I'm not sure what you dont like about him in interviews? He seems like a good kid to me.

European stats are misleading for a lot of reasons.

Here's a simple stat that matters: In a game this summer vs the US, Spain lost by 1 point. I'm going by memory, but I think Rubio was something like +20 or +18 while he was on the floor.

In watching the game, their team looked completely different (immensely better) with him in there. Watching him steal the ball from Derrick Rose was impressive. Rubio has very long arms & quick hands. He'll be a very good NBA defender right away.

The most important thing - He makes his teammates better.

i just watched the condensed 15min version of that game. yeah, he's a talent. i don't know that i would say he is good on defense though. he does have quick hands and long arms but he's not explosive or powerful. he gambles for steals. see rose's (basically) game-winning layup. on offense he certainly has vision but i'd also say he has a huge case of FPS.

a 6'3.5 white guy with average athleticism who can't shoot can only be so good. i suppose he could be steve nash-like if he develops a jumpshot...he probably will be a good player. i just don't like him. he strikes me as a huge puss with delusions of grandeur.

corey brewer is awful, can we get rid of him or cut him or have a corey brewer giveaway night at the target center where we give him to a lucky fan to take far away from the target center?

lol, great idea imo. I was texting a friend about him sucking tonight too. He is just chaos when he gets the ball and when he's playing defense he's always gambling and leaving his man wide open. That steal attempt late in the game tonight when all he had to do was keep his man in front of him was beyond awful.

Wes should have been the guy guarding Ginobli - not Brewer.

Fun game to watch tonight, but it'd be nice to win some of these close ones. The refs really screwed us bad on that phantom foul on Wes with the guy shooting the 3 - there was no contact at all. Then when Love tried to shoot the 3 at the end, the guy mugs him and no call. I guess its going to be like that until we're a more established team.

Love was a beast tonight again. He's just an awesome rebounder and a very good shot maker. He is limited though - he cannot create his own shot, and should not be asked to do so. He's at his best hitting open jumpers. We need other guys to post up and slash - not Love.

Darko was amazing tonight. He basically neutered Duncan at both ends of the floor. The play he fouled out on was dumb. When he was out, there was a huge difference in the lane when SA had the ball. That cost us the game. When he's in there, we're a whole different team defensively. Duncan couldnt get shots off against him. He affects the shots of anyone going into the lane. He almost reminds me of Hakeem Olajuwon in the regard.

Beasley was playing like he was half asleep tonight. I hope he comes out of this funk soon. It is good to know we can play well when he has a bad game.

Getting Martel Webster back will really give this team a shot in the arm. We really could have used him tonight. I dont know how long he's out for, but hopefully he'll be back soon.

seriously, what was Beasley's deal tonight? He played like he was high or something, which I suppose is possible.

Rambis' inbounds plays at the end of regulation and overtime were so incredibly horrible.

I mean its nice to be able to play with the best teams in the league, but eventually I'd like not blow a close game.

Such godawful clock management. Let's run a quick play with a six-second differential!

Sigh...+1 to cha and manupod's comments about Brewer. I've always thought he could be an athletic wing who at least played above-average defense to partly offset his awful shooting, but he seems to provide at least one idiot moment per game.

Darko gonna Darko. So much fun to watch.

Watched a bunch of Rubio interviews before/after the draft...he just seemed like a normal kid to me. He's looked pretty good on defense in the (very) limited minutes I've seen him. Rose blew by him a few times, but he was also quick enough to pick his pocket more than once. It'll be interesting to see how developed his midrange shot is when we see him next.

lol

Fran Fraschilla on Rubio's defense:
I'm not sold on him being a great defender.

In light of my nba 2k11 franchise, and not having any nba allegiance, I've decided to jump on the T-wolves banwaggon. I know nothing about min. or the twolves. will post more when I know more about the team.

That guy's comments are right on imo. His mental quickness is what is going to make him a very good player at both ends. Maybe he's not all-NBA defense material, but I dont think he'll be a liability, and I'm pretty sure he'll be a major improvement defensively over what we have at PG now.

some good Darko highlights

Beasley looked clueless the second half against SA. One horrible brick, next shot is an airball, then a turnover off his leg, then a pass to nowhere. Funny you made a joke about his high/lack thereof, since we did, too. That reputation will stay with him forever.

As we were discussing at dinner last night, there were two 3point shots that mattered in the game. The Spurs got the phantom call, and we didn't get the real call. In our opinions, neither should have been called. BUT IF you're only going to call one of the two, you needed to call the second one, against the Spurs, since it was a legitimate foul. The way the refs called it was absolutely *********.

Yeah, I agree with that.

One other bad call that was mentioned somewhere else: on the play Darko fouled out, the SA player (Parker?) obviously flung himself into Darko, initiating the contact. When I initially looked at the play, I thought Darko put himself in a vulnerable position (which he probably did), but now I think that it was a pretty bad call.

A team better than the Wolves would have had a bigger lead so those calls wouldn't have mattered, but it still sucks that the refs played such a significant part in that loss.

Anyone else going to the game tonight?

I looked up the point spread, and the Wolves are actually favored by 2.5 tonight vs Golden State. When was the last time we were favored in a game??

Clippers maybe?

I didn't see the game, but it looks like great 3rd quarter did them in last night. Darko -25 couldn't have helped.

I'm going to the OKC game on the 8th and the Pistons on the 10th.

The effort last night was pretty bad - especially in the 3rd. We played awful perimeter defense and awful fast break defense.

As Rambis was quoted in the paper, (something along these lines) we need to play better one on one defense and keep guys in front of us a lot better so we dont have to double guys as often and leave other guys with wide open looks. I agree 100%. Brewer is the worst at leaving his man open, but Beasley and others did it last night as well.

I saw Darko's +/- and was just a little surprised. I didnt think he played awful or anything, but he was definitely not as good as he had been for the previous 5 or 6 games. I think the bad +/- was more coincidence that his fault.

Love played mostly really well, but I think he padded his rebound numbers a bit by playing ping pong on the offensive end quite a few times when we never ended up with a score when we should have. He also played mostly well on defense (for him), but got lazy a few times as well, which led to some easy hoops for GS. I was not impressed at all by David Lee - I'm really glad we didn't sign him to a huge contract. Love is way better than he is and it isnt even close.

Beasley scored a lot, but he got a bit out of control at times.

The more I see of Ridnour, the less I like. He shoots too much too early in the shot clock, is frequently sloppy handling the ball and passing, and sometimes is unware when the shot clock is running out. Not exactly an ideal veteran PG. Bassy is much better at breaking down a defense, but he's such a terrible shooter, that can make him a liability a lot of times. I did not think I'd ever be saying this, but I hope Johnny Flynn gets well enough to play soon.

Monta Ellis has some skills.

manupod - the next game I'll be at is the Pistons game - sec 131 row W.

Just watched an OTL story on Rubio where he had 51 points in a 16U game vs Russia.

Tonight's game was ugly. I fell asleep during it.

One thing I noticed early in the game - after about 2 or 3 minutes into the 1st quarter, Rambis took Beasley out and put Brewer in. I am assuming he did that because Beasley was having trouble keeping up with the guy he was guarding. Whatever it was, Brewer came in and proceeded to jack up 3 bad shots and turn the ball over twice - very bad TOs, within a couple minutes. He stayed in the game until a ways into the 2nd quarter for some reason, even though he was playing like **** the whole time.

I dont understand wtf Rambis is doing keeping his best players on the bench for extended time while playing scrubs like Brewer. He's pulled similar **** with Love as well. Its kind of like he's punishing his best players to get them to try harder or something. In the end, he's punishing the fans and the rest of the team. I'm starting to get sick of this ****.

I'm also sick of seeing us pack the middle on defense, doubling everyone, and leaving good shooters wide open outside. When you play teams with good shooters, that kind of stuff kills you.

Love needs to stick to his man when he's guarding a shooter like Nowitzki. He kept sagging off tonight, presumably setting himself up for good rebounding position. **** that **** - get up in his face and stick to him you moron!

Beasley picked up 2 quick fouls IIRC

Must not have been too bad. Dirk only had 10 pts.

Could have been my tiredness that made me miss that. You're right - I just saw that in the Strib.

Again, being tired, I selectively saw some things that pissed me off and that was one. You're right - 10 isnt bad at all for Dirk, but he only played limited minutes and they never really had to go to him much because they had such a comfortable lead the whole game & everyone else was getting wide open looks.

We really need to do better on perimeter and transition defense. Our interior defense has been really good almost every game I've seen. Darko is primarily responsible for this imo.

Just saw this thread and all I want to say at this point is that I think any Twolves fan should be patient with Darko and Beasley consistently being as good as they've shown so far. I don't think they're duds, but sometimes on bad teams, players who are never going to really be that great get into a groove (larry hughes comes to mind) and never live up to it again, or other teams actually add preparation for them in their defense, like when Love got basically shut-down in the second Lakers game.

Right now the Twolves still have the benefit where most teams I don't think prepare or focus nearly as seriously as they will when they're better and opposition is throwing 2 guys at Beasley or playing Love face-up more like teams used to vs. Rodman. Obviously these are good things but the really good creators find a way for it to benefit their team through passing or just overcoming it.

Also, Love is the best rebounder in the NBA right now and I don't think he's trying to pad his stats ping-pong style on the offensive end, I think he just is still getting better at converting his Oboards into points considering he isn't all that athletic or has quick post moves. Hopefully he gets better at this so it doesn't seem like he has to either pass it back out a bunch or miss a bunch of point-blank shots.

I agree with most of that, except for Darko. One huge reason he is going to be so good is because of how good he is on defense. His defense has been very good all year and he shines against the best (Duncan, Pau Gasol, etc.). As far as his offense goes, I'm looking for improvement and more consistency. I think he has the ability to be one of the best offensive true centers in the league, but he has a looooong ways to go to get there, and I don't really know how good he'll get at that.

I watched the end of the game tonight through an online link. The quality of what I saw was pretty poor so I cant comment much first hand about the game tonight.

I'm reading a whole bunch of comments on a Wolves blog. Everyone there who watched the game is complaining hugely about the terrible officiating. It seems we got screwed worse in this game than in the first Spurs game. Its too bad the NBA wants it poor teams to never win.

I did see Ridnour make a few bad decisions at key times - a really bad turnover, and a bad shot with ~14 seconds on the shot clock - even the homer Spurs annnouncers commented about how he can get that shot any time he wants and he's taking it with that much time on the shot clock? He's a knucklehead.

We need some good guard play. Flynn is playing a D league game tonight & doing alright, but what I saw of him last year tells me he's a knucklehead too. At least he's got some better physical talent than the guys we have playing PG now.

I saw Webster is feeling well and is likely to return soon. This cant happen soon enough imo. I cant take watching Brewer jack up bad shots in tie games with ~2 minutes left anymore (this happened again tonight).