Post#984 » by winforlose » Wed Oct 12, 2022 5:56 pm
Copies from Canis user Monty Wildhack
“ Portion of an ESPN article on the Wolves and the Gobert trade is below, cannot wait to see the full team in action!
Part of the rationale was the well-established skills Gobert, a four-time All-NBA selection, brings himself. But what might have sold the Wolves was what their in-depth analysis predicted he will do for new teammates Karl-Anthony Towns, Anthony Edwards and D'Angelo Russell.
Finch, who has developed a reputation for being a tactician in his first two years as coach, spent hours wearing out some dry erase markers on the whiteboard going over how he saw it all would fit.
His assistant coaches and the basketball operations staff discussed where the Wolves would be vulnerable, how certain teams could exploit them and what all the downsides were looking for a reason to say no.
They couldn't find one, especially when they rationalized that they didn't have to give up any of their top four players: Towns, Edwards, Russell and McDaniels.
"It's a very small list of elite players," said Minnesota president of basketball operations Tim Connelly, who signed a five-year, 40 million contract with the franchise in May.
"When you're able to add a difference-maker and not trade a guy in a similar tier, it's so rare ... we didn't think we'd get a call like this for a long, long, long time."
Sachin Gupta, the team's vice president of basketball operations and one of the league's most respected analytics specialists, poured forth statistics on what adding Gobert would mean.
One potential boon for Towns, who only took five 3-pointers per game last season but shot over 40% on them: Could playing with Gobert increase his attempts by 50% or even double them?
"We faced so much doubling in the post with KAT last year," Finch said. "There were guys that the other teams didn't even guard honestly."
Towns also frequently dealt with foul trouble guarding opposing centers. Gobert can ease that and if they split time playing center, it would open new opportunities.
They look at how having Gobert to protect the rim might enable Edwards, who was 11th in the league in steals last season, to be even more aggressive.
They looked at Russell, who hasn't played in Minnesota with the kind of screen-setter that Gobert is and the projections on their pairing in that play looked tasty on the spreadsheets.
The general idea was to keep Towns and Edwards together all the time -- they were the heart of an offense developed last season that was No. 1 in the league after Jan. 1 -- and then have Gobert and Russell out there together as much as possible, ensuring 48 minutes of firepower if the groups were staggered correctly.”
We won't see another trade like this for a long, long time.
