Wolves at Celtics

[_AIJ_]

Gobert defensively tonight was freaking garbage

[IceManBK1]

Why don't we let our 2 best scorers/backcourt take 20+ shots like other teams do. Somehow Tatum and brown always gets 20+ shots each. Same on Blazers with Lillard and Simons. Both dlo and Edwards should take the bulk of the shots when they're playing well.

[shrink]

Ugh! We win three in a row, and it gets our whiners to stop whining. But lose two, to top teams with MVP candidates, and suddenly they think it’s time to post and post, preaching the end of the world. Fire Finch! Gobert kills us! The trade will set us back for years! Sometimes I wonder if the whiners hope for losses, so they can complain?

There are dozens of fan sites to make emotional, extreme takes. This is RealGM, and I guarantee you, no GM is spouting “end of the world” talk after two losses in December.

[Torben]

Apparently it's the time for hopeless optimists to write negatively about the so-called whiners. Seems logical as there are few positive things to write about this team.

[shrink]

If you want optimism,

1. I thought DLo had a good game. After a couple rough shooting games earlier this week, he looked much more competent and efficient lately. Even better, he seems to be making more of an effort defensively.

2. It also looks like Gobert is working hard underneath, even when he doesn’t get the ball. And MIN seems to be doing better getting him the ball.

3. The third thing I liked was Jaden McDaniels, who is looking more confident putting the ball on the floor, and seemed to stay out of foul trouble.

Look, BOS is a championship level team, which has been really strong defensively, and we played them at home, in one of the hardest arenas to compete. I’m disappointed we lost, but we hung with this team for three quarters, and that was without Towns (and SloMo, and Prince, and MacL..).

It’s not all doom and gloom, but if you read the thread, 90% of the posts are negative. That doesn’t seem like a “real” review of the game.

[shrink]

Hey, if you can watch now, check out quiet Jaden McDaniels doing TV

(EDIT: Ok, he’s off. I haven’t seen him do many interviews,and he did much better than I expected! I know he is really quiet and usually says nothing to try to get interviews over as quickly as possible, but he did ok answering questions after a loss. Although you can tell he needs work - he was too close to the microphone, that you could hear him breathing into it! Give him some pointers, Ant!)

[jpatrick]

Shrink, I’ve always been an optimist. But as constructed, we are a very mediocre NBA team. Now, that’s generally okay because most of thr NBA is and that’s better than we’ve been most of our existence. My problem is the trade left us no real options to get better outside of some miraculous steal of a late draft pick. It’s hope that keeps fans being fans.

Now you can blast us.l for being down on the team. You can always see a bright side. But that was an awful trade that set the franchise back. I do believe Finch will be gone if he doesn’t get us past the first round of the playoffs, which is shocking considering how highly thought of he was just six months ago.

[life_saver]

It would be foolish to fire Finch..Finch isn't perfect but he is still one of the better coaches in the league. In addition to figuring out how to incorporate Gobert with the team, the team is also dealing with lot of injuries right now and it just hasn't been ideal situation for Finch ..if they can stay close to 0.500 until KAT returns, that would be good.

[life_saver]

There are dozens of fan sites to make emotional, extreme takes. This is RealGM, and I guarantee you, no GM is spouting “end of the world” talk after two losses in December.

I was taking a peek at the Celtics board during first half...you'd think they are a lottery team going by some of the comments lol. Almost fan of every team on realgm thinks that their coach isn't good, sucks at rotations etc.

[shrink]

I’m disappointed we lost, but we hung with this team for three quarters, and that was without ..

Sorry guys! I just realized I’m THIS guy! Even I hate THIS guy!

Watch on YouTube

[moss_is_1]

Shrink, I’ve always been an optimist. But as constructed, we are a very mediocre NBA team. Now, that’s generally okay because most of thr NBA is and that’s better than we’ve been most of our existence. My problem is the trade left us no real options to get better outside of some miraculous steal of a late draft pick. It’s hope that keeps fans being fans.

Now you can blast us.l for being down on the team. You can always see a bright side. But that was an awful trade that set the franchise back. I do believe Finch will be gone if he doesn’t get us past the first round of the playoffs, which is shocking considering how highly thought of he was just six months ago.

I mean, wouldn't this team look a lot better with its best player, and 3 key bench players healthy? We are having to rely on guys like Nowell, Forbes, and Rivers to be major contributors.

[life_saver]

This..stop trying to do too much with Gobert on offense

Read on Twitter

[Calinks]

I think people have plenty right and reasons to be upset and worried. The trade has not been great so far and we were sold on this being a homerun deal. KAT and Rudy has been a very difficult fit and the team has not figured out how to come together. That said, we are still a .500 ish team which isn't horrible and there is still a chance we can figure something out and be more competitive by the end of the season.

I'm worried and disappointed too but I'm not thinking we are totally screwed and it's all over. I have to think the front office and Finch see something with this team and they will improve. If not, we will have a ridiculously disappointing season and have to figure things out from there. A terrible place but still not the end all be all.

[shrink]

I can understand people being frustrated with the Gobert trade, and the number of picks we gave up to make it happen.

For me though, I see the trade as a longterm move, and I probably won’t be giving it a final grade until halfway through the NEXT season! We should have expected that inserting Rudy Gobert would take a long time to work together. Mike Conley said it took him a year to get used to playing with Gobert, and Donovan Mitchell never really learned how to run an effective pick-and-roll with him. A slow start the first month from DLO and Ant should be expected - the way Towns was able to feed Rudy shouldn’t have been expected, especially considering KAT missing the preseason, Rudy exhausted from Euroball, and now, KAT’s calf strain.

The other thing I would point out, and something Dane has mentioned .. what other move did you expect MIN to do? Last year’s team was a happy experiment in outperforming expectations, but it didn’t have much of a ceiling. MEM in the playoffs showed how we were truly not built well. We needed help defensively (not our gimmick high wall teams learned to break) and we needed rebounding, But how could MIN fix it? Star free agents aren’t going to walk in the front door, and these stars might refuse a trade to Minnesota (or at least let it be known they wanted out). And those guys are almost never available anyway. Gobert was available, wanted to be here, and is one of the best players in the NBA at those skills.

Now, adding Gobert required a big shake up. We removed three guys in our rotation, who provided leadership and grittiness. We had to go back to a standard defense, and to play it with Gobert back there rather than Towns. We added a lot of new vets. KAT had to play less C, McDaniels less PF, and Ant less SF. It’s a seismic change for everyone involved. Others may disagree, but personally, I want to give it plenty of time before I say it can’t work.

[younggunsmn]

I can understand people being frustrated with the Gobert trade, and the number of picks we gave up to make it happen.

For me though, I see the trade as a longterm move, and I probably won’t be giving it a final grade until halfway through the NEXT season! We should have expected that inserting Rudy Gobert would take a long time to work together. Mike Conley said it took him a year to get used to playing with Gobert, and Donovan Mitchell never really learned how to run an effective pick-and-roll with him. A slow start the first month from DLO and Ant should be expected - the way Towns was able to feed Rudy shouldn’t have been expected, especially considering KAT missing the preseason, Rudy exhausted from Euroball, and now, KAT’s calf strain.

The other thing I would point out, and something Dane has mentioned .. what other move did you expect MIN to do? Last year’s team was a happy experiment in outperforming expectations, but it didn’t have much of a ceiling. MEM in the playoffs showed how we were truly not built well. We needed help defensively (not our gimmick high wall teams learned to break) and we needed rebounding, But how could MIN fix it? Star free agents aren’t going to walk in the front door, and these stars might refuse a trade to Minnesota (or at least let it be known they wanted out). And those guys are almost never available anyway. Gobert was available, wanted to be here, and is one of the best players in the NBA at those skills.

Now, adding Gobert required a big shake up. We removed three guys in our rotation, who provided leadership and grittiness. We had to go back to a standard defense, and to play it with Gobert back there rather than Towns. We added a lot of new vets. KAT had to play less C, McDaniels less PF, and Ant less SF. It’s a seismic change for everyone involved. Others may disagree, but personally, I want to give it plenty of time before I say it can’t work.

~40% of the way through the season, it's an utter epic disaster of a trade.
I didn't like it at the time, but in hindsight I would not have traded Beasley Beverly and Vando alone without any picks or Kessler attached. I would not have traded Kessler straight up. We've got a 40 milion $ center who has no business doing anything but catching lobs and setting screens on offense. When he catches the ball its like chum in the water as the other team salivates at the easy prey taking the ball away from him. Stone hands much worse than advertised. Shotblocking extremely overrated.
Cannot run a decent pick and roll with any of our primary ballhandlers and does nothing but draw another defender into the paint while we have one of the worst 3 point shooting teams in the league.

We've been forced back into the scrambling high wall scheme by our ineffectual perimeter defenders and Gobert does not fit this well AT ALL. This trade was the basketball equivalent of adding an expensive outdoor pool to your home in northern Alaska.
Now we've somehow got to find a way to turn it into a hockey rink.

[younggunsmn]

Watching Boston, it was interesting to see what a team filled with 2-way players can do.
They were missing their defensive anchor and got away with guarding Rudy with a small (because Rudy isn't any better than Vando at anything but catching lobs). Naz did not have a very good game, was out of position a lot defensively.
For a while we hung in there because Ant/D-Lo got hot and Boston could not make an open 3.
When things regressed to the mean in the 4th the game got blown open quickly.
Way too many long jump shots in the 4th quarter.

They did a great job bottling Ant up in the halfcourt and we really just didnt have enough bullets tonight to counter offensively.
Way too many offensive rebounds given up, part of that is hustle and part is a result of the reversion to the scrambling defensive scheme. The halfcourt D continues to look better, but the live ball turnovers are killers.
Rudy had a particularly egregious one above the arc where he couldnt execute a simple handoff.

The right corner was wide open again tonight this is probably a strategy teams gameplan to exploit our scheme.

Boston has not been playing particularly well lately, and this game was there for the taking.
It's frustrating because this is the kind of game we should win if we want to be a top-6 team in the conference, like expectations were pre-season. Kat or no Kat.

[the_urre14]

Would you get rid of Finch if there was a possibility to bring Quin Snyder? I´m still with Finch, bu if there´s a possibility to bring Snyder, I wouldn´t even wait for a second.

[minimus]

Watching Boston, it was interesting to see what a team filled with 2-way players can do.

Another aspect is that BOS have no "dedicated" PG. Smart at the beginning of his career was a reckless passer who drove BOS fans crazy. But he grew into solid passer, they also brought here White and Brogdon both are big comboguard with high IQ and above average passing game.

IMO MIN doesn't have enough passers to make offense work. Because our "static" spacing is not actually that bad: Gobert, Edwards and Towns can pressure the rim, providing us with vertical spacing. The biggest problem is passing and basketball IQ. This is main factor now to transform our static spacing into "dynamic" spacing, which exactly the main task for our coaching staff this season: implement flow offense where passing, screening, slashing and shooting games all elevate each other. Let's say we are able to feed consistently Gobert in the post, it will open up corner threes. You get it.

Right now we are missing Towns, JMac and KA, who are our best passers after DLo. We have seen a big improvement from Towns and Edwards as passers and decision makers, hopefully MCD can improve as well.

Sure we could absolutely use a shooter like Beasley or Huerter, but such players are system guys, who perform well when team offense is working. Huerter was near as good in ATL as C&S shooter, this season his handoff game with Sabas is key for SAC offense.

[_AIJ_]

Nowell has to go man. Hes not that guy at all. Dude stops the ball everytime!

[urinesane]

Liked the effort, stuck with them punch for punch for 3 quarters and the 4th got away from them.

Not a bad game on the road against a very good team, but it is tough to see how clunky they tend to look with Gobert on the floor. Hope they figure out something (it really seems to limit Edwards on offense).