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I have always wondered why the Wolves try to match up with the other team.

Example: The game against the Magic. Ollie starts instead of Collins, to match up to the samll lineup the Magic put out, so that Al isn't chasing Lewis around the 3 point line.

It seems a if the Wolves have always done this, even when KG was here.

Against the Magic K Love 16 points 12 rebounds( 8 Offensive ) and a block, is it really that hard for Wittman to start him

make Rashard Lewis play defense against Kevin Love in the post, wear Rashard out down there so his legs can't get lift in his 3 point shots, and you take him completely out of the game.

Its so hard to watch this team play when they play like they did last night.

I don't know if it is loyalty or stupidity, or even both, but Glen Taylor has shown enough of it to Wittman, and McHale, it should not take this long to fire these guys.

Wittman as the Twolves head coach is 38-103, it is rediculous to let a guy with that crappy of a record coach a team

Hey, it's better than when he only had 37 wins...

I agree. Much rather have Love in there to help rebound against Dwight than Gomes matchup against Rashard. He didn't stop him anyways and didn't score either. Neither Love nor Gomes is as athletic as Rashard, but at least Love has a rebounding and strength advantage.

RD&KG2 wrote:Hey, it's better than when he only had 37 wins...

great point, i guess we have to be happy about something

I agree, too. If you are constantly trying to match your opponent, then you will be hardpressed to win more than 25 games in the NBA. This team difinitely needs more talent to compete but we should be able to take advantage of more matchups than we do. We have two good PFs and three good 3pt shooters and have a lot of young legs. We ought to be able to make the other team work harder on defense than we do.

Gomes defense is way overrated. He can't guard anyone faster or bigger than him. It's quite frusterating. It might be alright if he had some help, but that prayer goes unanswered on this team.

This irritates me as well. We are always the team "matching up", never the team forcing the matchup. Love could pound the crap outta Lewis and his stick self.

In any event, how is a young team supposed to gain continuity if you're ALWAYS matching up with other teams all the time. I'd gladly sacrifice a few W's for that...oh wait, these games are ending in losses ANYWAY, so what is the point? Play a consistent lineup and let these guys figure it out, geez....

Devilzsidewalk wrote:I agree. Much rather have Love in there to help rebound against Dwight than Gomes matchup against Rashard. He didn't stop him anyways and didn't score either. Neither Love nor Gomes is as athletic as Rashard, but at least Love has a rebounding and strength advantage.

this is what i was thinking, i don't know if Love was only playing in the second half or what, but did Wittman not see the 8 OFFENSIVE REBOUNDS Love had

If your Big Guy (BIG AL) is getting Killed in the post, you would think the coach would worry about helping him instead of worrying about a guy beating us with 3's

i don't know about the rest of the Wolves population, or intelegent basketball minds but i would rather get beat by 3s, than beat in the post. Especially with the League Leader in Points in the Paint on your team. We are a team built around a guy who scores in the post, if he is getting beat you gotta help him out or we are prett much garunteed an L

Gomes is looking like more the piece we should be looking to trade rather than Miller. Gomes could be a solid bench guy on a contender, but with us he is simply too small to play effective pf and not fast enough to really be a 3. He should not be starting period. I like him as a person, but he is not a piece to build around.

just go with:

Al / Love
Love / Smith
Miller / Gomes
McCants / Carney
Foye / Telfair

and see where it takes us. If anything we increase Smith and McCants trade value.

The amazing thing about Wittmans record (38-103) is not how poor it is, but that he was able to coash over 140 games for us. That's almost 2 full seasons full of it.

we fired a much better coach who had us at a .5 record.

I said it back there, and repeat it now: firing casey was the biggest mistake of mchale in recent years. casey's team had exactly what we are missing now: identity, intensity, defense, attitude. wittman is a joke.

And to the OP: bad coached teams do that. it shows lack of trust in players. it sends the wrong message to the team. it's so bad in many ways.

prefuse73 wrote:Gomes is looking like more the piece we should be looking to trade rather than Miller. Gomes could be a solid bench guy on a contender, but with us he is simply too small to play effective pf and not fast enough to really be a 3. He should not be starting period. I like him as a person, but he is not a piece to build around.

just go with:

Al / Love
Love / Smith
Miller / Gomes
McCants / Carney
Foye / Telfair

and see where it takes us. If anything we increase Smith and McCants trade value.

Gomes is ok I think - anyway, I think he is a much better option than Smith. I agree he should play only the three (except for rare match-ups), but Smith is always overmatched on defense at the 4. Plus for some reason Whitman seems to think he should play at center half the time. I still can't believe that both of those guys are still on the team. It would be nice if this team had one guy who was actually good at his position and played there.

gjn19 wrote: I said it back there, and repeat it now: firing casey was the biggest mistake of mchale in recent years. casey's team had exactly what we are missing now: identity, intensity, defense, attitude. wittman is a joke.

Those are some big statements. McHale's made some pretty big mistakes, and the team with "identity, intensity and defense" had Ricky Davis, Mark Blount, and Mike James on it.

That said, I agree with you in principle. While Casey was rotten with match-ups, and assigning minutes, I think he did a decent job motivating at least some of the players to improve their defense, which is our greatest failing right now. I would love to see him return as an assistant, with younger, more impressionable players to teach. I think Davis/Blount/James wouldn't listen to anyone.

Yep. Casey wasn't perfect, but with him I felt like he could get better. He was a rookie head coach when he came here. I think he just needed to learn how to manage the team better. He did have us playing tough defense and we were in the playoffs and sitting at .500 with that crap team. I think Casey would have gotten the pups to play hard and hopefully by now, he would have some of his offensive issues worked out. I really wish we could have kept Casey and I wish Eddie G. would have gotten himself right and stayed on. Al at the 4 and Eddie G. at the 5 would have been awesome. Eddie could have been so damn good if he got focused and dedicated himself to basketball.

plus that .500 record was skewed negatively because we lost some games because of some bad luck (KG being ejected and suspended for one game, Ricky D. leaving the bench and being suspended too. losing to DET in double-OT) prior to Casey's sacking.

I'd love to give him a 2nd chance here as a head coach now.

gjn19 wrote:I said it back there, and repeat it now: firing casey was the biggest mistake of mchale in recent years. casey's team had exactly what we are missing now: identity, intensity, defense, attitude. wittman is a joke.

Agreed. Firing Casey was the worst move since Roy/Foye.

I like Casey, and i agree that he is better than Witt, hell he might be one of the best guys we could get to grow with this team. But i think the reason we like Casey so much is that anything is better than WItt at this point. I do think we would be better off with him tho.

"Casey come back..........you can blame it all, on, me"

and that's my biggest beef with the wolves FO. it's all cuddling and good friends.

flip could stay that long despite 8 straight first round exits. he got us into the playoffs, and he was a good coach...i'm not denying that. but in another organisation, flip would have been gone 4-5 years earlier, because of missing improvements.

in comes casey, not a guy to cuddle, but determined to put some sense into players, and he gets fired, even though the team overperformes. in comes wittman, the team is worse than ever, without any positive thing about it, but because he's good friends with mchale and taylor, he gets the benefits of the doubt time and time again.

it's all over in the FO. people keep their jobs because they know each other, they're soft. that's not how a successfull franchise is run. taylor and mchale are not tough enough for this. the problem with this franchise is right there...and it's no surprise it goes right through to the court.

of course, casey is no pop or jackson, but this guy had it. time to throw the axe at some people in the FO. take responsibility.