Zach's an easy scapegoat because he's the one out there playing Ricky's minutes. We're all grouchy because we miss Ricky.

I dont mind seeing him play SG. I just cant stand when he plays PG. Its Mitchell's fault he's playing PG.

yeah, the biggest problem this team has is when Ricky isnt on the floor. The thing is, even when he's healthy, there will be ~15 - 20 minutes a game he wont be on the floor. When we are playing good teams, they take advantage of that when Lavine plays PG. We have another better option for backup PG on the roster.

Maybe he has a low BBIQ because

?

And maybe this is the best way to increase his BBIQ? I honestly don't know, but I hardly think it's ridiculous to approach his development in this way. Sure, he'd like to play SG and he would be better in that role. But I'm a LOT less concerned with how good he is now and far more concerned how good he will be when it matters.

http://www.startribune.com/practice-...nse/350680541/

Ricky needs to start roiding or something; he is injured far too often. Him doing something against the rules to stay healthy is a freeroll since he never ****ing plays anyway.

I dont know what the trainers and medical staff are doing with him, but I know one thing they are not doing that would almost certainly be helping. They used to send some players to get ART from my chiropractor, and for some reason they stopped a year or two ago. That type of treatment is very effective for muscle issues like what Ricky has now. I dont know if he would have been playing by now or not if he had gotten ART, but I know it helps. I would not be doing the things I do physically (if you dont know what I do physically, check my log in H & F) without getting regular ART. The Twins and Vikings use it. Most professional and college sports teams that are knowledgeable use it. The Wolves know about it, but they are not using it to my knowledge.

I'm still not too sure lavine has low bbiq or whatever. Just having a high one doesn't mean you can play out of position. I mean he obv isn't gonna be nash or whatever with his bbiq playing any position but it'd be really nice to see what he can do at sg. One issue is that by the time he will play it his confidence could be broken or no one will have faith in him bc he has sucked. I dno, even at pg he is showing some flashes of possibly being a good to very good at at some point.

I think that's a fair concern on a general level Yugo, but he's been really solid this year. So far this year, his TS% is up (.515 to .553), his AST% is up (24.0 to 31.0), his TOV is down (20.4 to 17.5) and his PER has jumped a bunch (11.3 to 18.7).

I forgot to add, this is all while his USG has gone up from 22.0 to 28.6. He's only played 229 minutes, but they've been 229 good minutes.

Are you thinking he will turn into or already is a decent pg or combo guard? I guess it seems to me at best he could be a backup pg but if sg he cod be a very good sg. I guess him being a serviceable combo is a pretty solid outcome too. I just worry this is the most likely path to him being out of the league in a few years and doesn't necessarily maximize his upside.

No clue, I'm just suggesting that regardless of his positional outcome, it's clearly arguable that he's developing extremely useful NBA skills by having the ball in his hands so often. LaVine's development has looked good so far, I'm willing to defer and continue to let him grow.

And I guess saying "no clue" isn't really true.. I don't think he'll ever be a PG. Combo guard? Yeah maybe, seems possible. But even if we knew he was gonna end up as a SG, I still think this is an ok step in his development. I know I say it all the time, but Zach LaVine is 20. He is younger than Andrew Wiggins. I just want 22yo Zach LaVine to be as good as possible.

I would be much more inclined to think more like that if they had some sort of logjam at the 2 but it certainly seems be can get decent minutes there without many problems. Although I do think Wiggins needs to play 2 as well. That's one of the entire reasons i d try to get something for Martin, he's slightly in the way and his value isn't going to magically go up past this year. Anyway, I'm still relatively high on lavine despite him not playing sg. I don't mean future star but they already have 2 of those so don't really need another one . but they will need a bunch of useful players.

let's be honest, we're not contending for a title this year and we have basically two known commodities going forward...Wiggins and Towns. I have seen enough from both to know that I am very, very happy with Wiggins playing the 2 guard here for a long time as well as towns at center.

other than that we have an injury prone ricky rubio, a 20 year old high upside guy in zach lavine, shabazz and gorgui dieng. Are any of them pieces we want to go with Towns/Wiggins down the road? Can bazz learn to play defense...can dieng play defense,...can Lavine learn to play opposite of Wiggins...can Ricky stay healthy? Those are the things we need to figure out going forward imo and as frustrating as it is to see, lavine is 20 years old. He's been in the league a little over a year and everyone praises is work ethic. He struggles at times, especially against really good defensive point guards, but not every 20 year old guy is a Wiggins or Towns.

I've seen enough of him at point guard to think that all is not lost for him as a point guard. He struggles and is downright bad, but he was part of the reason we pulled away from Atlanta in the first half. Those glimpses of halves of really good basketball against a good defender like Teague are enough for me to keep trotting him out there.

With that being said, Dre is clearly our second best point guard right now and it isn't even close. I'd like to see more backup SG minutes down the road go to Lavine and pair them with Dre and ship out Martin for some future assets. However right now we have a logjam at the SG spot and a lot of open minutes at point guard, so we're going to see lavine struggle.

If anyone really wants to see Tyus, they should try to watch the occasional minutes he does play against opposing backup PGs and struggles heavily vs them. he's not ready to play in the NBA yet and he'd be much, much worse than Lavine at the same spot, imo.

Also,

Sam's posts were great. I didn't realize his USG was so high. To keep the same turnover rate as last year while upping his usage shows a lot of improvement. He also is a positive in win shares offensively and defensively(and the eye test backs up improvements on the defensive end imo).

He's far from a finished product and he needs minutes. He looks to be a pretty good shooter(89% free throw rate as well as shooting 41% from 3 this year and 35% for his career). his biggest weaknesses are ball handling and vision while dribbling imo...and point guard will help that when he does play off the ball.

JPete made a good point about Zach last game, when he's on the wing and attacking it makes the pass/shoot decision easier. When he's attacking from top of the key, there's too much to consider. To continue with the FB analogy, when you have a rookie QB you run a lot of roll outs to cut down on complicated reads.

Good lord mitchmell/wolves management...

ahahahaha

alright. im going with the wishes of the greatest soul of all time over moaning old fan. let the young zach play PG and improve at basketball. thats what FLIP wouldve wanted for the t-pups and long-term rang equity

Well, Flip did say that Zach was a SG this offseason and moved him there.

The Wounded Career of Ricky Rubio

http://www.minnpost.com/sports/2015/...er-ricky-rubio

Mostly stuff we already know, but still a nice long read on it all.

We need more KAT (and Wiggins) talk and less Lavine talk imo. Nice article on ESPN about KAT and the Wolves:

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/14...ing-make-sense

The idea that this thread needs less discussion of anything is ridiculous. More talk, not less.

KAT is the best though, all the to KAT.

Any word on Ricky for tonight?

Only reason I am not talking about KAT more is I feel I am already fellating him enough. There's just not enough praise one can give out to a 19 year old rookie big after he's had the start that KAT has had.

This was a great quote from Lowe's article today on the Wolves:

"He's already a scary rim protector. Opponents have scored 12 fewer points per 100 possessions against Minnesota with Towns on the floor, and they're shooting a ghastly 40.8 percent on shots near the rim when Towns is around, per NBA.com -- a figure that would have been neck-and-neck with Rudy Gobert's league-best mark last season."

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/14...ing-make-sense

MOAR TOWNS fellating