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Hi, it has been a while.

I was having a discussion with a negative Common-man type on FB and Klomp liked my reasoning for optimism. He asked that I copy it here. (Disclaimer: this was originally on my phone so the numbers might be slightly off)

I would say the current state makes it hard to be excited about the team. Yet, I think we have made some positive changes that will help with the factors that contributed to our downfall last year. Here they are: Turnovers, offensive eff, d...efense, overall talent.

1.) Turnovers. There are a couple things that will help this. 1.) Rubio as the pg. Rubio will have his own turnover issues at the beginning, but many of our turnovers came because the pgs did not know how to run anything outside of a pnr and in the triangle we spent too much time with bigs and wings running the plays. Put the ball in the pg hands and out of darko and you will limit turnovers. Run a basic offense and not the triangle and the turnovers will be limited.

2.) Off eff. We were 1 in pace, but 23rd (i think) in eff. We played fast, but did not capitalize on it. The reason was that many of our extra possessions came from the other team scoring off our turnovers. We did not fast break often (26th) and instead would jack up a jumper early. The offense should be judged on what type of shots it produced. Last year our most common shot was a deep 2. That is bad basketball. Switching offensive systems, putting the ball in Rubio's hands will help. Another thing that will help is Derrick Williams. Last year Beasley was the only player that could generate his own offense. He needed to jack shots because nobody else could. Ridnour is a nice back-up and can shoot, but he has never been a playmaker. This year we not only have a playmaking guard that will set up the wings, but we also have another player that can generate his own offense in Williams. He is a high post monster. (Also, when Webster got healthy he was able to generate offense off the benc).

Overall talent level. For most of the season we only had 1 player with a positive +/- Simple rating. (Hi Kevin) we had 2 players that flirted with it (Tolly, Ridnour) and one player that came on at the end of the year (Randolph). We finished the year with 2 players with a positive +/- (Love/Randolph) and 2 players with less than -1 (Tolly/Ridnour). Our overall talent level was terrible.

So how does that change? 1.) Rubio and Williams, but there are 3 other factors. 1.) Webster played incredible as he started recovering from back surgery. He said he would not be healed completely until rehab this summer. 2.) Beasley was a positive +/- and playing great before the 6 ankle sprains. 3.) Natural improvement from Wes Johnson as a result of the Rubio effect.

What about the defense? 2 things but they all come back to Rambis. There are 2 scheme things he did that bothered the crap out of people. 1.) He packed the paint and did not contest the swing around 3. This killed us. Looked bad on Beasley/Johnson but that was their assignment. Pack the paint and let the 3 be shot. 2.) His weak side rotation was a zone hybrid. It worked with LA and vets that had high bbiq but it was too complicated for younger teams. There is a reason why zone hybrid systems as not used in the NBA. The other factor is the amount of points other teams scored off our turnovers or early jump shots. When you miss a jumper usually the rebound is out of the paint and that allows a team to get into transition early.

Not to throw Rambis under the bus, but he was that bad. He used an offensive scheme that has failed unless you have one of the greatest SG of all time. He used a defense that does not work with a young team. Switching him, adding Rubio and Williams and we will greatly improve.

ok, now we have something to talk about...

1. Addition of Rubio & Williams
2. Healthy Beasley & Webster
3. Year of experience for Wes Johnson
4. Getting rid of Rambis

That's all I need!

I expect they will improve unless Ricky Rubio is a disaster and an obvious down grade from Ridnour and gets handed his minutes unjustly. If he either beats out Ridnour justly or fails to beat him out but exceeds Flynn's level of play (hard to believe he wouldn't) that would be a major step forward.

If Rubio justly wins the job from Ridnour (without a drop off in Ridnour's performance) then the PG position should be a position of strength for the Wolves for the first time since Cassell. I know people knock Kahn for his failures to fix the PG problem despite his obvious focus on doing so but in all fairness he did already vastly improve it, its just that he down graded the wings and then dumped Jefferson for the pu pu platter of Millic and Pekovic.

A healthy Jefferson and Love up front the last two years would've resulted in 10-15 game improvements in my honest opinion. Certainly it was a major issue last year when they finally had perimeter players who could actually shoot the three and then proceeded to dump perhaps the best pure post up big man in the league, It certainly wasted Kevin Love's break out season at any rate in my opinion. I also tend to think that Beasley would have been better with a lower usage and a interior scoring threat that defenses had to account for.

I also believe that Rubio's natural ability to create shots for his teammates should result in obvious improvements from Wesley Johnson, Martell Webster and even Darko Millic (assuming he is still around which I think is likely and playing 20+ minutes). I expect improvement from Wesley and Martell regardless as Wesley has been putting the work in and should be more comfortable with a year under his belt at the 2 and in a better system (hard to believe they could find a worse one for him) and Martell assuming he is healthy is already a fairly proven NBA SF.

I think the biggest potential for improvement lies with replacing Michael Beasley with Derrick Williams in the same role spliting time between the 3 and at the 4 in a smallball lineup with Love at the 5 and also simply backing up Love at the 4.

I know many see Beasley as the answer to the Wolves issues of not having a #1 option, as i've maintained right along I see Beasley's trying to force himself into such a role that I believe he is incapable of filling as perhaps the Wolves biggest problem.

I believe that Williams is capable of the same level of raw production as Beasley but that instead of needing 17 shots to get 19 points that Williams would require more like 14-15 shots and in time I believe he will be able to get 22-23 on 15-16 shots.

I believe the main difference between the two of them is simply basketball IQ, despite being younger Williams knows what a good shot is and what his strengths are so he plays to them. I know that some see Beasley's mindset of being a 19-20 shots per starters minutes as a strength but I personally think its his biggest weakness. He only creates about 10-12 quality shots in those minutes but he still consistently forces up the other 8-10 because he feels entitled to them.

I would personally be thrilled if they could use Beasley to dump some combo of Pekovic, Hayward, Ellington while getting back either a decent true SG a 2012 1st or ideally a decent veteran center whose contract would inspire a team to give up a 2012 first or a young SG talent. I'd be leaning towards say Brendan Haywood, Dominique Jones and a 2012 first.

My line of thinking being that the Mavs would rather over pay Pekovic at $4 million behind Chandler then Haywood at $8 while using Beasley as a short term protection from having to pay Caron Butler. I figure the Mavs pick wouldn't be hard to get included because Cuban knows he can also just buy one.

I also think Jones is worth a look and might be a very nice (and cheap) match for Ridnour in a second unit backcourt. Now obviously nobody is going to be thrilled with the idea of a 32 year old Haywood with 4 years and nearly $35 million of guaranteed money left before his lovely team option makes him a potential major trade chip for both the summer of 14 and 15.

I see him as a guy who has always played better as a starter and though his contract is bad, it certainly doesn't fall outside of the tradeable range. He has been successful as either a 25 MPG starting center or as a 30+ MPG starting center and despite being expensive a Hayward/Millic/Love center rotation would certainly qualify as solid.

He's also a pretty good fit in terms of the Wolves needs at the position, he defends the post, blocks shots, doesn't require help on his man but does provide it to others and is good enough to start in front of Darko but not so good that Darko couldn't take it back should he figure it out.

The Wolves could also obviously go smaller when matchups allow (which is fairly often given the lack of quality centers) but more importantly they could go big on basically everyone with size at every position without being unathletic.

PG Rubio Ridnour Jones
SG Johnson Jones Ellington
SF Williams Webster Johnson
PF Love Randolph Williams
C Haywood Millic Love

The other reason i'm so against keeping Beasley besides him being in the way of Williams, Webster and Randolph is that he is going to be playing for a contract. Which at least currently requires a $8+ million dollar QA in order to keep his rights for a S&T. I don't believe anyone gives him that in free agency under whatever the new CBA is so making him a restricted free agent and having him sign it would give him a no-trade option basically for that season. I think its either you trade him this off season or you either lose him for nothing or are stuck with him for two years.

Couldn't resist turning the optimism thread into another Beasely sucks/trade Beasley rant, could you?

Krapinsky wrote:Couldn't resist turning the optimism thread into another Beasely sucks/trade Beasley rant, could you?

LOL, I am showing optimism, its just about him leaving....

revprodeji wrote:Not to throw Rambis under the bus, but he was that bad. He used an offensive scheme that has failed unless you have one of the greatest SG of all time. He used a defense that does not work with a young team.

If the offense continually didn't work then why did we proceed to use it? If it's such a hard defense to learn for young guys then why would Rambis try to teach it to the youngest team in the league?

Rambis is stubborn as a mule.

pumunga wrote:If the offense continually didn't work then why did we proceed to use it? If it's such a hard defense to learn for young guys then why would Rambis try to teach it to the youngest team in the league?

Because he's a terrible, terrible coach who was too set in his ways to adjust his game plan to fit the talent on the team.

pumunga wrote:

revprodeji wrote:Not to throw Rambis under the bus, but he was that bad. He used an offensive scheme that has failed unless you have one of the greatest SG of all time. He used a defense that does not work with a young team.

If the offense continually didn't work then why did we proceed to use it? If it's such a hard defense to learn for young guys then why would Rambis try to teach it to the youngest team in the league?

He was given a 4 year contract and was told that he had 3 years to turn the team around. In the meantime, he had to revive careers (Beasley, Milicic, Randolph) and build up young talent (practically everybody else on the roster). Kahn had basically pressed the reset button when he took over. He didn't do it all at once, but we essentially started from scratch. Also in Rambis' defense, Kahn's draft picks never delivered and Kahn never made that blockbuster move that he promised. If anything blame Kahn, aka the guy who hired Rambis.

Krapinsky wrote:Rambis is stubborn as a mule.

Yet you want Nelson as if he's gonna be any better in that category.

In fairness to Kahn, he couldn't make that blockbuster move when Rambis's coaching showed nearly every player on the roster in a poor light but Kevin Love. Kahn is certainly to blame for hiring a guy who was obviously dead set on running a system that didn't suit the talent he had or the type of talents he has targeted since.

I still agree that it falls on Rambis for being unable and or unwilling to adjust his own gameplan to the strengths and weaknesses of his roster. He may not have been given stacked rosters to work with but he certainly had more then enough talent to avoid a 32-132 record had he not set them up to fail.

Sure Kahn has tripped up badly in some cases (Al Jefferson, Jonny Flynn, Ryan Hollins, etc) but he did some things right that Rambis's system has made look bad in my opinion.

bluethunder0005 wrote:

Krapinsky wrote:Rambis is stubborn as a mule.

Yet you want Nelson as if he's gonna be any better in that category.

Wait, what? Someone is actually for the hiring of a coach that checked out of caring half a decade ago and had fundamental flaws as a coach from day one?

That is just flat out crazy, they might as well have kept Rambis if they are just going to hire Nelson. You can all kiss Randolph good bye if they bring in Nelson, the kid will not play for him again.

off topic, how do i find you guys on FB?

Blame both really, but in the end, it was Rambis who proved unable to show any signs of team improvements - his rotations were horrid, his offense didn't fit the core players, and the defense was sort of embarrassing. Again, no improvement supporting a return on his leadership. Thats's the key issue that is unexcuseable. Kahn is harder to pin-point blame since his role involves more calculated risks ... a mediocre performance so far IMO, and unless things show promise early in the upcoming season, he'll likely be out prior to the 2012 draft.

Reason for optimism?
We have a PG
We drafted a very good/low risk basketball player (Williams)
Beasley will be traded

JMillott wrote:

bluethunder0005 wrote:

Krapinsky wrote:Rambis is stubborn as a mule.

Yet you want Nelson as if he's gonna be any better in that category.

Wait, what? Someone is actually for the hiring of a coach that checked out of caring half a decade ago and had fundamental flaws as a coach from day one?

That is just flat out crazy, they might as well have kept Rambis if they are just going to hire Nelson. You can all kiss Randolph good bye if they bring in Nelson, the kid will not play for him again.

That's interesting.

I'm not a Nellie guy, but Randolph played his best minutes under Nellie. They had disagreements, I'm sure, but Randolph was really very young then. I don't think you can draw that conclusion, especially because Randolph IS working hard right now. He's in Mpls shooting at Lifetime every time I'm in there. (Or was, until the lockout.)

JMillott wrote:Sure Kahn has tripped up badly in some cases (Al Jefferson).

How did Kahn trip up with Al Jefferson? He took a terrible defender who was decent in the post that was coming off a major knee injury and flipped him for 2 1st round picks and what became the pieces to let us get AR in the Melo deal(Kosta). I'm not sure how many other guys could talk another fantasy owner into that, let alone another team.

MadLoveSkillz wrote:off topic, how do i find you guys on FB?

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=1 ... 014&ref=ts

As for the topic, I'm quite optimistic actually but I had been optimistic for several years only to see them fail year after year. I wish they finally live up to the hype/optimism but I rather wait before I go into detail.

One thing that I'm really happy about is having Rubio on board and to see that Love has gotten into a great shape apparently.

farmtownte wrote:

JMillott wrote:Sure Kahn has tripped up badly in some cases (Al Jefferson).

How did Kahn trip up with Al Jefferson? He took a terrible defender who was decent in the post that was coming off a major knee injury and flipped him for 2 1st round picks and what became the pieces to let us get AR in the Melo deal(Kosta). I'm not sure how many other guys could talk another fantasy owner into that, let alone another team.

Jefferson may not be a franchise player that doesn't mean he doesn't have value and it certainly doesn't mean the Wolves made out by freeing up the money from Jefferson to sign Darko, Pekovic and the key to getting Randolph (a guy who has done absolutely nothing and whose rookie deal is almost up) was eating Eddy Curry's contract and having Brewer's to send out.

The point is that it was obvious that Al Jefferson rushed back from his knee injury and gutted through the season at far less then 100% in his last year with the Wolves. Dealing him before he was healthy was stupid in my opinion and he showed it by playing excellent basketball from almost exactly two years after the injury averaging 24/11 over Feb/Mar this past year. He has improved as a passer, his defense was better once he was 100% and he has further cut his turnovers.

If you can't see how his trade value would clearly be higher now then it was last summer then I don't know what I can do for you. It sure would've been nice to have that asset around during the draft process when they were shopping the #2 pick.

Keep in mind his last season of being 100% was 08/09 up until the knee injury, he posted a positive net PER at center of +7.1 that may not be franchise player dominance but that is certainly a level of play at center and at that contract that you can build a winner with.

Personally, i'm very happy for Jefferson because inside of a year the Jazz have set him up with two guys who are actually the types of PF and C that make sense next to Jefferson. Favors at PF gives him that athletic rugged big interior defensive big that he has never played with while at C and Kanter should allow Jefferson to opperate against PF's while Kanter gives him space with his shooting range.

I think its laughable that people will just try and lay blame on Jefferson and simply ignore how badly his career has been screwed over by bad timing and playing on bad teams. Had he broke out in Boston during any other season, Paul Pierce would've been healthy as he has been every other year and they make the playoffs. He gets send to Sota for a Hall of Famer only the Wolves don't make the Celtics take their trash in the deal and instead accept the Celtics trash (Telfair, Green, Gomes, etc when they should've insisted on Powe, T.Allen, Rondo, Perk and or sent Jaric or some other trash with KG) then the Wolves proceed to draft Brewer, Love, Rubio, Flynn, Lawson, Ellington over his time there.

Corey Brewer only made sense as the Wolves pick with KG in town. Love was and is a fine pick but if the point was to win quickly Gordon and Lopez might've been better picks at the time, in 09 Kahn reset the clock by dealing Foye and Miller for the #5 and then proceeded to get zero impact for two years out of three top 18 picks in one of the deepest most talented draft classes in recent years.

I've even heard people blame the Jazz season on him when it had nothing to do with him, Deron Williams was going to leave in free agency, they lost Wesley Mathews, Carlos Boozer and basically Memhet Okur for nothing and they were still on the way to the playoffs until Deron hurt his wrist and then was traded.

If not for them trading nothing of value for Jefferson they would've won maybe 20-25 games instead of 39.

JMillott wrote:Dealing him before he was healthy was stupid in my opinion and he showed it by playing excellent basketball from almost exactly two years after the injury averaging 24/11 over Feb/Mar this past year.

And led them to a 7-19 record during those two months...

If you can't see how his trade value would clearly be higher now then it was last summer then I don't know what I can do for you.

Going into a lockout, I doubt many teams would give more than two 1sts for a guy owed $29 million the next two years who hasn't won anywhere he's gone.

Yes, again its Al Jefferson's fault that a team with an injured Devin Harris, washed up Raja Bell, AK47 banged up, Millsap banged up, etc went 7-19. He gets screwed by virtue of having played all 82 games with all the roster turnover his team +/- stats are badly skewed against him.

They played .641% basketball with their intended roster and Al Jefferson was still adjusting to the system, getting back to 100%. I see absolutely no reason to believe that if Deron Williams doesn't hurt his wrist and stays why they wouldn't have been better after Jefferson hit his stride and after they stopped force feeding minutes to Bell that were better served to Miles and Hayward.

If they had they would pushed the Thunder for the division title despite losing Carlos Boozer, Memhet Okur, Wesley Matthews and Kyle Korver while only adding Jefferson, Raja Bell's corpse and Hayward.

So tell me, how exactly is that Al Jefferson's fault in any way shape or form and they didn't get two first round picks for him they got to protected first round picks. I wouldn't be saying a word if those picks weren't lotto protected or if Kahn had better spent the money.

By the way as for the two years at $29 the Grizzlies just extended Zach Randolph did they not? The NBA teams still gave out some of the worst contracts in the league just last summer. Corey Maggette, John Salmons, Stephen Jackson were all traded about a month ago and when the lockout is over more bad contracts will be signed and traded that are far far worse then Al Jefferson's deal.

I fully admit that ideally, Al Jefferson would be making closer to $20-25 over that time but making $29 is hardly outlandish compared to many other contracts around the league. He is also certainly capable of earning that contract if he plays his best basketball and is healthy.