Ricky Rubio "rumor" on ESPN:

"a source close to Rubio"

NY media BS imo. Same as all the **** they've been saying since the day we drafted him.

I was at the Houston game tonight. My first time actually going this year. Some random obvservations:

- The Wolves have got to be the absolute worst help D team I have ever watched in the NBA - maybe all of basketball throughout my playing and coaching days too - and I am not exaggerating.

Houston ran the same basic offensive sets all game - high screen + drive and kick or wing drive and kick. Shane Battier never had it easier; virtually all of his 9 three-point attemps were wide open ones or with a feeble flailing attempt at a hand.

My biggest moment was when Brooks or Martin ran off a high screen and the Wolves continually left Battier on the wing or corner to help the drive. No, no, no! Your help needs to come from the paint FFS; do not leave a jump shooter wide open, he will make it. Bring help from the paint and everyone rotate over.

- The game was never really that close after the first few min. of the third quarter. Houston held a double digit lead virtually the entire second half and only a late rally, when it was well over made the score appear close.

- The pre-game introductions video package is pretty cool this year, however it's sponsored by HBO and there is plenty of product placement. Gotta earn those ad revenue $$$'s somehow I suppose.

- One of the biggest needs right now is a defensive banger. Someone who isn't afraid to body up and play physical as hell. The only guy who really does that now is Love but we need him fresh and he isn't going to stay that way being the only one who bangs.

Darko has his moments but the dude is as soft as butter. Typical Euro player - nice soft touch and decent fundamentals on offense, but a pure finesse player. He scored 15 tonight but should have had 35 because the tallest defender he typically had was about 5" shorter. I kept waiting for him to back a guy down and power over him.

All the wing players - Beasley, Wes, etc. are all finesse defenders as well. Wolves may have to coax Bruce Bowen out of retirement.

I still like where the team is going and think there is a future with the core mix of guys we have. However, something has to improve on defense. Help side D is about 95% effort, you have to want to jump out to stop the ball handler and then get back to your guy. Virtually none of that going on tonight. Houston could have seriously scored 150 points if they really wanted to.

I watched the whole game on tv and agree with most of what you say, except that the defense being 95% effort. Maybe effort has something to do with what's going on, but I think the major factor is that defense that we play is the Rambis defensive philosophy - pack the paint and leave the outside shooters open. We ALWAYS double whoever has the ball in the post, whether or not they suck at post offense. We are nearly always late getting back to the shooter, imo, because the players are not taught to rotate back out quickly.

For a while I was on Brewer's case because he did this all the time. Now I'm realizing that what has been going on is because thats how the coach wants him to play defense - leaving the best shooter on the other team open all ****ing day.

This is never going to work and we do it every game. Rambis needs to be fired asap.

Anyone else besides me or yugo see that game tonight? So close. We didnt really collapse or give it away like we usually do; although there were some plays that looked like we were trying to.

Ridnour looks like a competent starting PG most of the time, then he has brain freeze about 2-3 times every game, and takes the 20 footer with 18 left on the shot clock, or the long, heavily guarded 3 while down by 1 with ~7 seconds left. Argh.

Speaking of brain freeze - Beasley looks unstoppable at times, then he will just drop the ball or throw a terrible pass to the other team.

Darko - leads the fast break and makes a great pass to Brewer for a slam; makes a huge dunk and gets fouled, plays great D at times....Then other times he lets small guys steal the ball, goes up soft for shots when he should be going hard to the hole, etc.... Yugo says he needs someone in practice punching him repeatedly in the face to piss him off more. Sounds good to me.

Love is Mr. Efficient. 31/21, yawn. And only one turnover. At the end of regulation, his hook shot rattled the rim & came out So close.

One of these days we're going to actually beat a good team.

KD is really really good. It looked for a while like he was having a bad game. Then you notice he has like ~36 and there's still a lot of time left. He finished with a career high 47, plus 18 boards.

Westbrook is very good, but not a top 5 PG imo.

Flynn always watches the ball on defense. He has no clue where his man is over half the time. Even when he does, it doesnt matter because he never gets in the way of a drive anyway. Offensively, the possession is a huge success if he doesnt turn it over. He adds absolutely nothing when he plays. Well, he did make one nice pass tonight, but thats the first one I've seen this season.

I didn't see much of the 1st half, but I saw all of the 2nd.

At some point in a close game they're going to make some really stupid plays. How many TOs did they have OT? Ridinour could have easily passed that ball to Brewer(?) after he idioticly jumped in the air to shoot. Johnson's pass to Brewer from 3 feet away when he wasn't even open.

Love & KD are both so sick.

I was really excited to see KD and Westbrook in person - KD lived up to the hype and more, just hitting 3s from 5 feet behind the line more easily than I can shoot free throws. But Westbrook seemed too sporadic. Perhaps b/c the Wolves pack the paint needlessly but it seemed he could get to the rim whenever he wanted to but only did a couple of times, and good things happened for his team. It seemed like the type of close game against a bad team where he should have stepped it up in the 4th like he's allegedly done in many games this season. Anyway, he's v good but not elite yet...of course, all of the Wolves pgs are in the 5 worst in the league so meh.

I really really think someone needs to get Darko to really mentally commit to a slightly different brand of basketball. He's not Rasho, he has a body, at times he can get physical. He just needs to be ready for contact every play, like Pekovic. I really think drills of him going up for dunks with Pek & Koufas punching him or hitting him with metal chairs during practice is the way to go.

I really payed close attention to Love and it seems he knows 1 unit of time before everyone else what's going on with every shot. So even if he's out of position, or just somewhere near the basket, he completely maximizes his angle and distance from the rim and then just sets up shop. But he gets tons of rebounds from behind ppl and when he's basically under the rim, without jumping like Rodman. So there's something else going on, the best timing in the league? I dno, it's kind of like a magic trick on ~5 rebounds a night.

Cha brought up a really good point at the game, someone needs to sit Wes down (and get Flynn far away from him) to just watch 5000000 hours of Ray Allen & Reggie Miller & even Rip Hamilton tape, Clockwork Orange style. He just stands there and then 2 times a game he finally gets a bit of space and shoots a beautiful jumper. And he's not like some stiff, he can run and jump and clearly is athletic.

Current NBA player efficiency ratings:

http://www.nba.com/statistics/player...xp=-1&splitDD=

I think that link might not work. NBA.com player efficiency ratings -

1. K Love 29.53
2. L James 26.69
3. P Gasol 26.15
4. B Griffin 26.0
5. D Howard 25.93

Here's a link to Love's all star promotional page: http://www.612allstar.com/

Hollinger chat on ESPN:

Your thoughts on Ricky Rubio and his potential NBA future?

Here's thing with Rubio -- everyone talks about his bad shooting, but there are lots of bad shooters in the league. What kills Rubio is that he's also a terrible finisher -- even in the paint he has trouble scoring. It's not just that he can't score from outside, he can't score from anywhere. Gonna be tough to make a large impact til he fixes that.


Now I'll let cha destroy this analysis.

I dont know. I am confident that he will be a massive improvement over what we have at PG right now based on his vision, ball handling & defense alone. If he makes a shot once in a while, its a bonus.

I think the shot will eventually come for him.

I had courtside seats for the practice before tonight's game.

Pek vs Laimbeer:

Laimbeer says, "ok, ok, I give, I give!"

lol

The Wolves treat their season ticket holders well. I split season tickets with a guy, so I got about half the games, and they made it so both of us are considered full season ticket holders as far as benefits go.

Those pictures I posted above - my ticket salesman called me a couple weeks ago & asked if I wanted to sit courtside for the Wolves pre-game practice before the Toronto game. He had already talked to the guy who I share seats with and knew that I didnt have tickets to that game, so he gave me two good ($115 each) tickets a few rows behind the Wolves bench. He took a picture of my daughter & I standing at center court while the practice was going on. She had a blast.

Good game that night too, as we crushed Toronto - the final score said we won by 16, but if the starters had played more it would have likely been ~ 30 point game. I think we were ahead by 28 when the scrubs came in.

Tonight, the Wolves had a fun night at the Brunswick bowling center in Brooklyn Park. They had free food, bowling & arcade games, and the players showed up for pictures & autographs. It was really crowded, so it was hard to see everyone, but I think my daughter got 9 autographs - including Love, who signed her #42 Love jersey.

All of the Wolves we met seemed like really nice people. After the organizers broke up the photo shoot and the table where they were signing autographs, several Wolves hung out and signed more stuff. Martell Webster stood there signing autographs for a bunch of people. When it was my daughter's turn, he asked her name and made sure he spelled it right. Great guy. Darko hung out and signed a bunch too until they told him he had to go. Tolliver was shooting pool with fans and seemed like he was having fun the whole time.

I want to mention a couple other guys from the Saturday night pregame - a kid a couple seats from us was wearing a Flynn jersey. Johnny came over, talked to the kid for a few minutes, took pictures with him and signed the jersey. Great guy imo, even if he sucks at NBA basketball, lol.

Love was talking to a kid in a wheel chair and getting pictures taken with him. As he was leaving, Love turned back to say "bye buddy". The kid had turned his head and didnt notice, so Love waited about half a minute until he got the kid's attention to say goodbye before he left the floor.

Compare these guys to one I heard about KG the other day. A kid asked KG for an autograph before the Lakers game yesterday. KG says to him "you'd have a better chance of catching Bin Laden". What an *******.

Kahn and Rambis both appear to be on the hot seat, which is good imo.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slu...es-taylorsview

I just hope if/when Taylor cans Kahn/both of them, he doesnt drag his feet again so we dont even have a coach during the draft this year.

Love snub! I really thought the coaches would select him, wtf. Hopefully Dirk declines for extra rest and Love gets to suit up. He's 6th in the league at PER I think, which is insanely high for someone not in the all star game.

Also, how does Taylor get put on the hot seat? He needs a new approach to finding decision makers for this team...

Love is in!

He made it as Ming's injury replacement.

Love leads the league in PER according to NBA.com. See post #233 ITT.


It sounds like some heads might roll if we have a really poor performance vs Toronto tonight.

http://freelivestreaming.net/nba/

Love is? I thought he was 6th for some reason. But yes apparently right after I post that Love gets in. For some reason I assumed they'd already named Yao's replacement.

Huzzah! Gonna be a sweet all star weekend. I'm really pumped!!

They waited and Stern picked Yao's replacement today. They announced it during tonight's game.

Pathetic effort again - 2nd in a row. Losing to Toronto, one of the few teams in the league who clearly has inferior talent to us, is awful. The guys at Canis are all calling for Rambis' head. I am 100% on board with that and I hope Kahn goes too. Papa Glen is not happy right now to be 11-38.

Love is 6th in Hollinger's ESPN PER ratings.

Was out watching HS basketball, did Beasley get hurt? and why isn't Ridinour playing?

I read yesterday that statisticly Flynn is the worst PG in the NBA.

Hollinger must use a different formula than NBA.com.

unconfirmed - I heard Beasley stepped on Love's foot & re-injured the same ankle as before.

That doesn't surprise me at all about Flynn. By my eyeball test, I've said he's probably the worst player in the NBA. He's easily the worst defensive player I've seen since Troy Hudson, and he might even be worse than that, which is saying a lot.

kahn might be the most annoying speaker in the history of language, but i am definitely against firing him or firing rambis in the immediate future. i think they've both done fine.

i understand that there are criticisms of rambis's in-game coaching, but at this point i think that is pretty far down on the list of importance. no matter who the coach is, this isn't a playoff team. i mean i'm not going to fire the guy for having 11 wins instead of 15 when it seems like he's decent at developing and dealing with young players.

as for kahn, i think he's done a great job taking a team with zero talent and zero potential and turning into a team with a little bit of talent and quite a bit of potential. i am definitely willing to endure more of him, and of rambis, especially considering how potentially devastating more coaching/managing turnover could be to such a young, bad team.

Its insane to fire Kahn at this point (and I say that begrudgingly). This team is in a much better place than last year and there were 3 distinct good moves this offseason (Darko, Ridnour, and Beasley).

A blind monkey could have done better in the last two drafts than Kahn has.

We had a **** ton of resources to spend this past two seasons. The Rubio pick was a no-brainer. The Flynn pick was a reach at best and has turned out to be one of the worst decisions in team history. I was in favor of the Wes pick at one point but I think he was considered a reach by most other teams as well.

He Kahned me into thinking that the Jefferson trade made sense at the time, but that now appears to have been a giveaway at this point. The cap space that we were sold as being so valuable is likely to be useless, or very little value. We were told that Love & Big Al couldnt be effective playing at the same time, but there was really no significant evidence of that - statistically or otherwise.

They did try to trade Love before the season (this is a fact that is not widely known), because neither realized how good Love is. Remember the exchange between Jerry Zgoda & Rambis after we lost the 1st game by 1 point to Sac. & Love played only 24 minutes in the game? Zgoda asked Rambis, something to the effect of "why didnt you play your best player more than 24 minutes?" Rambis shot back angrily - "that's YOUR opinion". He has an all star right under his nose and he has no ****ing clue.

Rambis is like Chilly in that he's got his system. He's not trying to make the best use of the players' talents, he's trying to make them fit his ****** system. Using Darko as the primary distributor in your offense is ******ed. This system does not work if you do not have Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan on your team. No other teams in the NBA have ever successfully used this system.

Also his defensive philosophy of leaving 3 point shooters wide open in order to double team the paint is beyond ******ed.

/rant, for now.....

I don't mind heat on Rambis fwiw. Drafts have been awful but saying Flynn is one of the worst in team history does a grave disservice to Stojko Vrankovic, Paul Grant and Ndudi Ebi.

What does anyone make of the proposed Melo to NY deal in which the Wolves would get Anthony Randolf and Eddie Curry for Corey Brewer and a 1st round pick. I'm assuming Curry's deal is up after the season and Randolf plays the same position as Love and never sees the floor in NY. I don't see how this makes us better.

kahn has done a terrible job so far. how can he get credit for beasley when miami was begging anyone to take his contract off their hands. beasley was free to anyone willing/able to pay him.

having 2 of the top picks and coming back with flynn and rubio is enough reason alone to be fired.