Wittman said on the radio yesterday that it has looked good in practice. I’d say that’s Step 1. Step 2 would be looking good in the summer league. Step 3 is the real games. Anyway, it’s one of the handful of huge question marks coming into this season. I’m anxious to see improvement.

...Brewer’s jumper, as well as his upper body strength. He needs to be able to guard 3s better this year. I also want to see how well they run the floor with Love, Carney, and Brewer. If Love is making interior passes and throwing outlet passes to Carney and Brewer in stride, those are the types of skills that you can start to pencil in for the regular season when the games start to matter. I’m also interested to see how much Love’s athleticism has improved.

Also very interested in Brewer and am also going to watch his confidence. I felt like that was his biggest problem last year (even also in Summer League) because he also missed some baskets that really were lay-ups and stuff like that.

I’m pretty sure one of these PG’s is gonna be signed to minimum and will only be used whenever Foye or some other PG gets injured. Unless both Telfair and Livingston sign with us, that would also make 3.

Looking forward to tomorrow (time difference is a pain in the ass).

Although the injury to Carney is minor, it’s disappointing to see he may miss today.

http://ww3.startribune.com/blogs/wolves/2008/07/14/summer-league-injuries-impressions/

There’s also the article about Foye chatting with Love about strategy. I know what Love’s question marks are, but I love reading about his strengths.

http://www.startribune.com/sports/wolves/25121744.html?location_refer=Timberwolves:highlightModules:1

...to see how Cupcake plays and how Dwayne Casey coaches. It will be nice to see him at the head of a bench again.

...trying to watch this game and not finding a link? Should have started 20 minutes ago…maybe it will start late? hope so, if so apologies for the irrelevance of this post.

...are going to be screwed at the point if they have to rely on one of the Pooh Jeter, Neitzel, Ahern crew. Love is having a decent game. A few too many fouls but he clearly can operate athletically at this level. Wow…that was quite the small sample size statement.

I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself on the Love athleticism thing…he has done a terrible job of moving his feet and that has been the main cause of his fouling.

Kamla called us the “Timbies”, that sounded funny :).

Also didn’t know that Casey was going to coach the Mavs team. They surely were better organised but as already has been said, Mavs are already on their 3rd game. They also shot extremely well. I’m not really sure it was bad defense on our side or just high confidence on theirs.

Jeter also looks TINY compared to Keith McCloud, I knew he was small but …

Overall I liked how Love played. He got some fouls early on and I got the feeling the defensive understanding between him and Richard wasn’t all that good but overall his game was solid, I think he’ll be OK. He’s only 19 and he’s a rookie, given those 2 variables, his game was excellent.
Especially down low though he showed he can get shots from all over.
He also showed he can put it on the floor (twice, though he got called for travelling once, I think he shouldn’t have been whistled on that one) and that he can make others better.
Also got to see one long range pass to Brewer.

I didn’t like how Richard looked. We know his offense isn’t that special (how’s that for an euphemism) but in my opinion his defense should be way way better against this type of competition than what he showed. He should have either gotten more minutes last year or he should have had a longer stint in the D-League. If he doesn’t get enough minutes coming year, he won’t develop and he’ll be out by next year.

Early on, Jeter’s handle looked very shaky, it looks like he’s bouncing the ball almost over his head and seems to fumble even when not really under stress. He improved through the course of the game but I’m not sold on him. We’ll see how it progresses.
The box scores shows 5 assists but that kinda surprised me. I didn’t really feel he set up the offense a lot.

Neitzel, in my opinion, had a much more solid handle. On the other hand, he had no assists and I’m not really sure he was that much of a floor general either. As a 3rd/4th point I like him better than Jeter. He felt like a lesser liability. If either of those 2 makes it on our squad I think it’s gonna be as an emergency sub. No way we’re not getting any other PG. So in an emergency backup role we don’t need someone that can get points (though he did score 4 consecutive baskets on nice Nash-ish jumpers in the second half after attempting about no shots in the first half), we need someone that can damage controle. Don’t lose the ball, bring it up and don’t force it, get the other players the ball. I feel Neitzel, as he played now, fit that picture better.
Neitzel also looked more able to hold his own on defense, but that was just an impression, not sure at all about it.

Both Neitzel and Jeter threw away some balls that really weren’t necessary. Lateral passes and that kind of thing are always dangerous. It might have been the stress of playing on a bigger stage. I haven’t written them off just yet but those kind of throwaways are awfull. We combined for 23 turnoves btw.

There also seems to be some need for working on a system or something. The chemistry isn’t really working. It’s especially clear because the Mavs are clicking on all cylinders. Especially on defense, the rotation is awfull.

Ahearn seems to be a guy with the best chances of earning a spot on some NBA bench. I’m not convinced he’s a point though. If we get someone to play point from this group, I’d like it to be someone with a decent handle, court vision and all those typical PG qualities, not someone who’s main strength is (long range) shooting.
Right after I typed “Ahern can shoot, no doubt” Kamla said “Ahern can shoot the ball, no doubt about that”. So um, he can shoot, better than the box score showed.

Overall, he really looked the best out of the undrafted/D-league pool but it’s kinda sad that he is at the position we have the least need. It’s not that I don’t like a “score-first” PG opposed to a “pass-first” PG. I just don’t think Ahern has the qualities to be either. He’s a SG.

Brewer was the guy I was most curious of watching since I was really high on him in last years draft.
He didn’t look good.
He started out nicely, hit his first jumper from long range, right in the face of his defender and it was really a confidence shot like “oh, you’re gonna give me some space? WAM, in your face”.
Right on the next play he forced a turnover by forcing someone out of bounds and then he hit another nice jumper.
But then he started to get overenergetic. He did get a lot of things by being energetic and active, he got a few times into the paint for layups BUT he got stripped quite a few times and more than not seemed totally out of control.
I wrote down about 4 missed layups but I’m sure there were more. He shot the ball well but I was thinking like .. damn, he would be very nice if he made all of those layups. Maybe he needs to watch some tape on Iverson. Iverson is in my view the master of seemingly flying out of control and laying that ball on the board from all kinds of angles. Brewer also had layups from all sorts of angles but he threw them all over the ring instead of in. Good thing Love was sometimes there to pick it up and get some free throws out of it.

I don’t know where it’s coming from. My first thought would be confidence but seeing him shoot so nicely at the start I’m thinking the problem is that the dosage of his energy is wrong.
In the second half I saw his “leaning forward/sticking ass backward” on his jumper coming back. I think that has something to do with him becoming tired. I think he needs to find a speed at which he is comfortable instead of being in Turbo all the time. He’s like the Tazmanian Devil sometimes…

Longar and the other guys really didn’t show up. It’s not that they weren’t give a chance, everyone got some minutes.

So I’m glad to see Love will turn out nicely but I’m getting more and more scared about Brewer. This guy was the 7th pick last year and he’s missing layups and getting tangled up inside. I’m hoping for some kind of miracle turnaround.
As we expected, the point guard situation just cannot be resolved by undraftees and D-leaguers.

If the guard play stays how it is, I’m hoping we sign both Telfair and Livingston, that would be my best case scenario right now.

Onward to the next game (woah what a long text)

There is plenty of time for everyone to get their act together.

Any word on our free agent situation?