10/27 Sacramento @ Minnesota 7:00

[C.lupus]

I know but those city folk are wimpy.

[mnWI]

The people that did show up did their best to provide a solid atmosphere, but the number of people physically there reminded me of when I coached in Anaheim and went to Clipper games a lot.

[Foye]

The people that did show up did their best to provide a solid atmosphere, but the number of people physically there reminded me of when I coached in Anaheim and went to Clipper games a lot.

Have you seen Clipper Darrell? [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-0cuLZ0m18&feature=related[/youtube]

I love that guy.

[mnWI]

The people that did show up did their best to provide a solid atmosphere, but the number of people physically there reminded me of when I coached in Anaheim and went to Clipper games a lot.

Have you seen Clipper Darrell? [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-0cuLZ0m18&feature=related[/youtube]

I love that guy.

I know Clipper Darrell When I coached in Anaheim we were the Clippers affiliate, and he came to a couple games. Never seen 800 people so fired up, and it was all because of him.

[Calinks]

I'm kinda confused by the fact the Timberwolves can not fill the stamps in their first home game of the season. That's ridiculous. Here in Germany almost every 1st league soccer match is sold out even if it's only against weak opponents and they don't manage to get the lower level seats occupied. You can't tell me that you don't find 20,000 dudes in Minnesota to go to the 1st Timberwolves game of the season.

LOL. It's not the weather at all. People would have sold out the Target Field if it was the twins. The fact of the matter is, Minnesota doesn't give a crap about NBA basketball. The wolves are way down the totem. Vikings, Twins, Wild, Gophers Hockey, Gophers Football, Gophers Basketball, Probably the mother effin Saints, all matter more than the wolves. People don't care. When the wolves turn into a great team then the bandwagoners will show up.

[Klomp]

We might pass Gopher football though...

[urinesane]

LOL. It's not the weather at all. People would have sold out the Target Field if it was the twins. The fact of the matter is, Minnesota doesn't give a crap about NBA basketball. The wolves are way down the totem. Vikings, Twins, Wild, Gophers Hockey, Gophers Football, Gophers Basketball, Probably the mother effin Saints, all matter more than the wolves. People don't care. When the wolves turn into a great team then the bandwagoners will show up.

The truth is they just don't like losing teams. Honestly if the Twins were mid 90's bad and didn't have Target Field, nobody would go to games. Same with the Wild, most of the popularity there was due to hockey being back and the Xcel Center.

Put a winning team back on the court and the fans will show up. The problem is, casual fans have no clue how much the team has changed in the offseason, so they don't really want to watch what they think is still a 15 win team.

[Vindicater]

OK, I just went back and read a few pages I missed while I was sleeping. Some of you guys need to lighten up or you are going to blow a gasket by Christmas. This was game #1 for crying out loud. There are still 81 games to go.

This is the youngest team in the NBA. Two thirds of the players are new. Rambis' offense is not easy to learn. The players need to learn the system, learn how to play with each other, and learn what it takes to win consistently in the NBA. There are going to be a lot of WTF moments this year and this team is going to lose 2 games for every one they win. Anyone who doesn't know this is deluding themselves.

Yes, they lost the game, they gave up 117 points, and Rambis had some questionable rotations (particularly at the end). They also had some very postive moments and they scored 116, despite having all the new players. This team should be much better the second half of the season when Flynn and Webster are back and Beasley, Johnson, and Pekovic get more comfortable with the playing style.

Maybe Rambis should take some accountability for the teams inability to play fundamental defense as well as his own horsecrap game management skills! Then stop trying to be Phil Jackson with his %@#@#$% mind game tactics ... he's 2nd year coach trying to act like he's the Zen master. HE might be the one with the ego problem

+1

I came on just to write something like this. If Rambis is seriouslly benching Love to prove a point it is not going to work. He does not have the reputation OR record to pull that crap.

If Phil Jackson, Larry Brown or Greg Popovich were doing it then maybe it would have some effect, then again if one of those three coaches was on the bench against Sacremento we would have won by 10+ points

[Krapinsky]

OK, I just went back and read a few pages I missed while I was sleeping. Some of you guys need to lighten up or you are going to blow a gasket by Christmas. This was game #1 for crying out loud. There are still 81 games to go.

This is the youngest team in the NBA. Two thirds of the players are new. Rambis' offense is not easy to learn. The players need to learn the system, learn how to play with each other, and learn what it takes to win consistently in the NBA. There are going to be a lot of WTF moments this year and this team is going to lose 2 games for every one they win. Anyone who doesn't know this is deluding themselves.

Yes, they lost the game, they gave up 117 points, and Rambis had some questionable rotations (particularly at the end). They also had some very postive moments and they scored 116, despite having all the new players. This team should be much better the second half of the season when Flynn and Webster are back and Beasley, Johnson, and Pekovic get more comfortable with the playing style.

Maybe Rambis should take some accountability for the teams inability to play fundamental defense as well as his own horsecrap game management skills! Then stop trying to be Phil Jackson with his %@#@#$% mind game tactics ... he's 2nd year coach trying to act like he's the Zen master. HE might be the one with the ego problem

+1

I came on just to write something like this. If Rambis is seriouslly benching Love to prove a point it is not going to work. He does not have the reputation OR record to pull that crap.

If Phil Jackson, Larry Brown or Greg Popovich were doing it then maybe it would have some effect, then again if one of those three coaches was on the bench against Sacremento we would have won by 10+ points

Huh? It's not Kobe, Tim Duncan, or Allen Iverson we're talking about. It's Kevin Love. While Love might be "arguably" our best player, that is not saying much right now. If Love is playing terrible I want him benched. WHile last night I thought he should have been given a stint in the 4th quarter to see if he had regained his composure, this isn't as big of a deal as many are making it out to be.

[Vindicater]

Huh? It's not Kobe, Tim Duncan, or Allen Iverson we're talking about. It's Kevin Love. While Love might be "arguably" our best player, that is not saying much right now. If Love is playing terrible I want him benched. WHile last night I thought he should have been given a stint in the 4th quarter to see if he had regained his composure, this isn't as big of a deal as many are making it out to be.

It is just not last night though, Rambis continually made bad judgement calls last year on when to bring players in.

I agree that Kevin Love was not playing well last night, guess what? Neither was Derrick Rose for Chicago, I did'nt see him getting benched? You know why? You play your best players, particularly when they are young and need to learn how to play through bad patches.

Kurt Rambis basically gave the game away last night. We were constantly getting killed on the offensive glass and our best rebounder (by a mile) was kept on the bench while his replacement got outrebounded constantly but because he was "scrappy" he gets to stay in?

Tolliver is a good player and a great energy guy. He is not the guy you keep in to win a game though. But hey, Kevin Love and the boys learnt a lesson right? Too bad it came in a loss.

A loss which I think sets them further back in their development (due to development being linked with confidence) then the lesson Guru Rambis is trying to teach.

[AQuintus]

I was reading Rube Chat a little earlier, and I saw someone complaining about the offensive rebounds that Tolliver gave up, so I looked at the play-by-play to see how bad it actually was.

The team gave up a total of 14 offensive rebounds. 9 of them were when Tolliver was in the game for a total of 7 points.

Edit:

Kurt Rambis basically gave the game away last night. We were constantly getting killed on the offensive glass and our best rebounder (by a mile) was kept on the bench while his replacement got outrebounded constantly but because he was "scrappy" he gets to stay in?

Tolliver was a +6 and Love was a -2 for the game. Who's to say that if he had put Love in the team wouldn't have lost by even more than 1?

[Krapinsky]

Huh? It's not Kobe, Tim Duncan, or Allen Iverson we're talking about. It's Kevin Love. While Love might be "arguably" our best player, that is not saying much right now. If Love is playing terrible I want him benched. WHile last night I thought he should have been given a stint in the 4th quarter to see if he had regained his composure, this isn't as big of a deal as many are making it out to be.

It is just not last night though, Rambis continually made bad judgement calls last year on when to bring players in.

I agree that Kevin Love was not playing well last night, guess what? Neither was Derrick Rose for Chicago, I did'nt see him getting benched? You know why? You play your best players, particularly when they are young and need to learn how to play through bad patches.

Kurt Rambis basically gave the game away last night. We were constantly getting killed on the offensive glass and our best rebounder (by a mile) was kept on the bench while his replacement got outrebounded constantly but because he was "scrappy" he gets to stay in?

Tolliver is a good player and a great energy guy. He is not the guy you keep in to win a game though. But hey, Kevin Love and the boys learnt a lesson right? Too bad it came in a loss.

A loss which I think sets them further back in their development (due to development being linked with confidence) then the lesson Guru Rambis is trying to teach.

Kevin Love isn't Derek Rose either. And it would be different if all Love was doing was missing shots (Rose last night). With every loss we can play the tuesday morning quarterback game and say woulda, coulda, shoulda, with regard to a number of possibilities. I can play that game the other way too. Whose to say Love's defense/effort won't be much improved for the next 10 games and we'll win an extra few games because of it? Tolliver played as well as Love could have played last night (very good). If anything, I'd argue that Love should have got minutes over Darko in the 4th as he looked a step slow -- though I'm not convinced that would have changed the result either.

[Devilzsidewalk]

Tolliver over Love isn't egregious at all, he was playing great, what hurts is seeing Ellington play over Wes when he wasn't doing anything besides 1 nice acrobatic layup and Darko getting all the crunch time minutes for particular reason. I like seeing Tolliver getting rewarded for great play, it sends the message that if you're playing above your head, you'll get minutes to show for it, but when you give minutes to Darko and Ellington, it undermines that and leaves people not knowing how you earn minutes.

[Krapinsky]

Tolliver over Love isn't egregious at all, he was playing great, what hurts is seeing Ellington play over Wes when he wasn't doing anything besides 1 nice acrobatic layup and Darko getting all the crunch time minutes for particular reason. I like seeing Tolliver getting rewarded for great play, it sends the message that if you're playing above your head, you'll get minutes to show for it, but when you give minutes to Darko and Ellington, it undermines that and leaves people not knowing how you earn minutes.

Johnson was limited to 18 minutes because of his injury. That was set before the game.

[AQuintus]

Tolliver over Love isn't egregious at all, he was playing great, what hurts is seeing Ellington play over Wes when he wasn't doing anything besides 1 nice acrobatic layup and Darko getting all the crunch time minutes for particular reason. I like seeing Tolliver getting rewarded for great play, it sends the message that if you're playing above your head, you'll get minutes to show for it, but when you give minutes to Darko and Ellington, it undermines that and leaves people not knowing how you earn minutes.

I didn't see it, but I think that someone earlier in this thread mentioned that Rambis said before the game that he would be limiting Wes' minutes to save his hammy a little. Wes was also dealing with fouls (4 in 18 minutes).

As for Darko, I'm not sure who else we could play. Pekovic? He was in foul trouble and isn't the defensive presence that Darko is. Koufos? Also worse on defense, and he didn't look all that good earlier in the game. Love? Again, worse on defense and playing somewhat poorly otherwise.

I would say that Love should have replaced Darko for the last play (same or better level of passing + an extra 3pt threat), but I'm not sure I'd want to replace him for the rest of the crunch time.

Hopefully everyone will get healthy soon so the rotation can get much shorter (get rid of Brewer, Ellington (except for garbage time), and Telfair). That would leave 30 or more minutes for Wes, Beasley, Webster, and Love.

[shrink]

KSTP 1500 has an interesting debate about Love being on the bench in the fourth quarter.

One guy said that Rambis is trying to impress on Love that he HAS to play better defense, especially at crunch time, and it was totally justifiable to bench him. I agreed.

Then the next guy said - even if that's true, don't you still put Love out there in crunch time to get him to do it? Its the season opener, fans are excited -- challenge Love. He changed my mind.

[Vindicater]

KSTP 1500 has an interesting debate about Love being on the bench in the fourth quarter.

One guy said that Rambis is trying to impress on Love that he HAS to play better defense, especially at crunch time, and it was totally justifiable to bench him. I agreed.

Then the next guy said - even if that's true, don't you still put Love out there in crunch time to get him to do it? Its the season opener, fans are excited -- challenge Love. He changed my mind.

The second part is exactly right. If Love is supposed to become one of our better players then now is the time to get him in those situations.

[funkatron101]

Learning by experience is far greater than learning from observation.

[Calinks]

I think in Rambis' eyes Love did learn by experience. His team lost the game and he couldn't help becasue he wasn't playing the right way.

[Swish4]

I like Tolliver as a mid game energy guy and good lockeroom guy but he's seriously soft. The 2 blocked shots were kind of a abberation. He's not a crunch time guy at all. Wish we had some beef to back up Love.