probably. this year's draft class sucks and if they don't land a top 10 pick this year (in which case they lose it) they lose next year's 1st rounder.

also:

at the time i would have taken all 3 over flynn. demarcus cousins 4, paul george @10 or wes johnson 4 aldrich 10 would have been decent too imo.

agree. if anyone is getting 3rd st minutes at the 5 it should be love. a lineup of ridnour/webster/johnson/beasley/love is pretty good imo.

yeah this is about right. i was leaning ~25 or so. it really is amazing how bad this team is record wise, but how much better they are than last years team(from a talent perspective)

How's Wes looking?

Wes has some skills. He's really smooth as a shooter, has great range, and can jump out of the gym. I guess he has a 43" vertical. He has shown flashes of being a great defender (eg. covered Kobe really well), but isnt good all the time at defense.

His handle needs improvement. He plays tentative most of the time - seems unsure of himself.

He needs to watch a lot of film of guys like Ray Allen imo. If Wes starting running around trying as hard to get open as Ray, he'd be really really good because he's athletic enough to play like that, and he's a great shooter.

He would really improve his game if he posted up a lot more too. He's ~6-7, so he's taller than most of the people guarding him. He rarely gets to the free throw line now, but would a lot if he posted up more.

I like his upside, but he has a long ways to go. I do think we made the correct choice when we drafted him.

Rambis is an idiot. Call a ****ing TO!

Nice play at the end of the game too.

Koufos with too much PT again. Flynn with too much PT again. Why is Flynn playing at the end of the game?? He is just bad. He stands around on defense like he expects his teammates to cover his man or something. He makes easy passes difficult because of hot dogging and laziness.

Jim Peterson nailed it a week or two ago when they were playing NO - he says Flynn has the same body type and physical abilities as Chris Paul, but the difference is all mental. Paul is like a coach on the court. Flynn's problems are all mental.

Good god, that game was the most frustrating one yet this season. So many horrible turnovers and bad defense against a lousy team missing two of their best players. We dont value our possessions. We make stupid, lackadaisical passes the whole ****ing game and give away so many possessions its ridiculous. Then we dont get back on defense and give up easy transition baskets.

If we would cut our unforced turnovers in half (not difficult), run back hard in transition (just effort and paying attention), and play halfway decent perimeter defense (effort and paying attention again), we might be pushing .500 right now.

I feel like Rubio is getting more and more valuable to us when we lose these close games. A good point guard will keep a team settled down and cut down on turnovers at the end of the game. They get a lead and then the last 8 minutes it's like 'oh ****, here we go again.'

I hope I'm not putting too much on Rubio, but he really seems like a true pg that would be great in these situations. He doesn't need to be able to get his own shot, just take care of the ball, get it to the scorers in the right position and play solid def.

I think even if he's not as good as I expect him to be, he'll be helpful as far as taking care of the ball and playing significantly better defense.

Anyone else see this crap tonight? Bad game.

Darko commits 2 fouls early in the 1st (one was probably a bad call) and sits. We leave their shooters wide open all over the place (standard) and they drain 3 after 3. Darko comes back in for 5 seconds in the 2nd quarter and commits his 3rd foul right away (terrible play by him) and goes to the bench. Wes Matthews has 32 (of his career high 36) at halftime. Down by 20 points at halftime - that was pretty much game over vs Portland.

Darko got his 4th foul (another stupid foul) early in the 3rd quarter, and Rambis left him in. That's something I dont think Rambis has ever done before with any player. Not that it mattered much, because he played soft after that, but at least he isnt Koufos.

Pek didnt play tonight. Koufos the dufus got a lot of minutes while Darko sat on the bench.

Brewer was in Matthews jock the whole 2nd half. Well, almost. He fell sleep a few times and left Matthews wide open, but luckily he cooled off a bit - presumably from actually having to work to get open, unlike in the 1st half.

Tolliver was back tonight for the first time after his knee injury, and he played pretty well - played good D and hit some shots.

Flynn is gawdawful bad at both ends of the floor. He is making hot-dog or nonchalant passes all the time - ones that even if they get to the intended target, wont lead to anything positive for us. His lack of defense is maddening.

Flynn's defensive prowess seems to be rubbing off on Wes, who looks lost at times.

Love - 30/19, 1-15 from the floor, 7-7 from the line, yawn. He seems like he's playing a little better defense lately as well, and at times was instructing Doufos how to play too. Doufos looked confused.

We did play a lot better in the 2nd half and only lost by 10, but it was never closer than 10 until there was > 2 minutes left if I remember correctly. It never really seemed like we had any chance.

Beasley was benched for way too long, presumably because Rambis was trying to teach him a lesson about playing better defense or something. Brilliant strategy - take your best scorer out of the game to make a point.

I'm starting to hate Rambis. He needs to go imo. A lot of the people over at Canis have been calling for his head for a while. These last two games have sent me over the edge as far as Rambis is concerned. I've seen enough of him.

If this crap continues much longer, we might need to change the title of this thread to FIRE RAMBIS! imo.

And I just got a Wes Johnson jersey from my g/f's parents for xmas. I guess the Twolves are now my team, lol. Perhaps I shouldn't wear it until Wes can score some points in a game, .

i like rambis. i do think he should go back to this look though:



how awesome would it be if he grew the stache over the allstar break or something and put the old glasses back pregame on ala rick vaughn

Willie - that would be tremendous. I really see no downside for him doing that!

Borrowed from a post at Canis:

It looks like maybe, finally, Rambis has figured out that if a wing player is scorching you from 3-point land, you put your best defender on him, tell him to stick like glue, and shut the dude down. It’s an unforgivable shame that it took Rambis 119 games to figure this out, but the second half of tonight’s game indicates that he did, in fact, figure this out. If he looks at Wesley Matthew’s stats from the 1st half vs. the 2nd half, and doesn’t employ this tactic from here on out, then he has a serious learning disability.

So, maybe, possibly, we can hope that the “random dude kills us from 3” problem might go away. The fact that it worked in the 2nd half shows that Rambis was wrong. The fact that he stuck with it shows that he’s willing to admit he was wrong. The fact that it took 119 games to realize that he was wrong is a tragedy.

My take, prior to reading that, was that having Brewer up in the shooter's jock might have been a one time thing. We'll see what happens from here on out. I've been complaining about our perimeter D for a while, and I think its one of the biggest reasons we lose so much. Packing the paint and leaving shooters wide open been Rambis' M.O. since he was with the Lakers.

This is just one of several reasons I think Rambis sucks as a head coach. Some people are suggesting he's tanking games again this year. If we're tanking, I dont like the idea of doing that, but at least he wouldn't be as ******ed as he appears to be.

I'd be surprised if it wasn't a "one time thing."

Is there some place on the internet you can buy a Wes Johnson jersey? I can't find one anywhere. As a Syracuse and Timberwolves fan it seems only logical I get one.

I have no idea. I have a feeling they got it at Dick's Sporting Goods which is a MN chain here. I'd also assume you can get them at the Twolves store at the Target Center.

They had some great deals on Love jerseys at that store in Target Center skyway - I got my daughter one for $25 a few weeks ago. They still have Al Jefferson stuff there, lol. There were Flynn jerseys on sale as well - I wouldnt be caught dead in one of those.

I dont remember if they had Wes jerseys or not, but if they did, I'm pretty sure they were full price. They didnt have Darko or Beasley on sale for sure - we would have considered getting one of those.

Wolves down by 3 late in the Spurs game, run a play to get a good look at a 3 pointer and miss. They get a stop on D, get the ball back, and instead of running a different play, they run the exact same thing and the Spurs are waiting for it.

Watch how it goes down, and read Pruiti's explanation.

http://nbaplaybook.com/2011/01/10/th...w-down-3-late/

Rambis sucks imo.

What a yawner tonight. Highlight for me:


Hard to get a non-blurry picture with my camera. Oh well. That was fun anyways.

- Brewer is not a defensive stopper. He sucks at offense worse than anyone we have. Please start Webster.

- I retract my opinion that Darko will be an all star. I think he could be if he put enough effort into it and played hard and aggressive all the time, but he doesnt. He gets lazy and makes stupid fouls and stupid passes. He need to go hard to the rim more often. He has the ability, but not the desire.

- Love - another 20/20. Can they keep him out of the all star game with his numbers?

- Beasley was missing everything all night before he hit a 3 and landed bad on his ankle, ending the night for him. I think it was bothering him all game. Hopefully he gets better soon.

- ****ing refs. We got 5 technicals in ~10 seconds, which pretty much iced the game for the Spurs, even though it was in the 3rd quarter. We weren't coming back after it went from a 6 point game to 11 at that point. I liked seeing Rambis get tossed and having Laimbeer take over, even if it was only for a quarter and a half.

I didn't see the game, but was the deal with all the T's?

The refs were horse sh*t. That Mauer guy, who's from St. Paul no less, T'ed up Brewer and Darko simultaneously after a horse-sh*t call. Then Rambis went over and got one. Then he got another one right away. Ginobli hit 4 free throws. Right after that they make another horse-sh*t call and Love complains and immediately gets T'd up. Ginobli hits the FT and it goes from down 6 to down 11.

Also, this little part of the game was small potatoes compared to the rest of the ******** calls. It was just awful all game.

I found out after the game (I didnt see this live), that after Beasley hit that 3 and hurt his ankle, Duncan had stuck his foot out under Beasley after the shot and Beasley stepped on it. No foul called there either.

Some of the fouls called on Darko were lame.

Spurs get by with traveling and all kinds of fouls that should have been called, etc....

We frequently get screwed by the refs because of a lack of established stars, and we probably wouldnt have won this game even if the refs had done a good job, but **** like this just takes all the fun out of what could have been an entertaining game.





One more thing......Johnny Flynn might be the worst player in the NBA right now. He is just brutally bad.

Refs gone wild:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fm2WxX6vtw
~1:15 notice what Rambis says to the asshat ref after he got tossed out. I gained a little bit of respect for Rambis for standing up for his team.

Thanks for the link. Wow is all I have to say. Imagine being at your job trying to get stuff done and your boss keeps docking you $50 because you ask questions when he/she's making dumb decisions. And then imagine the boss docking everyone in the room $50 when they back you up and telling the VP who manages your group to go home.