deeney0 wrote:Welcome to the board.
Trading for Love was better than drafting him at 3 outright. Miller should fit in well here. The trade dashes all hopes of making a splash in 2009 free agency, but opens up a possibility for an even bigger splash in 2010 IF they're frugal with the kind of contracts they doll out this year. If they keep Gomes, Telfair, and Smith for too long/too much, then one of the big appeals of this trade gets dashed.
Jefferson/Love is a short, slow defensive front court. The Wolves couldn't keep penetrating guards out of the lane last year, couldn't defend in transition, had crappy help defense. This trade doesn't address those problems much at all. Worse - the Wolves are locked into that front court for four years. Yes, Jefferson/Love is better than Jefferson/Gomes, but keeping Mayo and targeting a defensive big man next year (Thabeet, for example), would've addressed these issues a lot more.
I think a Mayo/Foye backcourt would've worked beautifully. I didn't see drafting Mayo as giving up on Foye at all, it was more a giving up on McCants thing - and he's still probably gone before the trade deadline.
After a week, I'm still not digging the trade. I wish Mayo was still here.
made baskets on offense = much better transition defense. Thabeet on the floor is just another guy you can play off of to crowd Jefferson and more inefficient offense and more long rebounds off of bad shots and just puts MN in more transition defense situations. With Love you have a more efficient offense (which was just as big a problem as the defense) and you're going to be in the halfcourt more often.
If teams think they're going to go at Love everytime down the court and abuse him, then good luck with that. Love is not the horrible defender everybody wants to believe he is.
