Martell Webster appreciation thread?

[john2jer]

Start here.

[IAWolf]

WTF happened to rudy

[pacersrule08]

hahaha i love this hahahaha

[hijacktheparade]

Didn't he score 24 points in a quarter once? That was kind of cool. I guess.

[4ho5ive]

He came from Portland, a much better team than this. That has to count for something right?.....right!?

[CB-Blazer]

To be honest, I don't know why Minnesota did this but Martel is a decent rotation player. He has some great blocks though! (hope that helps).

[T-HuDfoShizzle]

Got mixed emotions about losing Babbitt but definitely stoked about Webster coming in.

[revprodeji]

Appreciation? Is he moving?

I am hearing Gomes is not involved so something else must be there.

[Calinks]

Ah what the hell.

BLAM!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMVXnJDBtnI[/youtube]

[4ho5ive]

At least he is as young as our rookie

[moss_is_1]

Love Webster. Atheltic,very good shooter, and only 23 years old yet.

[Sinobas]

Well, I hope Webby works out for you. The guy has a beautiful 3-point shot that is extremely erratic. Our previous GM, John Nash, traded down from Deron Williams and Chris Paul and drafted this guy at #6. He's strong and solidly built for a SF, and is also very athletic, and can make some plays on defense.
He plays with great effort and intensity on defense as well.

Downside is that he's not comfortable handling the ball at all. He rarely ever drives or initiates the offense. He likes to sit by the 3pt line and shoot the 3 pointer. And as I said, he's very erratic, and can be maddeningly off at times. He has absolutely no mid-range game.

Every once in awhile, he will drive and he looks quite good doing it, and it makes you wonder why he doesn't try it more often.....but that can be said for many NBA wings....

[Klomp]

Well, I hope Webby works out for you. The guy has a beautiful 3-point shot that is extremely erratic. Our previous GM, John Nash, traded down from Deron Williams and Chris Paul and drafted this guy at #6. He's strong and solidly built for a SF, and is also very athletic, and can make some plays on defense.
He plays with great effort and intensity on defense as well.

Downside is that he's not comfortable handling the ball at all. He rarely ever drives or initiates the offense. He likes to sit by the 3pt line and shoot the 3 pointer. And as I said, he's very erratic, and can be maddeningly off at times. He has absolutely no mid-range game.

Every once in awhile, he will drive and he looks quite good doing it, and it makes you wonder why he doesn't try it more often.....but that can be said for many NBA wings....

So in other words, another Corey Brewer to develop. Sweet!

[moss_is_1]

Thanks for the kind words there. I think he still has alot of room to improve, maybe more minutes here and playing more in the open court will help.

[PHTown]

Are the wolves going for the all bust team? In Webster's favor one of my female friends think he is very handsome and uses "Liz Webster" as her buck hunter name. He is ok as a player. Dumb move though. So dumb.

[GopherIt!]

gawd dammit.

[TyKixx]

I am not sure some of you understand how this works. The Wolves didn't agree to trade a largely considered top 10 player in Luke Babbitt for Martell Webster. Before the draft started they agreed to trade the 16th overall pick. There was really no reason to believe Henry, Babbitt, or George would have fallen. What if the pick ended up Damion James, Quincy Pondexter, or Elliot Williams? Some of you would be singing a different tune. I am sure if the Wolves believed Babbitt would fall they would have never agreed to make that trade. A bit of bad luck that makes things appear worse than they are.

It would have been exciting to see Babbitt fall to us at 16, but as it is I like Webster a lot. Always have really. He will have an expanded role here compared to a very deep Portland team. Worst case scenario we know we have a player capable of being productive off the bench. With Wes and Webb we finally have players who can stretch the floor.

Also, Webster has a much more pure stroke from the outside than Corey Brewer.

[shangrila]

While that trade might have been on the table before the draft, they didn't agree to it until after it was clear they were getting Babbitt. The reason they traded him was for the obvious reason that they'd just drafted a better SF and didn't need another slow guy on the roster.

[Tirion]

The reason they traded him was for the obvious reason that they'd just drafted a better SF

So they traded him... for another SF.

Also word on the street is that Martell has been talking to the poh-leece:



Wait 'till word gets to 'Melo on this one.

[Thiazi]

Leading up to 16, there were three players that I wanted after George was off the board, Xavier Henry, Ed Davis, and Larry Sanders. All three of them were taken before the Wolves pick, so at that point, 16 was a pretty terrible spot for us. Where things really went south was the Webster trade, I was expecting it to be along the lines of Webster and 22 for 16 and some filler. Instead, we sent out 16 and Gomes, for someone who up to this point has been a marginal player. I understand that he was misused in Portland and probably will be a better fit in an uptempo offense, but it just seemed like we got terrible value in this trade. The only way to rationalize moving Gomes in this deal instead of trading him elsewhere or just buying him out is that his contract was about the same value as Webster's. The only good thing about Webster's deal is that he has a team option for next year, so if he doesn't pan out, then we can get rid of him after this season.

The draft went from starting as a B or B+ with Johnson, then we overpaid for Webster and made the bizarre Lazar Williams pick and things descended quickly. I like the idea of taking a shot in the dark with the two foreign players, but at best, we probably won't see those guys for another 2-years, so those two selections are incompletes at the moment. At this point I would give the draft a C-, Johnson should be a starter, Webster, and Williams are bench players, and while the foreign players could help down the road, they aren't going to help improve us this year.

This was supposed to be a night to help turn around the fortunes of the franchise and at least upon first inspection, we didn't come anywhere close to that. Maybe we'll win a few more games next season because of the additions we made tonight, but I don't think that Webster or Williams are going to put us any closer to realistically being a playoff team. I hope they prove me wrong, but tonight I've gone from giving Kahn the benefit of the doubt to approaching his moves with a heavy dose of skepticism.

There's still FA and more likely trades to help transform the roster, but I don't think it is unfair to say that our offseason started off with a stumble rather than a leap forward. Though we did move forward, since it is pretty much impossible to move back any further.

Edit: One thing that I want to add is that the frustration being expressed tonight is a sign that the fanbase cares about the team. We want to be excited and we want to be hopeful, but we've been beaten down so many times that we are waiting for the Wolves to gives us a reason to be excited. I hoped that tonight would be that night, but it wasn't. They still need to do something to transform the team and catapult the Wolves onto the right path, but we need more than incremental improvement that tonight brought.