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I think the Spurs were the worst team to play after a double game. The announcers said they were among the league leaders in fast break points. Another condolence point would be that last year's record was terrible on double games.
Finch needs to bench Towns and put Naz in when Towns goes stupid mode. Terrible passes, shots, and defense.
Gobert was alright. He still needs to get better acclimated to playing with Towns.
Edwards. He didn't really stand out. He might have taken one or two bad shots, but his shot selection wasn't as bad as it typically is.
Russell. Some quarters you love him, some quarters you hate him. I think his terrible shot selection in the first quarter led to the terrible team effort in the first half.
McDaniels. He seems decent some games, but I feel we will be kicking ourselves later on for not including him in the Gobert trade. We would have really used a hustling Vando or smart Bev tonight.
Reid looked pretty good when Finch eventually took out Towns.
Nowell looked like a great trade check come the deadline. I would trade him and Reid or McDaniels for a savvy back-up point guard.
Finch needs to bench Towns when he starts going terrible mode.

I watched the first half on the DVR and then skipped through the second half in fast forward after the lead ballooned in the third. My thought are that we only showed up for two quarters, and even then we didn’t play our game. We were sloppy with the ball, weak on the glass, lazy in transition, and just didn’t seem to care about winning. This was an ugly loss, and it is a loss that they MUST learn from.

Trade Towns.

How did JMAC play in the second half? I was skipping through and missed a lot.

Reminds me of the Ryan Saunders team just with more talent and without DLo playing like **** on purpose.

We can't keep carrying Ant shooting like **** - I have no idea what to do, but I sincerely hope Finch does

WolfAddict wrote:We can't keep carrying Ant shooting like **** - I have no idea what to do, but I sincerely hope Finch does

The issue wasn’t shooting. We played no transition defense in the first half. Down 10 going into the 3rd with a 15-2 transition disparity. We turned the ball over 7 times to their 4, and took 8 less shots. We came out flat with zero interest in playing NBA basketball. Then in the third we just quit. Maybe it was the back to back, maybe it is over confidence, maybe it is lack of leadership. Whatever it is, this isn’t simply clunkyness. Dlo not fighting through screens, Ant and KAT not rotating to shooters, lack of box out and stupid positioning following long shots.

I know we are better than this. I believe we will get it together. But the saddest part is the Wolves are robbing me of my joy. I was so hyped for this, and they don’t seem to be. Two ugly wins and two ugly losses all against non playoff teams. It hurts when I care more about them winning then they do. It just hurts.

It bothers me that people will look at the box score and think Towns and D'Lo weren't horrendous. Edwards knows those 2 can't lead, and tries to take control, but he's in way over his head, and it's just making things worse.

Mental Midgets

The biggest things I see are poor effort on D and no ball movement on O.

We look very low IQ. No system at all.

thinktank wrote:The biggest things I see are poor effort on D and no ball movement on O.

We look very low IQ. No system at all.

This. Long term we need more shooting. McDaniels has to become more of a floor spacer. But the bigger problems are IQ on both ends and effort on D.

Probably can’t run two different defensive systems.

jpatrick wrote:

thinktank wrote:The biggest things I see are poor effort on D and no ball movement on O.

We look very low IQ. No system at all.

This. Long term we need more shooting. McDaniels has to become more of a floor spacer. But the bigger problems are IQ on both ends and effort on D.

The defense looks super weak. PB's defensive leadership was bigger than I thought. Gobert might be more singularly impactful, but the incumbent "big 3" seem content to write it off like defense is Gobert's thing, and his role is to take care of the defense to free them up so they can focus on offense. With PBev, it felt like he was able to get the whole team to buy in.

https://www.nba.com/stats/players/hustle?sort=DEFLECTIONS&dir=1

We need more guys at the top of that list.