what would it take for Bazz to get some crunch time minutes? I feel like he should have some of Prince's and Martin's minutes.

Great game, the future is bright

Everyone except Lavine was exhausted.

Bjelly with a third consecutive terrible game. KMart with a fourth consecutive terrible game. I definitely did not enjoy overtime Prince. Rubio was great in the first half and ran out of gas. What changed with Gorgui? Like he decided to start blocking shots again; awesome development. Got ****ed on that 100% clean block on Elfrid's dunk that led to 3 killer points.

Wiggins and Towns so great in crunch time.

Yeah, I don't get Dieng. He played great defense in the first half and good defense in the fourth. There was a play where he watched a guy streak to the lane and he was there to contest but didn't move his feet and just stood there. Luckily the guy missed the dunk but it was weird.

Bjelica was awful, he had some terrible fouls out on the wing tonight.

Wiggins/Towns fellating continues, they were great in the 4th and OT.

Agree with you guys, not sure why Bazz doesn't get clutch time minutes. I don't know how Rubio/Lavine/Martin/Wiggins/Towns is superior to Rubio/Lavine/Wiggins/BAZZ/Towns .

It got us back in the game in the 4th but I thought Bazz would be a better replacement there.

In the end though, Fournier bailed out the Magic with two amazing 3s in OT.

can't expect to anything out of pek

Wolves PER leaders according to BBR

1. KAT 21.5
2. Rubio 19.5
3. Lavine 18.4
4. Wiggins 17.0
5. Miller 16.0

Maybe we cant expect anything, but I heard an interview with Milt Newton on the radio a week or two ago. He said PEK is running stairs, cutting and doing basketball things now (a couple weeks ago) and is expected back in early December. PEK says his ankle feels better than it has in years. If we can get significant minutes out of PEK instead of Gorgui & Payne, that's going to make us a lot better.

Nice.

I looked up WS/48 as well - we have six guys above .100 (~average NBA player) and six more at or above 0.80 as of right now. Wiggins is only at 0.80, probably due to his poor shooting while playing the first several games while he was hurt. That should improve as the season goes on.

Current BBR projections say the Wolves will be the 8th seed in the West this season: http://www.basketball-reference.com/...ayoff_prob.cgi

7 would be >>>>>>>>>>>>than 8, but I'd take it!

Anyone watch last night's game? It sucked. My take:

- Towns was the best player on the floor when he played. He played only 28 minutes. I know he had a little foul trouble in the first half, but he could have gone back in at the start of the 4th quarter instead of waiting until half of it was over. Mitchell sucks.

- Ricky had a terrible game for him, making a lot of stupid jump passes and taking some bad shots. We still need him on the floor for our offense to run like an NBA offense. And our defense is a lot better with him on the floor too. He played 30 minutes. I know, foul trouble, we dont want to get him injured, blah ****ing blah. He's healthy. We need him playing in order to be a good team. Play him more minutes please. Mitchell sucks.

- Lavine's numbers continue to look alright, and he does some nice things sometimes, but he is not a ****ing PG. The offense looks like its running in sand when he plays PG. We have a good veteran PG on the bench collecting dust. Play Lavine at SG, not PG. Mitchell sucks.

- We missed Bjelica last night. I hope he's ok.

- Payne has rocks in his head. As stupid as some of the players we've had here, I dont think I've seen one as stupid as Payne before. That says a lot. When he steps on the floor, I'm calling it a Paynewreck from now on.


- Gorgui has played poorly all season and was at his worst last night. All night he made several bad decisions and played very lazy defense. wtf happened to this guy to cause him to regress so badly? I cant wait for PEK to return, and I hope he can take all of Gorgui & Payne's minutes.

**** Mitchell. We're losing winnable games because of him. Yes, some of our guys had off-nights last night, but we still should have had a chance to win this game. Because we aren't playing our best players at their best positions, and our scrubs are playing too many minutes and our best players are playing too few minutes, the game wasnt even competitive at the end.

Towns FGAs over the final 3 quarters:

Karl-Anthony Towns makes driving layup 4:28 2nd
Karl-Anthony Towns makes layup (Andrew Wiggins assists) 8:45 3rd
Karl-Anthony Towns misses 14-foot jumper 6:05 4th
Karl-Anthony Towns makes dunk 0:49 4th.

4 FGAs. And he made 3 of them. All while Drummond was in foul trouble and unwilling to give up rebounding position to defend the jumper.

**** Mitchell.

I wasn't able to watch the second half collapse, but I watched the first half so my post is going to be a bit more positive. Towns was a beast and the offense did a great job of getting Detroit's top 2 players in foul trouble early. We easily could have been up 15 plus against them at the half if it were not for all of the terrible cross court passes. There was a spurt there where I think we had 5 turnovers in 7 possessions in the 2nd quarter.

Bazz needs more minutes, a lot more than Prince. I get the development aspect of having Prince play with the youngs but we NEED to see BAZZ with Rubio/Wiggins/Towns more to see if he's a long term piece. The same can be said for Lavine. Give prince KG minutes and give him the "starters" role, i dont really care about that tbh.

gorgui is so frustrating to me. he's a good athlete and at times can just be a plus defender around the rim and in the pnr. however he's so streaky and he's either good or bad. not much of a middle ground right now. If pek can come back and play 15-20 a game that will be nice for this teams win equity, imo.

I was at the game, randomly sitting near Paul Molitor. Got to meet him, so that was cool. Some observations:

Deng looked like the worst player on the court (maybe the NBA), and he kept getting minutes; that was beyond frustrating. We need Pek.

Crowd sucked; quieter than most high school games for the most part, unless there was a dunk, or towards the middle of the 4th when we made a mini run.

Wiggins and Kat are so fun to watch; I wish KAT would have demanded the ball more or something and tried to take over the game, kind of like Wiggins was doing. It feels like not many care that we win or lose (including the crowd?). Need some fire (old KG style).

It actually doesn't say much at all, because you are quicker to condemn players and coaches than anyone else I've seen on this site, and THAT says a lot.

I was the quickest to condemn Anthony Randolph and Johnny Flynn and Wes Johnson if I remember correctly. How did those guys work out as NBA players? How did Rambis work out as an NBA head coach? Granted, I was critical of Flip, but I think he was a slightly below avg coach and I never said he was the worst in the NBA like Rambis was. And I'm not (yet) saying Smitch is the worst in the NBA either, but he's worse than Flip and he does suck at being an NBA head coach.

Watch Payne next time he's in the game. He will do some good things once in a while, and he hustles, but he plays dumb. Watch the ball stop when it gets to him and see the confused look on his face. Watch the terrible passes, bad shot decisions, etc. Watch him be late on defensive rotations because he doesn't know what he's supposed to be doing. Watch him flail cluelessly and run into players on both teams. Keep in mind this is a guy who gave Gorgui a concussion last season with his elbow. Earlier this year when he ran into Shabazz, Shabazz got pissed and pushed Payne in the face. The evidence is there Willie.

He also has tons of terrible goaltending infractions -- a sign of being an idiot.

You also called Bazz the worst player in the league his rookie year too. You were definitely on the Rambis bandwagon.

You make so many rash opinions on players with very small sample sizes IMO. Some players are great after 2 games and some are the WOAT after two games.

But WRT to Payne, I agree. He's ****ty.

So does KAT tho.

Divide all cha statements by 3 and you get to a tolerable place.

Gotta disagree that Rubio should have played more minutes. He's been shelved with a quad strain and a hamstring strain in the last month. Over exertion injuries. Gonna have to be eased in.

I think i'm ready for the Lavine as a starting SG era. But I guess if neither Rubio or Miller can play serious minutes that might not work.

Agree with this. overworking a hamstring this early into the season would be a very bad look. We need Rubio for the whole season, not for the whole game for 2-3 games and then out 4-6 weeks.

sweet!

I think that Howling Wolf should be our logo over Trying to Look Ferocious but Failing Wolf.

Stealing this:

Rubio also hurt. Philly is gonna regret beating us when we out tank them for the first pick again.

We did it!

Wiggins was awesome, KG was good, everyone else was terrible. Every single other guy.