WCQ Game 1: Phoenix at Minnesota, 2:30 pm Saturday

[TimberKat]

It's interesting reading the Suns' posts. There is so much parallel conversations with Wolves. Two teams that needs immediate success each with 3 SuperMax contracts, no picks, and in second apron.
Same talks of too many turnovers by KD, Booker doesn't show up in playoffs when it matters, Beal overpaid and one dimensional, fire Vogel, need to blowup and start over, trade Booker while his value is still high. It just makes me wonder if all the conversations on this board are just a bunch of chatbots talking to itself in training

There a couple of big differences between the Wolves and the Suns situation. First, the Wolves have a young core of Ant, Jaden, Naz, and NAW that put them in a decent long term position, while the Suns are completely win now with little future upside. Second, the Suns are stuck in the repeater level of the luxury tax while the Wolves have no luxury tax seasons on the books (it takes 3 luxury tax years to hit repeater territory).

Yes, the current group have at least two more years. With Ant, we have another run after the group of Gobert, Towns, and Conley. The key would be how JMcD, Naz, and NAW develops. How we use Gobert and Towns' salary slot when they are done

[shrink]

One last thought. The defensive assignments made me think of high school tennis teams.

Now, I’ll admit I don’t know a lot about this area, and there are singles matches and doubles, but imagine a system where there are five singles matches, and the team that wins the most matches wins the competition. Most teams put their best player in match 1, their second best in match 2, and so on. Opponents generally do the same - helps boys egos that the best player gets to be in match 1.

Ok, so imagined that there are big gaps in talent between the players, and Team A has the #1, #3, #5, #7, #9 players, and Team B has the #2, #4, #6, #8, #10. If both coaches put their best players on each match, Team A wins 5-0. I beats 2, 3 beats 4, etc…

But imagine if Team B send its #10 player to get beat by #1! Then they get to have #2 vs #3, #4 vs #5, etc, and win the meet 4-1.

I thought Towns did admirable against PHX #1 offensive player, Kevin Durant. But Towns is not our #1 defender. In fact, he is behind McDaniels, Gobert, Ant, NAW and SloMo. But by putting KAT on KD and accepting KD will get his, it allowed us to have better defenders on Booker, Beal and Grayson Allen. Towns did fine, like he does on Jokic, but no one stops either player. Stopping the other three Suns is the mission.

[Klomp]

OK, I watched Game 1 in pieces as it was going on due to family obligations, and watched the replay of the game in pieces since, just finishing the last 3:30 this morning. What a game! What an environment!

I'm sure everyone has talked the Ant-KD exchange to death, but I think my personal favorite part of it was when they switched to the camera behind Durant, and (at least on Ballys) you can see Adrian Peterson smiling/laughing about it in the front row.

One cautionary thing I will say is that I think we got an A or A+ performance out of almost everyone on the team except for maybe Conley. So I'm approaching Game 2 and beyond somewhat cautionary expecting at least some regression. However, we have a 20-point cushion to play with in it. I'm expecting most of the rest of the games to be between 5-10 point margins, and they can still win one or maybe even two. But I feel confident we'll get through this series.

OK, now to go back and read everything I missed in the game thread.....

[Klomp]

One last thought. The defensive assignments made me think of high school tennis teams.

Now, I’ll admit I don’t know a lot about this area, and there are singles matches and doubles, but imagine a system where there are five singles matches, and the team that wins the most matches wins the competition. Most teams put their best player in match 1, their second best in match 2, and so on. Opponents generally do the same - helps boys egos that the best player gets to be in match 1.

Ok, so imagined that there are big gaps in talent between the players, and Team A has the #1, #3, #5, #7, #9 players, and Team B has the #2, #4, #6, #8, #10. If both coaches put their best players on each match, Team A wins 5-0. I beats 2, 3 beats 4, etc…

But imagine if Team B send its #10 player to get beat by #1! Then they get to have #2 vs #3, #4 vs #5, etc, and win the meet 4-1.

I thought Towns did admirable against PHX #1 offensive player, Kevin Durant. But Towns is not our #1 defender. In fact, he is behind McDaniels, Gobert, Ant, NAW and SloMo. But by putting KAT on KD and accepting KD will get his, it allowed us to have better defenders on Booker, Beal and Grayson Allen. Towns did fine, like he does on Jokic, but no one stops either player. Stopping the other three Suns is the mission.

I feel like we see this in some high school wrestling matches. There seems to be a little bit of flexibility in wrestling lineups, and some small schools will simply take a forfeit against the opponent's better wrestlers instead of putting a good but not great wrestler out there for a likely loss. They lose 6 points with the forfeit but they feel like they can potentially make up those points elsewhere.

[shrink]

One cautionary thing I will say is that I think we got an A or A+ performance out of almost everyone on the team except for maybe Conley.

I think we got a D in the first quarter from Ant, then an A+++ in the third, and it averaged out to an A+.

What’s scary is that he can be better!

[Klomp]

One cautionary thing I will say is that I think we got an A or A+ performance out of almost everyone on the team except for maybe Conley.

I think we got a D in the first quarter from Ant, then an A+++ in the third, and it averaged out to an A+.

What’s scary is that he can be better!

Ant will always ebb and flow at this point of his career. That's where the "40% of his potential" is really evident. The first quarter honestly didn't faze me at all, especially since we ended the frame with only a one-point deficit. At that point, my confidence level going into the last three quarters was at 75-80%.

[BlacJacMac]

One cautionary thing I will say is that I think we got an A or A+ performance out of almost everyone on the team except for maybe Conley.

I think we got a D in the first quarter from Ant, then an A+++ in the third, and it averaged out to an A+.

What’s scary is that he can be better!

Agreed. He was a complete mess in the 1st quarter. Looked exactly like how he played in the 3 previous games.

The turnaround after that was spectacular.