"I suck." ?

Something to do with existing contracts becoming guaranteed for the season after a certain date and 10 day contracts beginning a certain date. I think we're looking at guys to sign to 10 - 20 day deals now.


HEY KAHN - DONT ****ING TRADE PEK!

Rubio & PEK will play tonight. Hopefully they both play well and are available for lots of minutes - we'll need them vs the Hawks.

Jon Krawczynski ‏@APkrawczynski
Lazar Hayward will be signed to a 10-day contract if he clears waivers this afternoon.

if??

Cunningham is a beast! Who needs Love?

Trade Love for Kobe! Or some stud 2, although none come to mind, heh

yall always hate on derrick williams but he has been playing well this season so far imo

What a game for DC! and PEK! and AK47! and Shved!

DW even played fairly well. He's not bad at catching & shooting, and his defense isnt great, but he does defend most 4s ok (not as well as DC though). If he'd quit dribbling altogether, I'd like him more. Hopefully he plays himself into a higher trade value so we can get something of value before the deadline. Maybe Love will be playing well by then if we're lucky.

Great game tonight vs a very good team - we needed that. We have a tough stretch coming up.

PEK is a monster - dont trade him Kahn!

****

From Doogie:
That’s because All-Star Kevin Love could be lost for the season after re-fracturing the third metacarpal bone in his right hand last week.

It’s also possible Love’s New York City doctor will advise against surgery. But if surgery is necessary, Love will be gone for a minimum of three months, the source said.

Yeah, I have it on good authority that Love was getting his hand looked at again yesterday and might need more surgery so I'm not surprised.

Also, he didn't break it doing knuckle pushups, he did it doing kettlebell pushups and one of the kettlebells slipped from underneath him.

And I think he's had surgery on the other hand previously....probably a while ago? I never had heard of that before.

Something obvious that DWill needs to work on to make himself a decent NBA starter (besides consistent rebounding) is his penetrations. (He's got the three, plus he's an ok defender imo) If you break a penetration down, DWill grades out as:

Freeing himself from a PF on the perimeter: 9/10
The setup, the 1-3 steps after freeing up, before finishing: 3/10
Finishing: 2/10

He's just so bad at getting himself under control and finishing and the decision making that goes along with that. Pull up and take a 6-footer in the lane once in awhile!

His 6 footer doesn't look very under control either imo, lol.

But yeah, he kind of is a bit like Wally so far, when he puts the ball on the deck, everything kinda gets away from him. Hopefully he'll get in a groove with it some day. Wally never had a chance from the start imo.

Starting with the Denver game on 12/12, when PEK said he finally felt 100%, he has averaged 33 mpg, 19.5 pts on 54% fg/82% ft, 10.5 rebounds in 13 games. One of those games (12/26) he was sick and needed an iv at halftime - he shot 1-7 in 23 mins that game. Throw out that game and its 34 mins, 21 pts on 56%/82%, and 10.8 rebounds in his last 12 games that he played healthy.

Tonight he went for 25 points on 9/15 & 7/8 with a career high 18 rebounds and made Al Horford (a very good C) his little bitch in a close game.

I will never forgive the Wolves if they trade PEK (or fail to sign him this summer - he's an RFA - we can match any offer & keep him). I keep mentioning this because I am worried they dont want to pay him what he'll get offered this summer and either they will trade him before the deadline for an inferior player (P Gasol & A Verajao - I'm looking at both of you, and yes I said inferior) or not match an offer this summer and watch him leave.

Doogie said this a couple days ago:
One team official scoffed at the notion that center Nikola Pekovic, who is a restricted free agent this summer, could command $12 million/year on the open market.

I do, too, but big men are constantly in demand, and the Blazers, in desperate need of one, will have cap space.

If Pekovic doesn't get $12 million a year, the hunch is he'll come close. That makes me wonder, if Kahn can find the right replacement, whether he'll pull the trigger.

Doogie said this in October:

An internal fear exists at Target Center that soon-to-be restricted free agent Nikola Pekovic will be wooed Nic Batum-style next July and handcuff the Minnesota Timberwolves.

The best way for the Wolves front office to combat such a scenario is to present Pekovic and his agents a very workable extension on July 1, before other teams can make their pitch. But the collective-bargaining agreement prevents the Wolves from signing him to an extension before then.


Portland offered R Hibbard a max deal last season and Indiana matched. Portland is not happy that we made that huge offer to Batum last year. PEK > Hibbard.

This guy was telling us what DW was before the draft. He is what this guy said he was. I wish we would have paid attention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRxz12caa8E

That's public knowledge.

I hadnt heard that before, but it sounds about right.

yeah, ~ 3 years ago he broke the other hand.

100% agree with that. idk if nikola is the 3rd best center itl but i know theres not 3 C's itl i would trade him for

i suppose, depending on how far you want to bend the meaning of 'well' that could be true

^^^ put it like this, when dwill plays well & in the post game interviews the coaching staff nor the players dont even call his name n say that he played well nor does the 2+2 community

also dwill PER is the 5th on the team yet again he gets no respect

from all the games im watching as well i think ppl are alittle bit too excited about shyed.... i could see him being a solid 2 guard in the years years to come(needs to add some size) & he could be a decent pg on another team but umm yea the commentators giving the dude too much love for shooting so horribly & miss handling alot... he has potential but not like my boy rubio

PER is a vastly over rated stat and I think you're over rating DW. DW lacks BBIQ. Its obvious when you watch him play. He doesnt know what to do. He hesitates before taking shots because he doesnt know if he should take them or not. Also, he's one of the worst passers in the league. He's not as bad of a TO machine as Beasley, but he's way worse at finishing drives. He cant elevate off the ground in traffic, which is one of the reasons why he throws up scud missiles near the rim so often. People get on Love's ass for not hustling back on D (as we should sometimes), but DW is worse. DW is the last man back on D on a regular basis and does not go all out to get back, especially after he misses/turns it over at the rim.

good game write up: http://www.canishoopus.com/2013/1/8/...rap/in/3615713

PEK checks this dudes number to see who will be added to the pile of skulls.

I'm not sure how exothermic used it in the sense that you mean. Sure, PER is overrated in that it doesn't take certain key factors into account (most defensive factors, tends to favor higher usage guys), but it's still a decent catchall for how players are producing offensively. Williams' PER isn't bad because he does some positive things.

Derrick Williams was also born in 1991, making him the youngest player on the team.. AND it's absolutely indisputable that he has improved in this regard. I agree that he's unsure a decent % of the time, but there are certain shots that he is certain are perfect for the offense. Most notably, his catch and shoot from the 15' range on the wing or in the short corner he's releasing with confidence. And he should! He's a good jump shooter (more on that in a second).

BBIQ can develop. DW2 is not Javale McGee. He's also a pretty bright kid with a sound work ethic. I feel really confident this will trend up, not down.

I think this is by far his biggest weakness, he's an awful passer. One of the worst I've seen.

Not sure why we're using the Beasley comparison, they're pretty different players. Simply glancing at any advanced metric confirms this and so does the eye test. You're right though, his TOV% is better than Beasley's.

The second sentence there is an interesting critique and I would agree. He definitely needs to work on his finishing near the rim, still a major weakness for sure.

Nah no way, this is crazy talk. If you wanna defend this, let's look at some game film. Williams is the last one back a lot of times because he goes flying past the hoop into the photographer's pit or gets tangled up and goes to the floor. I saw him doing a bad job getting back once last night that I can remember, but he is not worse than Love.

My biggest criticism of this overall cha is that you've already made up your mind completely and you're ignoring some really obvious stuff that needs to be addressed when evaluating his play. I'm gonna write up a brief analysis real quickly without forming any conclusions until I get to look at the numbers.

SHOOTING
The first thing that has to be discussed with DW2 is his shooting. At 6'8", he has shown flashes of brilliance as a shooter. By the numbers this year:

-He leads the team in 3pt% at an awesome 40%. Malcolm Lee is second at 33.3%. This isn't a fluke number from an abnormally small sample size either: he's attempting the 5th most 3pt attempts per 36 minutes on the team (excluding Hayward and Conroy), and Budinger is one of those ahead of him. Given his age and size, this is a really big deal.
-He also shoots well enough from the FT line at 73.2%--a nearly identical percentage to Shved. These two things have combined this year to create a .535 TS%, good for fourth on the team behind Bud, AK47, and PEK only. His eFG% has also gone up, to 48.7% (also good for 4th on the team, behind the exact same group of guys).

When you consider both his range and his advanced shooting numbers (and Bud's injury), you can--and I will--make the case that he has been the best shooter on the team this year. That matters.

REBOUNDING
The big difference for DW2 this year has obviously been a positional one: about 83% of his minutes at PF this year as opposed to 60% last year, according to 82games.com. This will be relevant to his defense as well, but it affects his rebounding value. DW2 is not a great offensive rebounder; of the bigs, only Stiemsma has a worse oReb%. Part of this is probably that he plays much further from the basket, but it certainly something to mention. Defensively otoh, only Love has a better percentage. I suspect his is so high for similar reasons to Love: they both of tendency to take rebounds away from teammates. This would definitely fall under the BBIQ stuff cha was referencing and is not a good thing. That being said, he's a perfectly fine rebounder for the bigger position.

DEFENSE
This is where the Beasley comparison is extremely unfair. In his second year in the league, DW2 is posting a 103 d-rating (average is 100, lower numbers are better), down from 106 last year. The positional change has been a big one: while playing the 4 this year, DW2 has a counterpart PER (meaning the PER that his opponent registers against him) of 9.4. Sure, he's not guarding elite offensive players given the rotations, but guys playing against him are posting well below league average numbers. He's clearly improved on defense from last year to this year and given his age and inexperience, this bodes extremely well. I would be shocked if he didn't go through his career as an at least average defender. By comparison, Beasley has had d Ratings of 112, 107 and 110 the last three years. Beasley's counterpart PER last year at the 4 was a 17.7. They're not comparable.

TURNOVERS
What if I told you that everybody's mancrush (including my own) AK47 turned the ball over at a much higher clip on a much smaller usage? It's true. DW2's turnover percentage is effectively identical to PEK's on extremely similar usages. I don't hear much about PEK or AK47's turnover issues. I think part of it is that DW2 has some stupid turnovers that frustrate us as fans, but those are increasingly correctable as he adapts to the NBA game.

PASSING
Awful, awful, and more awful. The biggest value sieve in his game. His assist % is pitiful--only Stiemsma is worse--and PEK and DC (the next two ahead of him) have both been 150% better in this regard. And we don't exactly consider those two to be great passers.

What do I take from this? DW2 is already a legitimate NBA rotation player. He has vastly underperformed his draft position, but he absolutely has value on an NBA contender. He is not a good starter--and maybe he never will be--but his age and unique skill set as a shooter gives me hope that he can become just that. Comparisons to horrific players like Michael Beasley and Wes Johnson should stop immediately, he is absolutely not those guys.

Sam - have you watched this yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRxz12caa8E

The whole thing pretty much sums up what DW is imo. This guy saw it coming. If you dont want to watch the whole thing, this gets to the part about how he plays hard ~75% of the time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...12caa8E#t=457s

I saw a lot of this towards the end of last season, and that type of effort is what turned me against him more than anything else. Adelman kept talking about how certain guys needed to go out and play hard and show what they can do. He never named names, but by the end on the season it was clear to me he was talking about DW with a lot of his comments, and how these "guys" (DW was one of several) never stepped up. At times this year he's gone full speed >75%, but at others, he loafs.

One play in particular irritated the **** out of me last night - he drove to the basket and had one of his embarrassing finishes where he got stuffed by the bottom of the rim. Atlanta got the rebound and went into a fast break. DW stood under the rim while the other 9 players on the floor sprinted back. Plays like that are way too common and it pisses me off.

I've watched almost every minute of his pro career and I've seen a lot of loafing that has hurt the team.

He's a 4, has always been a 4, and will always be a 4.

He's a bad ball handler.

His rebounding is ok at times, but at other times he disappears on the boards - this is related to his 75% effort (see that video) imo.

TOs - lets talk TO to assist ratio if you want to put that stat in perspective. DW is among the league's worst at that - everyone in the NBA who is worse was a C last time I checked.

The fact that he has underperformed his draft slot affects his value because his salary is tied to that slot for 4 years.

Shooting is his strength - especially catch & shoot. If he ever learns to avoid his weaknesses and hustles like someone like DC, he will be a good player. I dont know if he'll ever reach his potential because I dont think he's very smart. He's not dumb like Beasley or A Randolph or J McGee, but he's a lot closer to those guys' BBIQ than guys like Kobe or Lebron or Love or Rubio or AK47.

I do agree - he is not Beasley, and I didnt mean to say he's that bad. He can contribute. I'd rather see him do it on another team. When Love is healthy, we have a stud 4. DC is the perfect backup for Love because he plays hard all the time and plays smart - he plays within his strengths and doesnt try to do things he isnt capable of (the opposite of DW). DW is not a 3 and never will be a good 3. When everyone is healthy, there is no place for him on this team to get significant minutes.

Great post, Sam.

Nice effort, cha.