats so far this season. But he continues to make too many boneheaded plays that are no longer acceptable given how long he’s been in the League. And I’ve also seen stretches, including most of last night’s game, where Ant’s effort isn’t good enough. He loves the spotlight, loves to have fun and appears to be highly competitive. But is he fully committed to doing what it takes to win and does he have the mental discipline to rein in his tendency to make really dumb, careless players. He had 6 turnovers last night. That’s beyond unacceptable.

Jaden’s effort wasn’t there the first few games but it looks like he’s now fully engaged and has regained his elite defensive form. Unfortunately, he continues to commit dumb fouls that are no longer acceptable given how long he’s been in the League. His three-point foul last night was a prime example. So while you might say Jaden has played hard consistently (after the first couple games), he hasn’t played consistently smart basketball. Further, there’s still no sign of a significant advance in his offensive game. Meanwhile, he has not shown the level of three-point consistency needed to make him a bona fide elite 3&D player.

Julius Randle has been good offensively. He’s proven to be a very good passer - even better than I thought he’d be. But he’s proven so far to be a defensive liability. And he turns the ball over way too often. A big part of his success offensively so far this season has been his three-point shooting, but it’s going to fall off as it did last night. As his three-point shooting regresses, his flaws will become more apparent and troublesome.

Mike Conley is probably the biggest disappointment of all so far this season. I love the guy, but Father Time appears to have caught up with him. Watching him live last night confirmed my initial impression from video that he’s lost a step; it happens and it typically happens pretty suddenly to NBA players in the mid to late 30s.

So what has to happen?

1. Ant and Jaden have to play consistently smarter and Ant can’t let his energy or effort wane for stretches much less entire games. I don’t know if they can play smarter; they might be limited by their basketball IQs, but I’m not giving up hope.

2. Jaden has to consistently knock down threes.

3. NAW or Donte needs to start in place of Conley

4. Finch needs to start integrating a couple of the younger guys into the rotation - Minott and Dilly maybe.

Good stuff Lip.

Like I mentioned in another thread, we are currently in the top 10 in both offense and defense, which is a pretty big deal if we can sustain it. The wins will come if that happens.

The situation with Conley is delicate. Finch may be waiting for Mike to come forward and volunteer to come off the bench. Finch probably doesn't want to ask him to do it. The dude has been nothing but a positive force for this franchise, so he deserves some rope here. Hopefully he either starts playing better or demotes himself. I don't want Finch to have to be the one to do it.

If Conley were to go to the bench, I'd replace him with DDV. We need to somewhat watch NAW's minutes because his greatest asset is the defensive energy/intensity in which he plays. That's hard to do playing much more than 23-25 MPG.

Great to hear that we are now top 10 in both offense and defense, Q...we're in pretty good company there with Cleveland, Boston, Golden State and (surprisingly) Memphis. OkC is close, but they rank only 12th on offense. Quite impressive considering we've had to integrate 2 new players into the rotation. I'll be more impressed if we can sweep Portland the next two days.

I hope I don't have too much of a Camdenian man crush on Conley, but I'm far from giving up on him. I've never seen him play worse than he did against Miami and Portland in the past two games, but I thought I saw signs of "last season Mike" in the previous games. In the 4 games before that, he made 9 out of his 19 3-pointers and had 23 assists and only 3 turnovers...I'll take that kind of performance any night! And while I don't agree with Lip's assessment that he has lost a step (I think he has looked very active on defense), I'll admit that his in person assessment might be better than my screen assessment. It might be notable though that he laid a turd against Portland in his 3rd game in 4 nights (always a killer for NBA players, and especially for an older one) and against Portland on the back half of a back to back. If this trend continues, I suspect Finchie will be judicious about Mike's minutes on nights where the old man might be a little more weary. To this point, I note that Mike's games with the fewest minutes were on the second night of back to backs...21 against San Antonio and only 18 against Miami. I'd like to see him play 28 tonight and maybe 18 or so tomorrow.

All that said, the strength of this team is its terrific bench...I want to see Finchie continue to have his 3 star reserves off the bench, and allocate minutes based on who is performing best that night. It's a challenging coaching situation, but also a blessing to really have 8 starters.