The Age excuse.

[shangrila]

Experience and age/youth are pretty much the same things though

[Vindicater]

Experience and age/youth are pretty much the same things though

Are you serious? Webster has 7 years in the leauge to Wes Johnson's 1/2 year yet is only 2 years older than him.

That is only a small part of experiance too. Experiance means anything you have done and learnt during your lifetime. Experiance in winning programs, experiance in losing programs. Experiance at runnning a triangle offence or experiance of running a zone defence?

Experiance is not age/youth.

Maturity is not age/youth.

Age/Youth is a determing factor in both those things but not the equivilent.

[moss_is_1]

I think most of it is players that aren't familiar with each other because of barely playing together, plus players getting used to learning how to win. Love was a winner at UCLA, but that team had a lot of talent, as with Brewer at Florida. Ridnour hasn't ever really been a winner has he?

[cpfsf]

I want to emphasize that Love is 22 and Beasley is 21. There are exceptions, but generally the best teams tend to be more experienced (and older), and rebuilding teams are generally younger. I also want to note that our youth isn't the only reason our team has struggled. I would say a lack of talent has hurt our team more. Injuries certainly haven't helped.

[shangrila]

Experience and age/youth are pretty much the same things though

Are you serious? Webster has 7 years in the leauge to Wes Johnson's 1/2 year yet is only 2 years older than him.

That is only a small part of experiance too. Experiance means anything you have done and learnt during your lifetime. Experiance in winning programs, experiance in losing programs. Experiance at runnning a triangle offence or experiance of running a zone defence?

Experiance is not age/youth.

Maturity is not age/youth.

Age/Youth is a determing factor in both those things but not the equivilent.

It's not clear cut that experience is relative to youth, that's why I said they're "pretty much" the same. But there's clear similarities between the two.

And besides, if you want to argue semantics like this then this team is one of the least experienced in the league anyway. Here's the years each player has been in the league:

Michael Beasley 2
Corey Brewer 3
Wayne Ellington 1
Jonny Flynn 1
Lazar Hayward R
Wesley Johnson R
Kosta Koufos 2
Kevin Love 2
Darko Milicic 7
Nikola Pekovic R
Luke Ridnour 7
Sebastian Telfair 6
Anthony Tolliver 2
Martell Webster 5

That's not counting this year, BTW. But anyway, you've got 3 rookies, 2 sophomores and 4 3rd year players. That means that 9 of the 15 players on the roster have less then 3 years of experience in the NBA and of those 9, 6 are in the regular rotation (Beasley, Love, Flynn, Johnson, Pekovic and Tolliver). That's not even mentioning that Darko probably has less overall experience then Love, as he's only played 2000 more minutes in his career then Love has despite having almost 5 years more time logged in the NBA.

So averaging out those numbers (going by total years played, meaning rookies = 0), you end up with 2.5 years of experience per player on the roster. So in reality it's a pretty huge part of what this team is.

[C.lupus]

Response from the stats board:

viewtopic.php?p=26290557#p26290557

[Krapinsky]

Response from the stats board:

viewtopic.php?p=26290557#p26290557

Pretty good evidence that it's a legitimate excuse.

[Tha Juice]

Response from the stats board:

viewtopic.php?p=26290557#p26290557

Thanks C.lupus. If my math is correct, history would say that a team with an average age of 24 should be around .200- .300 winning percentage which is around 16-24 wins.

[funkatron101]

Response from the stats board:

viewtopic.php?p=26290557#p26290557

Great! This is a good starting point to justify or dismiss the age excuse.

There are certainly exceptions to the rule with age/experience and success, but overall the trend supports the excuse.

Looking at the experience/win % chart, it looks like we should in fact hover close to 30 wins for the season. I do think it is fair to expect that out of this team and if it is not reached, then the Wolves front office should definitely take a critical look at what is and isn't working and be prepared to make more moves, while still retaining some core pieces to build on.

[funkatron101]

Response from the stats board:

viewtopic.php?p=26290557#p26290557

Thanks C.lupus. If my math is correct, history would say that a team with an average age of 24 should be around .200- .300 winning percentage which is around 16-24 wins.

But the experience chart rates it a little higher, unless it is specifically referring to experience as a team unit, as opposed to the individual experience that the player brings to the team.

[shangrila]

My math ended up with an average of 2.5 years of experience per player. So with a current win% of 25, according to the chart they're below average. But just looking at it, it seems that there's a lot more dots below that line then above it, so I'm not really surprised at where they are.

[C.lupus]

In theory (because of age, experience, newness to team/system, schedule) they should be significantly better the second half of the season and should end up about where the line is or at least close to it - somewhere in the 25 to 30 win range. In theory at least.

[Tha Juice]

But the experience chart rates it a little higher, unless it is specifically referring to experience as a team unit, as opposed to the individual experience that the player brings to the team.

Oh, yep you're right. I was just going off the Age vs. Overall Success chart, but now that I look at the others more closely it seems to be a little higher. More like 25-30 range as C.Lupus said.

[funkatron101]

The other factor to consider is the data range. from 1951 to at least the mid to late 80s, players entering the draft (or NBA in general) were older on average. That might be the reason for the discrepancy between age vs experience. That's almost 40 years of data that probably equates many 22 to 23 year olds as rookies. 2 years of experience puts them 24 - 25 and the data matches more closely.

I would almost say that the data range is too wide in this case. The game and players are vastly different today than from the 50s to the 70s.

[C.lupus]

I had that same thought funk. Another reason why I really wanted the raw data for myself but, oh well. I think it would be more appropriate to look at, say the past 20 years. That would be a large enough data set but wouldn't go back too far in time.

[TrentTuckerForever]

Response from the stats board:

viewtopic.php?p=26290557#p26290557

Pretty good evidence that it's a legitimate excuse.

Facinating... this is my favorite quote from the article:

"The strength of the team often determines its age, not the other way around."

...speaks to the "Juwan Howard effect" - this year's Heat are an older team with Howard, but not better because of him. If Love, Beasley and (eventually/hopefully) Rubio grow together, by the time they're all 25 the Wolves should be a much better team, because they're good players. And the Wolves should be an older team as well, because at that point it will make sense to have Juwan Howards or Kurt Thomases or Derek Fishers on the roster. The limited contributions of older players will complement those of the in-their-prime horses.

Correlation without causation is a difficult concept... my head hurts. I'm going back to the trade board to use some abbreviations. FTW!

[TrentTuckerForever]

it's guard play. the timberwolves have really poor guard play simple as that. teams that win have really good point guards or great 2 guards. it's our weakest area. so it doesn't matter the overall team age until you get a guard that can not only create his own shot but create shots for his team.

+1. Even though I think most of us don't think Mayo will make the Wolves a title contender, he's tempting because he'd make us better in this area. Someone mentioned Rondo earlier in this thread, and how much better this team would look with him at the controls (same for Nash, or D. Williams.) And that's all true, regardless of the system the Woofies are running.

In my opinion much of the venom directed at Rambis this year is misplaced. Players make systems, not the other way around. Barry Sanders would have been a great back whether he played in the I formation or the shotgun spread. Rambis is not Phil Jackson or Red Auerbach, but he's not the main reason this team is so hard to watch either.