^^^ bynum didnt do bad against him tbh, and i assume d.howard wont have too much trouble either

but yea everybody else will

pek is a beast, cant shot block which is why the stiemshma trade is so good for them


btw twolves need to get rid of barrea + williams in a trade cause they dont fit into the rotation anymore and both players ide assume are assets teams would want

Lol, I remember that live. Great play, I think I had to rewind it several times, .

I'm just saying, he isn't really an "anchor" to the D. OTOH, the main reason I feel anchoring D is so hyped up, is b/c most centers aren't very good scorers. Pek can play D by getting fouls called on his man a lot of the time. We'll see though. He plays hard and is very skilled - which is somehow a hard combination to come by in a big man.

Was posted ITT during the season, but it never gets old. I've watched that 20+ times I bet.

Pek owned HGH in their game last year

I really hate this offseason from a reality vs hopes standpoint. Maybe there weren't any good guys to go after. I suppose everyone made sure to be a free agent last year before the new CBA...

that play

this^

Reality imo: The Wolves would have been a 6 - 8 seed last year if the big three had stayed healthy. I think they were 12-6 over the stretch of 18 games before Rubio went down. That was with getting below D-league replacement player level production from the 2/3 positions. We appear to be headed to getting average or better production out of those spots, which will be more than enough to get us into the playoffs assuming Rubio can come back healthy and PEK & Love dont get hurt. If things go right we might win a playoff series or two.

It would be great to add an Iggy or Deng or Gay, but we don't necessarily have to do that to be on track to be a perennial 45 - 50 win team.

btw - Anyone watch that summer league game last night or the night before? DW is struggling vs summer league players. I do not have high hopes for him.

Darren Wolfson ‏@DarrenWolfson
@JBoog35 Kahn meeting w/ agents in Vegas. Roy/Shved = in. They like chances w/ Steimsma/Hill. Lee’s # needs to come down. Otherwise Brewer.

When is the deadline for POR to match our offer? I think/hope they let him go and start rebuilding around LA.

wait is that lolcoreybrewer we're looking at?

11:00 pm CST tonight

no - its Ronnie Brewer (CHI) - he's a solid player with a .134 WS/48 over his career. .100 would be an NBA average player. Good defender, smart player who knows his role. Smart people at Canis are saying he'd be a better fit than C Lee because he's better at guarding NBA SFs. I remember watching him last season thinking to myself that I wished the Wolves had a wing as good as him. http://www.basketball-reference.com/...brewero02.html

Wes will have a hard time seeing the floor at all if we end up with these guys.

In other news, Birdman was amnestied. He would be a very nice addition (instead of Steamer) imo, but I hear we aren't interested. His age (34, but whogivesa**** imo - he'd be a short term backup anyway) and legal status (probably a false accusation by a stalker, which is way less concerning to me than J Hill, who might go to jail for 10 years) probably have something to do with that.

Trade DWill before his trade value falls through the floor like Wes' did imo - he is a 4, not a 3, and he never will be a good NBA 3. He can not do the things that good NBA 3s can do (handle the ball, guard other 3s, pass - he's one of the worst passing 4s in the NBA for that matter). He could be a decent 4, but he has little to no place to do that on this team.

Trade Wes for a 2025 protected 2nd round pick imo.

yea ronnie brewer is a legit defender and a serviceable guard. 7 hours away from batum being photoshopped into a twolves jersey boys!

Looks like Blazers suprisingly matched our offer for Batum. Does this close the door? Or can we still trade for him?

Portland already matched.

I don't think we can trade for him for the length of the contract. Maybe if he gets traded to someone else first, I'm not as sure on that.

DWill has a pretty good handle.

This was expected and yeah, it closes the door. I hope Kahn doesn't tie up any wiggle-room in the cap with anyone long-term who isn't young and at least as good as Batum. Hopefully they can be players mid-season or next summer when it really will be "do or die" to get things chugging along to 2nd round playoff territory imo. Their team right now won't cut it unless Roy was healed by an actual magician.

Compared to who - an average center? Not compared to an average NBA small forward. Think of the good ball handling 3s in the league - James, Pierce, Gay, Iggy, etc.... DW is nowhere near in their class at handling the ball. I'll say it again, he has a chance to be a good 4, but not with the Wolves because he will never be better than Love (barring major injury) and he will never be an above NBA average 3.

Here's an "elite" list he's on: from 2011-12 to 2011-12; requiring Minutes Per Game >= 20 and Assists Per Game <= 0.7 and Games >= 60

All 4s and 5s on that list.

For those reading this who don't think we've done (much/enough/what we should be doing/whatever) this off season so far, consider this post by SnP:

Last year the Wolves gave 9989 minutes to players that were not within 5% of an average wp48. If you go by PER it’s 9580. It’s just over 10000 with ws48. Last year they gave 13,600 minutes to sub par wp48 players.

I really think “moving the needle” needs to be placed in that context. Yeah, guys like Ronnie Brewer aren’t going to move it much from average, but they will move it quite a bit from the land of suck.

If you take these minutes and put them on a per game basis, the Wolves handed out 163 mpg last year to this sort of production. They handed over 166 the year before that. OKC’s number was at 75/game last year.

If the Wolves swap some of this production out with, say, Lee, Hill, Stiemsma, Budinger, and Brewer, they add roughly 91 mpg of not-crap. That’s huge. It’s a much bigger impact than Nicolas Batum. Much bigger.

Its going to be fun to watch the Wolves this year imo.

Well, yeah. Williams has a good handle for a 4. He's a 4 and no matter how badly we need him to be a 3 he just isn't.

Isn't Wes leading the summer league team in scoring. Hoping he turns over a new leaf cuz I like Wes despite his being really terrible. I can't think of any other Minnesota athlete I could say that about. Maybe Drew Butera? But he's at least good at something

Wes is a lost cause. Yeah, he scored 20some points the last game, but he was ****ing terrible. No way he does this vs NBA defenses. He turned it over 4 times and had several other near turnovers trying to be aggressive or something, dribbling when he shouldn't. He just can't handle the ball, is a bad passer, has a very low BBIQ, and is really a bad shooter. Oh, and he still looks lost most of the time. The smile gets annoying when so much suck comes with it. Even the NBA TV commentators were ripping him pretty bad most of the game.

Hey now, Wes is actually a pretty good passer. He dropped some really nice dazzlers last year. He just gets no assists because he is a bad ball handler and isn't aggressive at all

Here's something out of left field: Jerry Z is tweeting about the Wolves having interest in A Kirilenko. It sounds legit, and AK47 has commented that he might return to the NBA this season - the Nets also have interest in him.

He's now 31. His WS/48 in his last NBA season was .171. He led the NBA one year in blocked shots while playing SF.

I would like it a lot if we sign this guy. He would be the starter at SF this year, and from stuff I'm reading, it sounds like his game is still very good.

serious question how can the nets afford him?

No idea. I imagine the Wolves or someone else can offer him more money. Here's some national publicity on the matter: http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports.c...medium=twitter

here's what Jerry Z says: http://www.startribune.com/sports/blogs/163226176.html

I think he would start at 3 for this team. The backing up Love speculation doesn't make a lot of sense - AK47's mostly been a 3 during his career I think.

It's stating the obvious but we don't need Love backup as long as DWill is ours. We need a 5, or maybe a versatile 4/5. That article makes little sense as Kirilenko would seem to me to be a completely different conversation than the 4/5 that we actually need.

I like it if he's still good. Just one more piece of the whitest team ever.