Flava

Who would you have had in the game down the stretch?

he shot the ball. The guy can make good decisions at times, but at other times, you just shake your head.

In the post game, Rambis said he stuck my Tolliver over Love because of Tolliver’s defense. Which I get, because I thought Tolliver was one of our best players out there tonight. But I would’ve tried to run out Tolliver/Love instead of Tolliver/Darko. I don’t know if the numbers back this up, but I thought that other than Corey Brewer, Darko was our worst player tonight. If he had come down with that ball instead of trying to make a weak tip, the game changes substantially. If he hadn’t gotten that stupid T, we’re right there.

Pekovic needs to stop fouling so he can take Darko’s job.

I think he is, though his skills in actually identifying players that would qualify for hot hand status are severely lacking. I’ve noticed that Rambis, whenever we’re in a close game, tends to keep riding the same players until the game unravels. Whoever happens to be in for us leading up to the finish becomes the de facto “guys who kept us in this close game” even if their actual play wasn’t all that good. The classic example of this was the triple OT game against Houston last year, where Rambis rode the same 5 guys for 20+ minutes without making any substitutions through three overtime periods, even though those five didn’t include Sessions or Love. And yes, we lost. The concept of a player’s actual skill level as observed over the course of many games being a more reliable predictor of what he’ll do than what he’s done over the last 5 minutes is totally lost on Rambis.

The last play really irked me, too. We have three bigs who can reliably hit three pointers. Why is Darko on the floor in the situation? Worse, why was the inbounds play seemingly designed to get him the ball? The next time we run a play that yields a quality look in an endgame situation will be the first.

The team is a lot better, but maybe not a whole lot less frustrating. There were a lot of good things I saw from a lot of guys that I would be talking about, but it’s too hard to focus on the positive when your team loses at home to a bad team missing its best player.

for Cleveland tonight.

If his job was on the line? I always get the feeling that Rambis believes he knows something that we all don’t. It makes his crappy ass rotations all the more frustrating.

Or Maybe he’s just getting an early start on the tanking? I think we’re in for another painful season.

“Just announced TV partnership with My29 for 12 games. First My29 game will be the #twolves taking on LeBron and the Heat next Tuesday night!” – Ted Johnson’s twitter feed

just had to say that I read the “bacon and everything” line above, and I completely agree. So, so true. OK. Am going to go and finish reading everything else you wrote.

Seriously, though – bacon really does go with everything.

Agree with pretty much all of it. I was disappointed in our interior defense. The Euros can’t resist the fouls and Love is a little too small, sometimes. We didn’t seem any better in that department, tonight.

Wes needs all of Brewer’s 15 minutes to get the 33 he deserved. Love needed about 8 of Tolliver’s 28.

I thought the #4 and #5 picks looked very good, tonight. Cousins started out a little shaky but had a dominant 4th. Wes was solid throughout and played good defense.

The Kings without Evans are a very bad team — that’s the type of roster you face in April during tanking season. That game should have been won by the Wolves, by a comfortable margin. Terrible loss.

for Corey Maggette on Friday night? 20? 30?

and will start leaning on them more once they’ve established themselves. I’d really like to see a lot more of Wes-Beasley-Love on the court together at the same time. If Tolliver’s playing well, go small, put him at center, and run the other team out of the gym.

My main concern is that they didn’t match the intensity of the Kings. Sacramento acted like it was a playoff game because they needed to do that in order to win, and the Wolves not only didn’t match it, they played into their hands. That third quarter stretch is inexcusable because it was completely self-inflicted. Had they been more focused for 2 more minutes at the beginning of that quarter, they win the game. Way too many stupid turnovers.

I’m not really going to look for silver linings. Part of growing up in any profession is figuring out what you’re screwing up and avoiding those mistakes in the future. They look better than they did last year by a significant amount, and I don’t think adding Flynn and Webster at some point will upset the apple cart based on how their replacements played tonight. No need to panic, but a loss is also nothing to celebrate. As for any frustration about the rotations, I’m going to follow the sage advice of Adam Carolla: “If it doesn’t make you money, and it doesn’t make you happy, let it go.”

Hmm, my eyes kind of disagree with the box score.

Love had good numbers, but I thought he looked pretty mediocre especially on D. Landry was eating the Wolves lunch. I think Love didn’t play in crunch time because Tolliver was playing better D.

Beasley was not doing much in the first half but really sparked the team on offense in the second half. He can get shots in a variety of ways – you just get the feeling the rest of the team has no idea what he is going to do.

Ridnour played well and made a lot of timely shots.

Ellington was not very impressive to me. Looked like he was trying on D, but missed a lot of shots including some wide open threes.

Johnson looked great to me and I was wishing he’d get more minutes. Active on the boards, on D, drove toward the basket. I think Rambis limited him because of his hammy, but he looked like the best wing out there to me. Hope he gets well soon.

Brewer was fairly invisible except when he let Casspi get free on the baseline for what seemed like the back breaking basket.

I don’t care what Telfair’s line was – I thought he was killing the team out there. He shoots way too much – 9 shots in 16 minutes – and it felt like more. Hucking up shots early in the clock without running any offense. Flynn can’t come back fast enough, and I am not even a huge Flynn fan.

I thought Darko was okay. Blocked some shots and had a few nice plays, but did not shut down Cousins by any means when guarding him 1-on-1.

Pekovic looked like he could score every time they’d post him up, but he can’t stay on the floor due to foul trouble. Looks like Al on the left block, except his moves take 2 seconds instead of 22.

Fun game to watch, but if the Wolves are going to win some games they need to beat the Tyreke-less Kings at home.

We really need Webster back and Johnson at 100% so Wayne is a low minute guy and Brewer is on the bench. Love needs to improve his defense and energy enough not to get pulled for Tolliver.

basically righ now i know we fuked up donw de strecth but de offiacting wuz fuckin ridiculous mayn it wuz like watchin de muthafuckin cocksuckin packer game again mayn an we won dis game in de real score. Love muss be injured or Rambis is an idiot i dont see a middle ground. Bassy thought he was Iverson in de 3rd quarter and is probaly de biggest reason for de loss besides Tim Donaughy/de refs. Fuck a box score i wuz there and Wes outplayed Demarcus by far, an I wuz buggin de fuck out on draft day cuz i wanted cousins. Ridnour wuz a great signing, he is de anti flynn. dat bitch who can flip china bowls on her head is amazing maynnnn hol up i seen her before but she needs some press she much more thowed den anywun on de court today.