Wolves at Suns 12/15 8pm

[Piecake]

Pek has been awful the last several games. I think he is averaging a TO a minute

[flexbuffchest]

The lack of defensive rotations from our team in the 4th quarter, really the whole game, is what killed us last night. It's mind boggling how bad this team is at rotating on defense.

[Dewey]

Speaking of poor defense ... Flynn was insanely horrid no less than Ridnour. He got beat at will and didn't even attempt to recover ... "stood and watched" time after time. To say Flynn was a (+) and Ridnour a (-) tells me that stat is complete joke. Frick ... watching Flynn and Rodnour is a complete embarrassment. If Flynns injury recovery is part of his probelm, then send him back to D-league. He doesn't belong in the NBA right now.

[re49gb_2gho32fp]

when you concede 130pts, you know you got some serious work and communicating to do. You shouldnt concede that many points vs full and healthy lakers in a playoff series much less a borderline playoff team. like Suns (even though thats how they play). The scored numbers are great of course, but let's not forget who the counterpart was.
Not trying to be impolite, but Blazers conceded <100pts vs Suns playing 4 vs 5 on d (Roy is a shadow on d, almost an invisible shadow) and with a overall crappy bench (no Pryz 2 of three times)
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/teams/por/schedule

That's not to say Blazers will win the Wolves on Friday.

[Tha Juice]

I thought Wes Johnson played pretty good last night. 17 PTS (7-12), 4 REB, 5 AST, 2 BLKS, in 35:41

Over the past few games I've notice some improved ball handling from Wes and actually seen him drive the lane dish it off to Love for the easy basket. It's nothing great at the moment and still needs a lot of work but its very evident that once he can improve on this his offensive game will vastly improve. Theres been flashes of it at times recently. I think he had 1 or 2 shots that were way off last night but I'll take that any night over a Corey Brewer shot.

Maybe I'm wrong or seeing things but it seems like he's moving without the ball a little better as well. Well, better then early in the season.

He still seems to lose his man on perimeter defense and still needs to close out better but that could be said for just about everyone on our team. He's still learning a new position and if I remember correctly I think Syracuse played zone defense. So I will remain patient but would like to see some improvement and remain optimistic that it will happen.

[horaceworthy]

I'll admit I didn't watch many games early in the season, but has Pekovic really improved as much as people are saying? Because honestly the guy looked bad tonight.

Really? I liked what I saw from Pek last night. On defense he failed to rotate over to Warrick once when Love got blown by, and he got victimized by him in a pick and roll situation (the one that resulted in the BS blocking call on Love), but he also did a good job breaking up an 'oop, hustled down and broke up a pass underneath the basket in a fast break situation, did a good job cutting off the baseline against Dragic, and brought some added physicality to the paint. On offense he got, I think, 4 opportunities in the post. He kicked it back out to Webster once, got Brewer an easy bucket with a handoff on the block where he kept both Richardson and Lopez from challenging the attempt, scored on Lopez once and got to the line the other time.

It certainly doesn't look pretty, but he's at least looking to be adjusting better. Plus, that snippet with him and Darko they showed at halftime was pretty funny.

[Krapinsky]

Yeah I thought Pek looked fine too. I was hoping Rambis would bring him back in, but never did. Sometimes it just looks like Pek tries to do too much and gets in trouble because of it.

I'd like to see him get to play next to Darko a little more. He makes a big target for Darko passes. If you get Pekovic the ball underneath it should be game over nine times out of ten.

[Piecake]

If we could infuse Wes's passing ability and court vision into Beasley, we would have one awesome player

[NewWolvesOrder]

If we could infuse Wes's passing ability and court vision into Beasley, we would have one awesome player

If it was possible I don't think Beas would be available to us for 2 second round picks.

[shangrila]

Really? I liked what I saw from Pek last night. On defense he failed to rotate over to Warrick once when Love got blown by, and he got victimized by him in a pick and roll situation (the one that resulted in the BS blocking call on Love), but he also did a good job breaking up an 'oop, hustled down and broke up a pass underneath the basket in a fast break situation, did a good job cutting off the baseline against Dragic, and brought some added physicality to the paint. On offense he got, I think, 4 opportunities in the post. He kicked it back out to Webster once, got Brewer an easy bucket with a handoff on the block where he kept both Richardson and Lopez from challenging the attempt, scored on Lopez once and got to the line the other time.

It certainly doesn't look pretty, but he's at least looking to be adjusting better. Plus, that snippet with him and Darko they showed at halftime was pretty funny.

I lost my pie for most of the 3rd quarter and some of the 4th because a thunder storm took our my power for a while, so maybe I missed a lot of the good stuff he did. But from what I saw he still looks surprisingly raw for a guy who's been a professional for so long.

I saw some of his good things. He was running the floor a bit and made some simple passes, but I also saw a lot of the bad. He was missing defensive rotations, missed a couple of hand offs I thought he should have made and didn't seem to do a lot when matched up one on one with longer and more athletic guys.

Maybe I'm just seeing the bad, and I'm not throwing the towel in on him yet, but I can't call him good right now.

[horaceworthy]

I lost my pie for most of the 3rd quarter and some of the 4th because a thunder storm took our my power for a while, so maybe I missed a lot of the good stuff he did. But from what I saw he still looks surprisingly raw for a guy who's been a professional for so long.

I saw some of his good things. He was running the floor a bit and made some simple passes, but I also saw a lot of the bad. He was missing defensive rotations, missed a couple of hand offs I thought he should have made and didn't seem to do a lot when matched up one on one with longer and more athletic guys.

Maybe I'm just seeing the bad, and I'm not throwing the towel in on him yet, but I can't call him good right now.

Pek didn't play at all in the 3rd/4th quarter, just the end of 1st beginning of the 2nd.

You sure you weren't mixing him up with someone else? The game hasn't been erased from my DVR yet, so I went back and watched those 5 minutes again. There's one defensive rotation that it could be said he missed, the aforementioned Warrick dunk when Pek was engaged with Lopez.

There was literally only one time a guy cut off him and he didn't hand it off to him, when Webster made a baseline cut and Pekovic chose to keep the ball and drew a foul on Lopez.

The kick out to Webster was off a possession where he caught the ball 8-10 feet from the hoop and faced up, my apologies. That was the only time he wasn't being guarded by Barron or Lopez, and he didn't attempt to make a move, just made the skip pass to Webster, who passed it to Brewer, who drove in for a lay-up, so I don't really see the struggled one on one against longer athletic guys bit.

Also, it was Barron and Richardson he got in the way of on the Brewer handoff, not Lopez as I said in my previous post. My apologies.

Other than the 3 mid-range jumpers he allowed his man to take, that's every possession he was involved in, and being that it was RoLo and Earl Barron taking those jumpers, and they all clanked pretty badly off the rim (although when went onto bounce on the top of the backboard a couple times and fall through), those were good calls on Pek's part.

And I don't think anyone's calling him good, just saying it looks like he's adjusting better lately.

[shangrila]

Maybe I'm mixing in memories from a past game. I'll keep my eye on him tomorrow though.

[Steve_Holiday]

Not exactly snatching defeat away from the jaws of victory this time around. The Wolves built their lead with Nash and co. on the bench. I was optimistic about the lead too, for about 5 seconds, at which point I saw there was 8:00 remaining and Nash was loosening his hips on the sideline.

I agree with you here. However, I've NEVER seen a lead disappear so fast as it did last night.

08:21 left: [MIN 102-95]

04:49 left: [PHX 114-106]

A 15 point swing in 3:32. You have to do a lot of things incredibly wrong on both ends of the floor for that to happen...especially near the end of the game. It wasn't just unstoppable Nash-magic.

[horaceworthy]

I agree it wasn't all Nash magic, but there's gotta be some sort of voodoo at work for the Suns to drain 5 straight threes in that span and for there to be such an enormous swing without the Wolves turning the ball over during that stretch.

[Devilzsidewalk]

I still support my Nash trade

[horaceworthy]

What was your Nash trade?

[Devilzsidewalk]

people didn't like it much for the most part, but you know what else people hated at first? Sex.
Now look how far it's come, it just takes time.

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1069313

[Esohny]

Oh boy...

[LOBO 7]

I agree it wasn't all Nash magic, but there's gotta be some sort of voodoo at work for the Suns to drain 5 straight threes in that span and for there to be such an enormous swing without the Wolves turning the ball over during that stretch.

That stretch was pretty ridiculous, but if you're anything like me you KNEW every one of those 3s was gonna drop. I could feel the voodoo in my blood. Rather than voodoo, I like to think of it as karma. Its bad now, but at some point we'll have a lot of good karma rolling our way. I predict a 9 game win streak in the near future