Battle of the Beards: Wolves at Hornets (No Local TV)

[mandurugo]

This Jason Smith guy is not bad at all: 7-footer, can play PF & C, a good athlete and runs the floor well(good fit with Rubio). And he's a FA this summer.

Completely agree. Plus, he's a high-post post, which Adelman loves. He's signed for 2 more years at 2.5 mil flat.

Johnson for Smith?

I don't think so. Jason Smith is not the player Kevin Love and the rest of the wolves made him look like last night. Are we still at the state that whatever player kills the wolves we have to go after him despite how he plays against the rest of the league?

[Klomp]

This Jason Smith guy is not bad at all: 7-footer, can play PF & C, a good athlete and runs the floor well(good fit with Rubio). And he's a FA this summer.

Completely agree. Plus, he's a high-post post, which Adelman loves. He's signed for 2 more years at 2.5 mil flat.

Johnson for Smith?

I don't think so. Jason Smith is not the player Kevin Love and the rest of the wolves made him look like last night. Are we still at the state that whatever player kills the wolves we have to go after him despite how he plays against the rest of the league?

He's still a 10/4 guy. Unless you'd rather keep Randolph and Milicic and their combined 10.1/6.1 on 3x the salary

[Tirion]

Kahn wont be the fall guy for this season and he shouldn't be. Everything as great until the final couple of months. Kahn will be under a tighter scope though. He has done many good things for this team but his eye for talent has been sorely lacking. Most of his guys are not working out and he has had some terrible draft choices.

He has to turn it around.

Completely agree. Taylor has said (right around) that the pre-injury team's success was a year ahead of schedule. Not saying they expected to be this bad, but they probably didn't expect to be playing as well as we were pre-injuries either.

Lol, what schedule? They will be worse next season. This roster, as currently constructed, had already peaked. The internal sources of progress have been exhausted, Love can't sustain his current pace of development and Rubio will probably lose next season, trying to get himself back to his current level after surgery. Unless D-Will can miraculously turn himself into a legitimate NBA SF, this roster is cooked.

[C.lupus]

You need to take some anti-depressants.

[Tirion]

Remember Milwaukee a couple years back? Fear the Deer movement? What happened to that team?

[Tirion]

You need to take some anti-depressants.

And maybe you need to get off them and smell the reality. It's much easier to fall down than to climb up. This season's so called "success" looks like fool's gold with every loss. Good teams' fortunes don't rest on a single player. Rose missed a lot of games, but the Bulls never skipped a beat. If the roster as a whole was any good, losing Ricky would have been a minor setback. Instead, they completely fell apart.

[C.lupus]

So reality is a team with a 23 year old PF that has improved every year and has continued to improve throughout this season coupled with a 21 year old rookie PG has peaked? Alrightythen. Might as well just blow it all up and start over with 15 draft picks I guess.

[Tirion]

So reality is a team with a 23 year old PF that has improved every year and has continued to improve throughout this season coupled with a 21 year old rookie PG has peaked?

This offseason hey need to find:
1) starting caliber SG who can create, shoot and defend;
2) starting caliber SF who can shoot and defend;
3) defensive backup PF/C to compliment Love and Pek.
with no 1st round picks and not nearly enough cap space and assets. Very few good free agents and a lot of other teams with cap space to overpay for them.

[C.lupus]

I think everyone agrees with those three needs. If we cut Webster, Miller retires (he's already said he will), we amnesty (or trade) Darko, and renounce Beasley, Randolph, and Tolliver, then we will have roughly $15 million in cap space to work with. We also have Williams as a very tradable asset and Barea as a somewhat tradable asset and Johnson (probably not very tradable after this season but who knows). We'll definitely have to overpay somebody but I don't think it's all doom and gloom either. Mayo is very gettable. Iggy is probably gettable. I think there are options. The onus is on Kahn to get it done, of course.

[mandurugo]

Completely agree. Plus, he's a high-post post, which Adelman loves. He's signed for 2 more years at 2.5 mil flat.

Johnson for Smith?

I don't think so. Jason Smith is not the player Kevin Love and the rest of the wolves made him look like last night. Are we still at the state that whatever player kills the wolves we have to go after him despite how he plays against the rest of the league?

He's still a 10/4 guy. Unless you'd rather keep Randolph and Milicic and their combined 10.1/6.1 on 3x the salary

Hopefully those aren't the only choices! But I'd just as soon keep Randolph as get Smith, despite the number of times he's failed I'm not done gambling that he'll put it together. Darko I've finally given up on unfortunately. He has the tools to be an awesome back-up center and a reasonably good starting center, but it seems that psyche is too damaged.

[Yes We Kahn]

5 game losing streak and people act like its a sign of a Wolves apocalypse. Take a few deep breaths. We lost our leader - the player who gives the team its identity - for the year. Then we lost our emerging center (who has no back-up) for a significant stretch. Then we lost Beas, Barea, and Ridnour for various stretches of games. Remember before that, when we looked more likely than not to make the playoffs? Did we really think that we were going to be anything close to the same team after all of that? To put it in perspective, Wayne Ellington played 27 minutes last night.

The future is not lost. Of course the team has areas to address this offseason, but its not hopeless. Relax.

[Hambone93]

I'll take anything we can get in regards to this season.

People keep pretending that the lockout didn't happen when they discuss this season. Remember, there was no training camp, no substantial practice time. That usually would spell disaster for a young team that has never won much, hasn't been together long, and dealing with an entirely new coach and system, not to mention a new starting line-up.

There is no continuity from this season to the last season, rubio helped mask that fact defensively, and as a floor general type dude. I see us coming out strong next season; our players should be healthy, love should be even better than he is this year, we may have signed someone in the offseason, and our wolves will have the benefit of a training camp and a year of experience together.
At least, a year of experience that consists of more team success than they were used too.

[pumunga]

So reality is a team with a 23 year old PF that has improved every year and has continued to improve throughout this season coupled with a 21 year old rookie PG has peaked?

This offseason hey need to find:
1) starting caliber SG who can create, shoot and defend;
2) starting caliber SF who can shoot and defend;
3) defensive backup PF/C to compliment Love and Pek.
with no 1st round picks and not nearly enough cap space and assets. Very few good free agents and a lot of other teams with cap space to overpay for them.

hahah doesnt every team need those?

[NewWolvesOrder]

So reality is a team with a 23 year old PF that has improved every year and has continued to improve throughout this season coupled with a 21 year old rookie PG has peaked?

This offseason hey need to find:
1) starting caliber SG who can create, shoot and defend;
2) starting caliber SF who can shoot and defend;
3) defensive backup PF/C to compliment Love and Pek.
with no 1st round picks and not nearly enough cap space and assets. Very few good free agents and a lot of other teams with cap space to overpay for them.

hahah doesnt every team need those?

I bet you that if we add Lebron will need none of that stuff. We'll be fine as it is.

[Worm Guts]

You need to take some anti-depressants.

And maybe you need to get off them and smell the reality. It's much easier to fall down than to climb up. This season's so called "success" looks like fool's gold with every loss. Good teams' fortunes don't rest on a single player. Rose missed a lot of games, but the Bulls never skipped a beat. If the roster as a whole was any good, losing Ricky would have been a minor setback. Instead, they completely fell apart.

Cleveland lost Lebron and went from a 60+ win team to a sub 20 win team in 1 season. This is the NBA, one player can make a huge difference.