The wolves are going to have to get older.

[Klomp]

They won yesterday without their #1 player. Something we were told repeatedly can't happen as the excuse for all the losses.

Didn't say they can't win. Said it's harder to win.

[Macwolf527]

In order to take advantage of acquiring veteran talent with team friendly contracts, you must develop the younger talent on your team to use in trades. We must also continue to building a team identity so we can determine what type of veteran player is needed to move the needle for your team. As some of these rookies move into contract years, I can see them being moved to bring in older players that fit our needs.

[Jedzz]

They won yesterday without their #1 player. Something we were told repeatedly can't happen as the excuse for all the losses.

Didn't say they can't win. Said it's harder to win.

Which is all we've been saying all along. Just because one player is down doesn't mean the team gives up, doesn't mean they can't win, doesn't mean the team can't adjust and still compete at a high level. Maybe their win percentage drops off a bit, granted. But it simply does not excuse mutliple repeat blowouts. But everytime someone posted a critical thought we are met with the excuse, "when a team loses their #1 player they will lose!...would happen to any team" Sorry, that just doesn't cut it.

Most amazing to me is that this is the same POBO and Coach that had to deal with Towns out most of last season,and also got a good month look last season on how to keep competing without him, which they did do. But this season when Towns goes out, collapse, blowouts, developing the young high draft picks. Priorities...game plans...roster adjustments, desire to win games? All in question.

[AbeVigodaLive]

Ok, I guess this is a good place for a little optimism.

Three players have been better than I expected .. our last three #1 picks. Okogie, Culver, and Edwards all seem to have taken a step forward, and this is the growth from within that good teams need. KAT has actually looked better on defense too, and this may help him be a better team leader.

I know fans get tired of the “wait until next year” mantra we hear about this team every year, but we are hitting a lot of singles now with these three (and Naz, McLaughlin) and maybe Edwards and KAT can become home runs. I don’t want to see us provide value in a trade by including any of them for for an expensive PF to try to be a borderline playoff team this year. I want to see us develop our youth, establish a system, compete, and do all we can to be a consistently strong franchise for the future.

What specifically (or what tangible evidence) about Culver suggests a step forward?

Yes. He's now shooting 59% from the line instead of 46%. And he's rebounding more... But his scoring is down. His assists are down. His TOs are up. And the advanced stats are off-the-chart bad... again.

-4.6 OBPM
-2.4 DBPM
-0.3 VORP
-.007 WS

On further review... Culver's "single" has been changed to an error by the official scorekeeper.


[Note: Meanwhile, Okogie has really only played 3 games. So we can wait for a few more... but thus far, we haven't seen the kind of incremental year-over-year improvement that is so evident in other players around the league. 4 games in to year 3... and he still measures out at slightly below the value of a replacement player.

[shrink]

Everybody seems to have their own personal scapegoat, whether it’s the Saunders, DLo (mine), Culver, etc etc.

Perhaps most of my optimism stems from the lowered expectations I had coming into the season. I had no faith that Okogie could defend against opposing PF’s, but he handled Blake Griffin well. In the first few games I watched (I have missed a few since then), Culver’s defense looked well above average, which is surprising to me for any player his age and he still needs to fill out. Last season, Okogie and Culver seem to need to be staggered offensively because they were so bad, and this season they may need to be staggered because their defense are valuable, particularly on this team with DLo (low effort, athleticism) and Beasley (constantly breaks the system to play hero ball). As for Edwards, and any rookie, I expect them to bad, and have learned to look for flashes. Edwards already has shown several flashes, and more importantly to me, he hasn’t been terrible in the areas I worried most about. His attitude seems fine, he doesn’t seem Wiggins-like in his effort, and he seems to already be locking into a team concept.

We’re a young team, and we need some of our young players to develop into legitimate NBA starters. They may not be there yet, but I am far more comfortable with all three of these picks than I was last year at this time.

[Klomp]

They won yesterday without their #1 player. Something we were told repeatedly can't happen as the excuse for all the losses.

Didn't say they can't win. Said it's harder to win.

Which is all we've been saying all along. Just because one player is down doesn't mean the team gives up, doesn't mean they can't win, doesn't mean the team can't adjust and still compete at a high level. Maybe their win percentage drops off a bit, granted. But it simply does not excuse mutliple repeat blowouts. But everytime someone posted a critical thought we are met with the excuse, "when a team loses their #1 player they will lose!...would happen to any team" Sorry, that just doesn't cut it.

Most amazing to me is that this is the same POBO and Coach that had to deal with Towns out most of last season,and also got a good month look last season on how to keep competing without him, which they did do. But this season when Towns goes out, collapse, blowouts, developing the young high draft picks. Priorities...game plans...roster adjustments, desire to win games? All in question.

No, but they also shouldn't be held to the same standard as a 100% healthy roster.

[Jedzz]

Didn't say they can't win. Said it's harder to win.

Which is all we've been saying all along. Just because one player is down doesn't mean the team gives up, doesn't mean they can't win, doesn't mean the team can't adjust and still compete at a high level. Maybe their win percentage drops off a bit, granted. But it simply does not excuse mutliple repeat blowouts. But everytime someone posted a critical thought we are met with the excuse, "when a team loses their #1 player they will lose!...would happen to any team" Sorry, that just doesn't cut it.

Most amazing to me is that this is the same POBO and Coach that had to deal with Towns out most of last season,and also got a good month look last season on how to keep competing without him, which they did do. But this season when Towns goes out, collapse, blowouts, developing the young high draft picks. Priorities...game plans...roster adjustments, desire to win games? All in question.

No, but they also shouldn't be held to the same standard as a 100% healthy roster.

How is hoping your team can be flexible enough to not get blown out game after game be the same as expecting them to be at the same standard as 100% healthy as planned.

Your answers, like many were, were responses as if people were saying the team should only have 1 loss right now. Which obviously was never the case. They wanted the tanking like blowouts to stop. They wanted to see the team adjust it's failing ways faster, with some of the things I listed prior. Adjust your priorities for players minutes as needed, maybe bring in another player temporarily (10 day?). They also kept that last spot open (likely for trade options I guess), although any trades you would hope would be planned this year for sending out more then one player to bring back one better vet so I've been critical of holding this spot open. But even if you filled up their last open spot and got in a pinch they have players they can cut on a dime that they don't pay squat for. So they have plenty of ways to add players to get through a 6 or whatever game drought of KAT. But nope. The already too small roster is supposed to just carry that span without him.

During this stretch of losses:
- we regularly saw guards of questionable defensive abilities or small SFs ending up on centers and large PFs regularly. Undersized roster, poor switching preparedness, players didn't know where they should be
- for the first couple blowouts we saw a lot of Dlo/Rubio combinations with Edwards/Culver and those young players ending up on ball too much. We saw utilization of Beaslet/Dlo in the offense collapse as they seemingly wanted to focus on development already.
- we saw them focus on individuals to try to get them involved one per game. Once was Layman, the next was Juancho. Just as they had already done for Edwards,Culver. But these were temporary one game experimental pushes, not really intended to extend into following games with any kind of similar focused use.
- we saw experiments then start separating Dlo / Rubio and then a couple games later they flipped what they had working for Rubio over to Dlo in the middle fo the game - changing their rotation as if testing first two quarters compared to last two quarters.

This was experimental trial and error from a team that should know their players better than we do. But it seems altogether easier for many of us to see what works, what doesn't, and what they haven't tried yet. Calinks yesterday decribed each game and events in them as data points that are, I guess, getting analyzed. My god man, how long does it take to figure these things out? These are professional sports people. Recognize it on the fly and adjust.

We also have seen them completely go away from last years strict scheme culture change now. 30 threes a game is now seemingly the target. They don't care how many 2s are shot anymore at all. They aren't getting these players into the right spots on the court for rebounds anymore. Remember all that talk last season? It's all gone right now.

There are large reasons I see that this team, though suggesting they analyze everything and plan it out aren't actually displaying that they are very good at that, and also seem to have a very short memory of their over arching plans and claims about what they see successful basketball actually being.

It sure seems like they proved this offseason they didn't know what they had already, and they didn't know how to add new players together that could work together. Once they selected players, they didn't let the players know who would lead this team and who the developing players were or any kind of pecking order. Which is understandable after seeing all the trial and error. They were not prepared to. This offseason obviously wasn't normal, but not many teams look to be in this bad of dissarray as they have shown. Does one player missing cause all of this? A player that was iffy all last season, they weren't prepared for this?

Aside from moving Wiggins deal out, what am I or we supposed to take as major / minor positives about this new group who's starting to become old already? I wish someone would help us see something. But all we get are the same old stories. This team is too young, everyone should adjust their expectations as this team is still just beginning it's rebuild and will waste more seasons chasing lotto picks. Now picks we don't even own. These are decades old stories and this specifc group has more moves already made then most prior front offices.