Wolves season watch thread for the 2021 pick

[Swift21]

Twolves defense is still awful. I have no doubts it will be some where in the top 10.

UTA was the league's top 3PT shooting team last seasons and has all their best folks still on the team. MIN shut it down. They're different. But keep your chin up, indeed.

Yeah Russell, Beasley and Towns will anchor that great defense all season.

[Phase 3]

Considering we’re stuck with Wiggins, if this pick isn’t in the 4-8 range the trade was a failure

Summed up perfectly.

[MarxyLebronist]

Oh they're no world beater lol. But they ran guys off the line and forced more bad 3s than good, knowing that UTA was going to be hoisting. That'll work to manage games against a lot of teams these days in this terrible 3 ball era. Then again, other teams or UTa next time might just hit more of them and win.

A lot of the early season wins will be passion/effort wins and young teams that believe in each other and/or trust their coaches will get some wins that will count big after in the year as everyone catches up on things. Just two games. They'll get stomped tonight in LA (the B2Bs are insane around the league so far, btw- really curious decisions made about who has to play them and what the circumstances are).

[lars_rosenberg]

KAT's hand injury may lose them a few games.

[marthafokker]

Let's wait and see.

Minny has started fast in recent years to only be top 10 lottery picks.

[MarxyLebronist]

KAT's hand injury may lose them a few games.

Yeah, it looked very scary and then he came right back in. My friend and I were chatting through game (different states) and went sort of speechless. Bummed us out after all KAT's been through personally on top of it all. Feel for him. But there he was. Looked for sure like a break or 4-6 week major sprain at best.

Will say that the team showed it can cough up a lead real quick, right around that time.
They'll have to just outgun teams plenty of nights, to be in the mix.

[GQ Hot Dog]

D'lo is horrible. Beasley's about to bust his rifle out on him.

[MarxyLebronist]

Yeah it's insane they're playing a road B2B in week 1. No idea what the schedulers are doing. Bulls were on a B2B tonight too actually, as will the Pistons be next. But at home. Maybe Pistons away-home B2B? I forget. Wolves look so bad right now lol. Rotation weird, too, Edwards looking overwhelmed. His face was like "what just happened? I thought I was good?!" at a break. Lakers look so good here even without AD.

[PharmD]

D'lo is horrible. Beasley's about to bust his rifle out on him.

I have ventured to this forum looking for DLo opinions and I stumbled on this thread. Can I continue to post here while cheering against you guys itt?

DLo appears to suck. He carries himself like a star and all the announcers talk about his as one but his entire offensive game seems to be dribbling into long 2s? A good game is one where he goes 9/16 and a bad game, well, he just had 4 points 3 assists 7 turnovers -31. Playing around on bbref I see that he has a career usage of 28.6 with a TS of 0.526 and WS/48 of 0.44. That's uncomfortably close to Wiggins 25.6 0.521 and 0.43. I also see that his teams have always been better with him off the court.

Am I missing anything or he just an unathletic inefficient chucker that can't play a lick of defense and also has dumb looking hair?

[Coxy]

Am I missing anything or he just an unathletic inefficient chucker that can't play a lick of defense and also has dumb looking hair?

I'm afraid so my man. He'll have a game or 2 where he gets hot and you're brain will play a trick on you thinking that he may be pretty good, but then poof, he sucks again.

It's generally not his offence that's the major problem, its that defence. He has no lateral ability at all. He has really high hips, and a skinny and unathletic core area, so he has no power about him. Everything is finesse, and he doesn't fight through screens, nor can he keep up with anyone, so he's constantly putting the entire defence under pressure to collapse and help. It's a nightmare for coaches, because all you can do is try to hide him in the corners. He also just plays soft. Everytime he gets hit, or even touched, his natural reaction is to exaggurate the contact rather than fight through it. It drove me insane, but I am a bit of a defence 1st stickler, so a player like Dlo was always to make me want to kick puppies. As a guy that's playing 30+ minutes a night and supposed to be leading the team, it's uninspiring and deflating for teammates having a guy like that.

He looked half decent in one of the wins I thought, I think the 1st game where he came off the bench? That should be his role. A microwave bench scorer like Lou Williams. Just bring him on when other team play their 2nd/3rd units.

[Mylie10]

D'lo is horrible. Beasley's about to bust his rifle out on him.

I have ventured to this forum looking for DLo opinions and I stumbled on this thread. Can I continue to post here while cheering against you guys itt?

DLo appears to suck. He carries himself like a star and all the announcers talk about his as one but his entire offensive game seems to be dribbling into long 2s? A good game is one where he goes 9/16 and a bad game, well, he just had 4 points 3 assists 7 turnovers -31. Playing around on bbref I see that he has a career usage of 28.6 with a TS of 0.526 and WS/48 of 0.44. That's uncomfortably close to Wiggins 25.6 0.521 and 0.43. I also see that his teams have always been better with him off the court.

Am I missing anything or he just an unathletic inefficient chucker that can't play a lick of defense and also has dumb looking hair?

D’Los our ticket to the draft lottery again. Thank you. You can vent while we scour future draft pick footage. We have another thread for that if you want to see who you aren’t getting.

Feel free to root against us. That’s fine. I think you guys will be just good enough to not fall into the final three picks. And even if you do, you have a chance that the little balls don’t cooperate and you fall out of the top three picks.

Good luck!

[killmongrel]

D'lo is horrible. Beasley's about to bust his rifle out on him.

I have ventured to this forum looking for DLo opinions and I stumbled on this thread. Can I continue to post here while cheering against you guys itt?

DLo appears to suck. He carries himself like a star and all the announcers talk about his as one but his entire offensive game seems to be dribbling into long 2s? A good game is one where he goes 9/16 and a bad game, well, he just had 4 points 3 assists 7 turnovers -31. Playing around on bbref I see that he has a career usage of 28.6 with a TS of 0.526 and WS/48 of 0.44. That's uncomfortably close to Wiggins 25.6 0.521 and 0.43. I also see that his teams have always been better with him off the court.

Am I missing anything or he just an unathletic inefficient chucker that can't play a lick of defense and also has dumb looking hair?

D’Los our ticket to the draft lottery again. Thank you. You can vent while we scour future draft pick footage. We have another thread for that if you want to see who you aren’t getting.

Feel free to root against us. That’s fine. I think you guys will be just good enough to not fall into the final three picks. And even if you do, you have a chance that the little balls don’t cooperate and you fall out of the top three picks.

Good luck!

This post made me laugh. But to the Minny fan, at least he's keeping KAT happy for the meantime. I'm sure that's the main value in having DLO there right?

[PharmD]

I have ventured to this forum looking for DLo opinions and I stumbled on this thread. Can I continue to post here while cheering against you guys itt?

DLo appears to suck. He carries himself like a star and all the announcers talk about his as one but his entire offensive game seems to be dribbling into long 2s? A good game is one where he goes 9/16 and a bad game, well, he just had 4 points 3 assists 7 turnovers -31. Playing around on bbref I see that he has a career usage of 28.6 with a TS of 0.526 and WS/48 of 0.44. That's uncomfortably close to Wiggins 25.6 0.521 and 0.43. I also see that his teams have always been better with him off the court.

Am I missing anything or he just an unathletic inefficient chucker that can't play a lick of defense and also has dumb looking hair?

D’Los our ticket to the draft lottery again. Thank you. You can vent while we scour future draft pick footage. We have another thread for that if you want to see who you aren’t getting.

Feel free to root against us. That’s fine. I think you guys will be just good enough to not fall into the final three picks. And even if you do, you have a chance that the little balls don’t cooperate and you fall out of the top three picks.

Good luck!

This post made me laugh. But to the Minny fan, at least he's keeping KAT happy for the meantime. I'm sure that's the main value in having DLO there right?

I assume so, yes, but how long can that last? Towns wants to score a bunch and win. How long is he going to like playing with a guy that jacks shots all day and hardly even moves on defense? Also the fact that he's KAT's bff probably means there's no way we can trade him and thus we are ****ed. I wouldn't count us out of a top 3 pick just yet. We have a lot more experience praying for ping pong balls then you do.

Spoiler:

Sidenote: Wiggins and Oubre have only ever been good when they played with Ricky Rubio and are terrible otherwise.

[killmongrel]

D’Los our ticket to the draft lottery again. Thank you. You can vent while we scour future draft pick footage. We have another thread for that if you want to see who you aren’t getting.

Feel free to root against us. That’s fine. I think you guys will be just good enough to not fall into the final three picks. And even if you do, you have a chance that the little balls don’t cooperate and you fall out of the top three picks.

Good luck!

This post made me laugh. But to the Minny fan, at least he's keeping KAT happy for the meantime. I'm sure that's the main value in having DLO there right?

I assume so, yes, but how long can that last? Towns wants to score a bunch and win. How long is he going to like playing with a guy that jacks shots all day and hardly even moves on defense? Also the fact that he's KAT's bff probably means there's no way we can trade him and thus we are ****ed. I wouldn't count us out of a top 3 pick just yet. We have a lot more experience praying for ping pong balls then you do.

Spoiler:

Sidenote: Wiggins and Oubre have only ever been good when they played with Ricky Rubio and are terrible otherwise.

Yeah, Wiggins and Oubre still have a ways to go to prove they belong on this team going forward. But there is still a lot of time. So we'll see.

As for the DLO/KAT situation, I mean, that's just something you have to live with right? Better to try to satiate your franchise player and see how it works than gambling with a volatile situation by not doing with what he wants. Didn't seem to work in Houston with Harden, but at least they tried. At the end of the day, you can still trade KAT for a good rebuild.

[Mylie10]

D’Los our ticket to the draft lottery again. Thank you. You can vent while we scour future draft pick footage. We have another thread for that if you want to see who you aren’t getting.

Feel free to root against us. That’s fine. I think you guys will be just good enough to not fall into the final three picks. And even if you do, you have a chance that the little balls don’t cooperate and you fall out of the top three picks.

Good luck!

This post made me laugh. But to the Minny fan, at least he's keeping KAT happy for the meantime. I'm sure that's the main value in having DLO there right?

I assume so, yes, but how long can that last? Towns wants to score a bunch and win. How long is he going to like playing with a guy that jacks shots all day and hardly even moves on defense? Also the fact that he's KAT's bff probably means there's no way we can trade him and thus we are ****ed. I wouldn't count us out of a top 3 pick just yet. We have a lot more experience praying for ping pong balls then you do.

Spoiler:

Sidenote: Wiggins and Oubre have only ever been good when they played with Ricky Rubio and are terrible otherwise.

Oh and thank you for Steph Curry and our three Championships! You guys are the best, we really appreciate it.

[Scoots1994]

Feel free to keep posting here PharmD. Who knows, maybe the Warriors keep getting injured and end up with 2 top 10 picks.

[Warriors Analyst]

D'lo is horrible. Beasley's about to bust his rifle out on him.

I have ventured to this forum looking for DLo opinions and I stumbled on this thread. Can I continue to post here while cheering against you guys itt?

DLo appears to suck. He carries himself like a star and all the announcers talk about his as one but his entire offensive game seems to be dribbling into long 2s? A good game is one where he goes 9/16 and a bad game, well, he just had 4 points 3 assists 7 turnovers -31. Playing around on bbref I see that he has a career usage of 28.6 with a TS of 0.526 and WS/48 of 0.44. That's uncomfortably close to Wiggins 25.6 0.521 and 0.43. I also see that his teams have always been better with him off the court.

Am I missing anything or he just an unathletic inefficient chucker that can't play a lick of defense and also has dumb looking hair?

I was pretty enthused about DLo when we got him. I thought that it would be interesting to see the Warriors with another capable ball handler who could gun it from three. My enthusiasm was gone by the time we traded him.

DLo came into training camp out of shape. Kerr was not happy about that at all. It's pretty frustrating to pick up a guy on a max contract who then doesn't even bother to come in shape to training camp. The guys on the Warriors beat for The Athletic all have all but said that Kerr decided by the end of training camp he didn't want DLo on the team long term. To that point, Kerr apparently didn't send DLo any film on the off-ball stuff during the offseason so he could prepare to run Kerr's motion stuff. To be fair, before Steph broke his hand it seemed like Kerr was going to let Curry and DLo each run more pick and rolls and eventually blend the motion stuff in, but once Curry went down, Kerr pivoted to teaching our scrubs and rookies the motion stuff.

Once Curry went down, DLo stopped trying on defense. It was rough. As a longtime Warriors fan, I've seen a lot of terrible defenders pass through here: Jamal Crawford, disengaged Monta Ellis, Corey Maggette, the list goes on. DLo was as bad as anyone I've ever had to watch. The effort level, or total absence of, was appalling. DLo put up almost no physical resistance on D. He'd avoid screens whenever possible and would get blown by regularly. To some extent, I get DLo giving up on D once Curry went down; it was obvious the team was going nowhere fast and max defensive effort on his part wouldn't have translated into more than two or three more wins. But with that said, DLo is not Draymond who has proven his worth in five championship runs and has played more than additional season's worth of playoff games. Draymond has earned his place in the league and has a lot of miles on his body, especially for a guy his size. If he wants to take some plays off, that doesn't really bother me. But Dlo just got a max contract and his ability to play winning basketball has always been in dispute. It was really disappointing to see DLo not even try on that end of the court.

Before the trade was made, DLo did start playing off-ball more and he was starting to look more comfortable in the motion offense. But over the course of the season, his physical limitations made themselves very clear on offense. Because DLo doesn't have much of a burst or first step, he's always going to struggle to get easy looks in the paint. Every now and then a screener would wipe out the defender so that DLo could get deep in the paint, but that was pretty rare. If DLo got into the paint, it was almost always because he used several dribbles to do, at which point the option of hitting the roll man was gone and the paint would be clogged. It was pretty common to see Dlo get the defender on his back and use his ass to block the defender off while he slowly dribbled his way into the paint. Because he struggles to get deep into the paint on his first step, he rarely gets the chance to attack rim protectors, so a lot of his looks in the paint become step backs or floaters. He's not going to get easy shots off in the paint.

With that said, DLo is a brilliant passer, but the above limitations make it so that the majority of his assists occur above the free throw line or three point line. If he hits a lob man or shooter in the corner, it's usually on that first or second dribble off of a PNR. If DLo has to dribble several times, he's going to have to take the shot on his own in the paint. In fairness, DLo is a pretty good shot maker. If you want some reason to be optimistic about him offensively, look at this EFG%. It's pretty solid and not that fair off from what Harden gives you. It's far better than Wiggins'. The reason his TS% is so low is that he just doesn't get a lot of free throws, which dampens his overall efficiency. He's a good shotmaker, he's just misses the mark of being genuinely efficient because his free throw rate sucks.

[GQ Hot Dog]

D'lo is horrible. Beasley's about to bust his rifle out on him.

I have ventured to this forum looking for DLo opinions and I stumbled on this thread. Can I continue to post here while cheering against you guys itt?

DLo appears to suck. He carries himself like a star and all the announcers talk about his as one but his entire offensive game seems to be dribbling into long 2s? A good game is one where he goes 9/16 and a bad game, well, he just had 4 points 3 assists 7 turnovers -31. Playing around on bbref I see that he has a career usage of 28.6 with a TS of 0.526 and WS/48 of 0.44. That's uncomfortably close to Wiggins 25.6 0.521 and 0.43. I also see that his teams have always been better with him off the court.

Am I missing anything or he just an unathletic inefficient chucker that can't play a lick of defense and also has dumb looking hair?

I really think D'lo is far more useful a player when alongside a dominant big man. One thing I'm sure you've noticed about his game is that it's predicated on slow, deliberate movement. D'lo disrupts any sort of motion offense. His game is about his teammates standing around and waiting. Waiting for D'lo to hesitate, to dribble, to crossover, to step back and ultimately to shoot. Maybe to pass but not as often. There's no point in cutting if you're playing with D'lo, he doesn't move fast enough to pass to a cutter. Off ball movement is disruptive to D'lo. Everyone needs to stand as still as possible and let him go to work.

With KAT playing D'lo can space out, physically and mentally. KAT can go to work and D'lo can stand on the wing waiting for a pass. He's a good shooter and he will knock down those threes. Make sure your other guard knows it's his responsibility to get back on defense.

[ILOVEIT]

I don't know why everyone makes it so complicated. Any player now in the NBA that sucks on defense isn't worth anything relative to championship basketball. DLO is one of the worse defensive players ever. He makes Harden look like he's almost trying!

[Little Digger]

Wolves will end up 2-70