"This offense has been easy to run," Love said Wednesday after the Timberwolves' seventh consecutive loss, "but hard to figure out."
Lots of things were hard for Love to figure out during Denver's 110-102 victory in Target Center -- like the brief stretch where coach Kurt Rambis assigned him to guard Carmelo Anthony, the league's third-leading scorer. "I said, 'Are you sure?'" Love said.
He was, and while the matchup, forced by Denver's decision to play a three-guard lineup, didn't last long, it coincided with the Nuggets' decisive burst of energy. "I love Kevin Love," shrugged Wolves teammate Al Jefferson, "but I don't think he can guard Melo 1-on-1."
Is the players' confidence in Kurt Rambis waning? (via StarTribune.com)
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I think it was a smart move by Rambis
to put Kevin Love on Carmello. It goes both ways. Carmello shouldn’t be able to guard Kevin in the post. Plus it is a challenge. When you are your team’s best player, you should want to challenge the other teams best player even if you don’t match up that well with them. It’s a chance to show your competitive drive.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if Kevin Love could become the SF with a lot of work to get in better shape and be able to run?
+1
It’s a lesson for Love to pick how he is going to handle these challenges and throw one back to the other team.
I've been wondering...
…who was defending Carmelo all night? I only saw part of the game and Gomes seems like the only player with any chance at all. So, Gomes played 36 minutes and Melo 41. Who other than Gomes was going to take Melo? At least Love could theoretically have an advantage on offense with Melo, or at least more so than Wilkins.
'It's just noise coming out of an ugly scientist.' Michael Scott
Gomes got a heck of a lot of it,
And, especially in the first half, he held his own defensively.
"It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."
Gomes was "guarding" Melo last year...
… when Melo tied the NBA record for points in a quarter. I agree that Gomes is probably the best of a bunch of bad matchups we could throw at Melo, but I’d prefer to stick Corey on him. Brewer would be overmatched by Melo’s strength, but Brew’s energy and constant pestering on defense would at least have a chance of tiring Melo out more quickly than Gomes’ “position”-based defense would.
Actually this year Gomes's defense at the 3 is vastly better than Corey Brewer's.
Check out 82 games’s “By Position” opposing PERs. It’s not remotely close. Rambis has been using Gomes to defend other elite wings as often as he does Brewer. Brewer’s giving up All Star numbers to all the 3s he’s faced as a group. As in, all season long he’s been a defensive hemorrhage guarding shooting forwards.
In this last game, which I attended, Gomes did very well on ’Melo. May not always have been the case, but he was no slouch.
"It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."
Fine, but by almost any measure you're going to see it.
Even “by eye”: Rambis is playing them that way, for that matter. Corey got Durant, but against, oh, Carmelo Anthony in the game we’re talking about Kurt went with Gomes in the first half and got good results.
Basically at this point Brewer’s lack of bulk is making him a liability against opposing threes. Watch the games and you’ll see it. The other team beats him up, posts him up, and all like that. It’s quite rare that Brewer plays effective D on forwards.
"It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."
I'm not disagreeing in principle
I’m just saying that Opponent PER is blown out of proportion so much. It really tells very little about anything except for a defensive scheme that involves strict man defense with zero help at all and everyone is guarding only the position that they are listed as on offense.
I don’t really know much about how other defensive metrics are calculated, but I’d have to assume a lot of them suffer from the same issues. I might be wrong, but I don’t know how they can really fix them that much without carefully watching each and every game for each and every player to see what he was really liable for on the defensive end.
Do you think
that Brewer would measure, in any system, as a better defender at the 3 than Gomes right now?
‘Cause I don’t. Rambis doesn’t seem to either, except on a few specific matchups.
"It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."
I completely agree with you
that Gomes is better suited to defend Melo. I’m just not a fan of the use of many defensive metrics (especially without actual matchup analysis strewn in with it) and Opponent PER is right at the top.
Brewer is great for guarding 2s of the league. If he can add some more weight he will be even better. But he will never be big enough to guard the Melos and Brons of the NBA for extended minutes. I like throwing him on them for 5 minutes at a time just to pester them, but that’s about it.
The thing is though, Jonny is quite often supposed to be rotating on to Brewer’s man and he doesn’t leaving Brewer’s guy wide open. On the other hand when Brewer is guarding the guy with the ball, he gets a screen set and does an ok job of recovering, but has absolutely no presence in the middle stopping the guy from getting to the rim easily or even for hedging the screen (with the exception of Darko and even Love one out of every 5ish times). An even bigger issue with OPER to me is that Brewer was often playing the 2 while guarding the 3, yet getting the credit for what the 2 does. When Portland went small he was at the 2 but guarding Roy (at the 3) and Roy did next to nothing that game. When we played GS he guarded Jackson but got credit for their 2s lighting us up (Jackson had a high assist number but low scoring compared to his average). No one has brought up OPER since the beginning of the year, so I don’t have any recent examples as I haven’t paid any attention (and we are rotating much better, so I’d be surprised if his numbers for the last month are even close to his season average).
On a smaller note, at the beginning of the year he was defending the break like Lebron (he chased them down and swatted the ball. Now he is always ahead of them trying to play actual defense, which is really hard in transition), but whoever’s guy who got swatted got credit for that and he doesn’t get anything (other metrics give him credit for the block still, but not if he alters the shot but doesn’t actually block it).
The thing is though, Jonny is quite often supposed to be rotating on to Brewer’s man and he doesn’t leaving Brewer’s guy wide open. On the other hand when Brewer is guarding the guy with the ball, he gets a screen set and does an ok job of recovering, but has absolutely no presence in the middle stopping the guy from getting to the rim easily or even for hedging the screen (with the exception of Darko and even Love one out of every 5ish times). An even bigger issue with OPER to me is that Brewer was often playing the 2 while guarding the 3, yet getting the credit for what the 2 does….
All of that happens for other defenders too, is the thing.
Unless we accept that Corey Brewer’s defense is inherently almost impossible to chase in the numbers, we’ll have trouble arguing that it’s superior. By either individual or team numbers, the guy just doesn’t look that good defensively — and there are other players on the team who look better.
Choose your measure. At the three, Gomes and Wilkins and Pavlovic and Cardinal all look better in whatever measurement you pick, in the context of the same awrfulbad defensive team. Is Jonny not failing to rotate when Wilkins is in the starting lineup, or something? Is Rambis giving Brewer vastly different defensive assignments than those for Gomes or Pavlovic? At some point you have to ask whether all the defensive aggression isn’t backfiring, making the kid a much less effective player on that side of the ball.
"It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."
I'm not saying to discount what it is saying entirely
just to take it with a grain of salt… a really large grain of salt.
The thing is, at the beginning of the year, Corey was the only guy rotating out there. It was the hardest part about watching the games for me is watching him rotate only to have his guy wide open for a 3pt.
And it was happening to Wilkins as well, just not when Corey was out there rotating to his guy. As Corey is getting the majority of the minutes with Jonny (and Jefferson and Hollins), he suffers a little more. Not only because no one rotated to his guy, but because he was leaving his guy entirely to catch the PG coming off of a screen that Al or Hollins doesn’t even try to leave their man to stay with and Jonny doesn’t have any idea how to fight through a screen.
I’m still pretty comfortable defending the idea that out of all of the players on our team, Corey’s defensive metrics would take by far the most significant jump if he moved to a team like the Bobcats. Hopefully a certain Evan Turner would fix this problem…
I’d say that you are right though, as things currently stand it is backfiring. Instead of the PG getting an easy layup, his man gets a wide open look at a 3. And unfortunately teams don’t seem to miss open 3s against us… ever…. seriously when’s the last time that’s happened? Haha… the life of a Wolves fan. Anywho, on the defensive assignments, I’d say Brewer is getting completely different assignments than Pavs or Brewer (maybe not Wilkins as much). Brewer is giving 30+ mpg against the Kobe, JJs, Roys, Durants, etc etc while Pavs is getting 10mpg against mostly backups and the occasional starter. Gomes generally gets the perimeter big assignments that Love/Jefferson cant deal with (but these guys are really easy for Gomes if he doesn’t worry about rotating) and the occasional harder assignment like Melo, for example. But I’d still say that Brewer has logged a lot more minutes against the stars of the other teams than perhaps anyone else on our team including Flynn, as Brewer is often trying to guard his own man and Flynn’s ;)
And when’s the last time you’ve seen the Janitor guarding Kobe or Lebron :-p
I feel as if instead of letting Love hang out there
Rambis should have countered with throwing in Darko. Let Carmelo deal with Jefferson or Darko on the other end. And Darko seems to be mobile enough to at least recover and challenge a shot after Anthony gets by him.
Even if it didn’t work, it would be fun as hell!
The Love on Melo angle is overblown
Sure, it’s a mismatch, but Carmelo scored once during this lineup, and that was on a play when Love had picked up Anderson who go t up court early, and Jefferson was still high near the free throw line. He sort of picked up Melo who got the ball at the top of the key and blew by his matador defense to the hoop.In the meantime, Melo was not enjoying guarding Love under the basket. Love drew one foul on him and scored on him in the paint as well. Love was pounding on him to get position, and Melo was looking frustrated, especially after getting whistled for the hold. Not sure how it would have played out if the matchup continued. This certainly did nothing to swing the game, though.
this is simply not true
In the span of about a minute and half, Melo scored 7 straight points while Love was guarding him.
And the way he scored those points made it look ridiculously easy, because it probably was for him.
You are correct, rh.
Love gave ’Melo lots of space, begging him to take an outside shot, which was the smart thing to do. Carmelo went at the hoop.
It might be that dropstep was thinking of the first half when it happened in transition once or twice, but in the third there wasn’t any question about how that played.
It does astonish me that we’re talking about Love’s defense. The problem last night could not more conspicuously have been Jefferson. I haven’t seen a worse defensive performance from a Wolves big, I don’t think, ever.
"It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."
I would say Love played equally bad defense as AL
They were both brutal.
I thought AL looked pretty decent next to Darko in the 1st half actually, but then completely gave up on defense altogether in the 2nd half.
Whereas, much of the time you could see Love was rotating and trying to help on defense, other times he was getting abused by the guy he was guarding or is just too slowfooted and unathletic to make a difference. And then in the 3rd quarter, he took the que from AL and gave up altogether as well.
Both of these guys’ utter lack of interest in even attempting to play defense is pretty sickening. There has to be something going on behind the scenes here. Maybe it is just the rift between Rambis and Love or maybe Love and AL are going at it too who knows.
When the Nuggest ran Nene iso after Neno iso on Al, and all he could do was bear-hug him and send him to the line, it was pathetic. I’m a Jefferson-guy and usually defend him, but that was impossible to watch, last night in the 4th Quarter. Love didn’t do anything defensively that came even close to the way Jefferson got abused by Nene.
What's worse...
AL letting Nene blow past him for easy layups or Love just standing there watching as well?
At least AL gets back on defense most of the time. Love will take full possessions off and not even attempt to get back on defense or run down the court.
I think you’re holding AL to a higher standard than Love.
Agreed.
I do think Love is the better overall player of the two, but he shouldn’t get a pass for some lackadaisical effort when Jefferson gets hammered. I noticed a couple possessions last night like you’re talking about, where he thought he got fouled, put his head down and walked downcourt. That’s middle-school stuff.
I’m not saying Love played good defense — I remember a specific play where he let Birdman cross his face in the paint and draw a foul, as well as one of the lob-plays where he lost him and got dunked on.
But Denver was insulting Al by running their entire crunchtime offense through Nene, despite having Mr. Big Shot and Melo, who is arguably the best scorer in the world. Al’s response was to completely cave in and give up, rather than step up to the challenge. I’m wondering what other teams will do, having seen that. Like feral notes below, I’m also hoping it’s Al’s legs that are the problem. Because if he gets exposed like that, he can’t be on the floor.
I completely agree with you that AL gave up on defense in the 2nd half.
I said that in my other post. It was obvious to anyone who watched the game. But Love gave up as well. Nene or whoever else would drive right past AL and Love would just watch even though if he wanted to step in and challenge the shot he could have.
I’m sure Love is very frustrated with the way Rambis is jerking him around and thinks he’s being treated unfairly. Love seems to be a hardworking guy. But with all this in mind, and having seen the game and his body language and expressions, I got the impression that Love was thinking, “If AL isn’t playing defense, I’m not going to try and cover for him. Screw it, it’s not my guy he can score all he wants for all I care” And then after that Love pretty much checked out of the game mentally and wasn’t even running down the court every possession which is inexcusable no matter the circumstances.
Anyone else that saw the game get this impression?
I won't defend Jefferson's defense because I'm sure it wasn't good...
… but people forget/overlook what a mismatch Nene is for Al. Nene is about three inches taller, significantly longer, a good deal quicker, and much stronger than Jefferson. Nene has a nice burst in the post, and if Melo’s “usage” weren’t so high I suspect Nene would put up bigger numbers that would have him in the conversation as one of the game’s better bigs. I don’t condone Al’s giving up, if that’s what happened, but we should’ve had Darko on Nene as much as possible.
I think loves defense
On Andersen was problematic. Him being on melo is just bad coaching. That was beyond a mismatch. They may as well put him on billups.
Forever splitting the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs
www.canishoopus.com
by Stop-n-Pop on Mar 11, 2010 8:21 PM CST via mobile up reply actions
kind of sends the message
that he should probably get in better shape and hustle more though, doesn’t it?
A Darko Fan since 2010!
by TheEvilProfessor on Mar 11, 2010 9:21 PM CST up reply actions
I don't know
At some point there are matchups that no matter how fit a guy is, he’s simply not built for that type of action. He definitely needs to get more fit, but I don’t think this is a result of him being anything other than out of Melo’s league on that end of the court.
Forever splitting the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs
www.canishoopus.com
You mean...
Chuck Hayes can’t guard Lebron? Blasphemy!
Interesting point
The guy is an NBA professional finishing his 2nd season, yet still appears ten pounds overweight and lacking muscle. He’s had almost two years to lose twenty pounds and add muscle, but hasn’t come close on either front. Gets a little concerning when a 21 year old has this issue.
I don't know
It looks like he’s lost a lot of weight. He doesn’t really look overweight anymore. Just tired and weak. Two years isn’t a lot of time to add muscle when you’re playing 82 games a year Nov-Apr.
by oblivionspocket on Mar 12, 2010 12:04 AM CST up reply actions
It's pretty clear where you're coming from, here.
I can sympathize with the whole “People don’t hold Love as accountable as they should” idea. In general you may be right.
To compare him to Jefferson in that game isn’t reasonable, though. (Nor is the idea that Love should’ve lost 20 pounds and added tons of muscle at 21, necessarily. NBA bigs keeping muscle on is a common problem, and young ones? Ask Cherokee Parks sometime.)
"It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."
Yeah, but...
…other then Gomes, Melo would wreck anybody – he’d break Brew in half, use Wilkins like Yi’s chair, Pavs? right. Al, Jawai, Darko? Tucker, Stewie? Gomes played 36 minutes, Melo 41. Of anybody Rambis could have put on him Love at least can give him trouble on the other end – at least by dominating the boards. Melo gives everybody problems and there wasn’t a good choice anywhere, Love provided the best mismatch on the other side. Sure it looked funny and sounds bad, but the reality is, what else reasonable could have been done?
'It's just noise coming out of an ugly scientist.' Michael Scott
What about...
the seven or so other games during Love’s career that we’ve played Denver and he’s never guarded Melo for a second? We should stick to that.
So..
..who on the active roster last night took Melo in any of those last 7? And what happened?
Look, I’m not trying to defend any particular decision, but I’ve grown weary of this ‘the coaches are idiots’ stance when it is not clear at all what alternative was better. And, honestly I have no idea what our record was in those previous 7 games, or even if Love played in all of them or who took Melo or if Melo played in all of them (ok, I know we beat them this season, just dubious it was because Love didn’t take Melo for a second, if true). Seriously, my point stands. You’re the coach. Gomes is playing 36 minutes, Melo playing 41. Somebody else has got to take Melo for a few minutes (and really, is Gomes locking him down for real?). Make the decision. I promise your hypothetical is as nuts as Love taking him for a stretch. When you suck, you suck. When all your choices are bad you take the one with the most upside. Easy to criticize, hard to provide a better alternative.
'It's just noise coming out of an ugly scientist.' Michael Scott
What they/we are missing
is that Kenyon Martin’s out, so Denver has recently been moving ’Melo to what amounts to the four. So, yeah, that puts pressure on the Wolves at that spot, where neither of their two best players are capable of handling him.
"It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."
Exactly.
I’ve never seen as bad a performance from a Wolves big as we had from Al last night. Luc Longley, as a rookie, had more defensive chops.
I’m just hoping it’s Al’s legs.
"It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."
You're right, kind of
I forgot about Denver going small before half. Still, Love’s defense on Melo wasn’t as bad as I’d fear. He guarded him well on he first drive and Melo got bailed out by Brewer’s foul. He conceded Melo’s outside jumper, but Melo conceded a similar jumper to Love. His defense on Melo’s second drive as OK, Melo just hit the jumper over the double team. His last point, off the FT, came off Gomes, who was guarding him on that possession. The net result of this 90 second span you’re referring to is a one point swing. So, like I said, the impact of the Love on Melo matchup is overblown. Not that I’d recommend regularly putting Love on Melo in the future. But I do think that in these circumstances you do try to push the mismatch that works in your favor, which was making Melo wrestle with Love under the basket as is the 3rd period.
The net result of the AL/Love anti-tandem in the 3rd quarter also was a 1 or 2 pt swing.
But I think we all agree that it was a disaster.
That is a very deceptive stat you’re using that doesn’t tell what actually happened.
Love was abused by Melo much in the same way Foye was abused by Durant trying to guard him last year.
Love vs. Melo will never be a mismatch in our favor and that should be obvious to Rambis, who is an NBA head coach and watches Love play every single day. No reason Rambis should even think about doing that.
How bad was the strategy?
Yes, it is a horrible matchup on the defensive end. That said, I thought Love did a decent job. On the first isolation, he cut off Melo’s first drive. Melo then regrouped and went again and did not actually get by Love, who contested the shot (and stripped him according to the Wolves announcers). Melo converted on that possession because Brewer fouled him. His second jumper was hit over a double team. The bottom line is that I would never criticize Love for not being able to guard Melo in the way I would if he was getting abused by an underacheiving 4. I’m not too quick to criticize Rambis either, because he too often in the past has played reactionary coaching, where he swaps in less talented players to avoid the kind of mismatches we’re talking about here. I mean if there was a reasonable bench alternative, fine. But not many teams bring out D-league personnel to avoid mathchup problems with their best players.
Going small is bold. Going big is bold. But coaches voluntarily enter these potential mismatches in order to exploit something on the other team, knowing that their vulnerability in some area will be increased. Not responding to the other team going big or small is also bold, but it recognizes that some mismatch will work on your favor. Chaing your lineup to match the other team is not bold, and is probably exactly what the other team is hoping you do. That’s certainly how the Warriors work with their small ball lineup, and getting beat by responding to it was how the Mavs played it in the playoffs, where as the Jazz just pounded them to death with size in the next series.
It should be noted
that since Kenyon Martin got scratched from the lineup, the Nuggets have used ‘Melo as a de facto four for stretches. It’s a hard matchup, but that’s what Denver goes to, so the Wolves’ personnel has to play it like anyone else.
"It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."
What should also be noted
Is that he teams best defender can’t be thrown at physical small forwards. Brewer being unable to guard melo is what causes the biggest number of problems.
Forever splitting the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs
www.canishoopus.com
by Stop-n-Pop on Mar 11, 2010 8:24 PM CST via mobile up reply actions
Melo is a similar, but tougher match-up than Pierce…but I thought Corey did an ok job on Pierce either last year or during CB’s rookie year.
Has Corey gotten abused by Melo in the past?
by TWolvesFanInLA on Mar 12, 2010 1:10 AM CST up reply actions
At SF our capable defender is Gomes. Even against an average SF, is Corey a good option?
By now, Corey’s opponent PER ratings this year:
at SG: 17.2
at SF: 24.3
Maybe we’re selecting for situations where Corey’s slid over to defend a Durant, but that number is still unacceptably high.
Gomes at the 3? Opposing PER 11.3. Unfortunately, he doesn’t score well from there.
"It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."
Love should stop running his mouth
If Rambis tells him to go in and defend Melo, then by all means he should have enough chutzpah not to say “are you sure?” to his coach. I mean, that’s just a defeatist attitude to begin with. If Love doesn’t like his minutes, then quit making passive-aggressive comments to the likes of Zgoda (who apparently has some axe to grind with Kahn and Rambis) and others and take out your frustration on the court, a la the baseline jam he handed out last night. If Big Al were the one making the comments that Love is making, most of this board (myself included) would be all over him, yet Love gets a pass for not keeping it in house and instead taking pot shots in the media.
If you want more PT, Kevin, it’s pretty simple: shut your mouth and let your game do the talking.
Really? I'm surprised there hasn't been more complaining
And frankly, a little disappointed. I don’t want the players to accept this losing fate; I want them to be angry and if the speak out sometimes, so be it.
It was hardly a scathing indictment.
by Eric in Madison on Mar 11, 2010 7:00 PM CST up reply actions
As far as I can tell, Love has been the only one complaining. Don’t get me wrong, I really like Love’s game, but he talks a lot without thinking.
by BVP on Mar 11, 2010 11:10 PM CST via mobile up reply actions
He does do that.
In less than two years as a Wolf, we’ve had the “McHale’s not coming back” tweet, the “What are we doing?!?!” tweet, an interview where he constantly referred to Rubio as “good trade bait,” and I’m sure there are more.
Kind of funny, though. I like the personality.
There was more than one “Rubio trade bait” interview. And let’s not forget his appearance earlier this year on PTI when his distaste for Kahn’s rebuilding wasn’t exactly kept in check.
Thank god
Who wants a player who wants to be “rebuilding,” which is code for “losing”? Players should want to win right now, today, screw tomorrow. That’s someone else’s job.
by Eric in Madison on Mar 12, 2010 8:50 AM CST up reply actions
Nothing wrong with complaining
unless he is not taking his own share of the responsibility. He’s a large part of the losing and seems to skim over that every time it is mentioned. Yes, he helped a lot when he came back and took minutes from Pecherov and Hollins, but taking minutes from negative contributors isn’t a great feat.
The problem is that his talk doesn't match his actions...
If he was an ultra-competitive player, he’d show it on the court by hustling on defense, making tough shots, and not caring who he had to guard. The only two guys who actually show they’re sick of losing with the way they play are Brewer and Wilkins.
by pagingstanleyroberts on Mar 12, 2010 3:17 PM CST up reply actions
I know where this opinion comes from
but I don’t really agree. I think Love is very competitive and that most players on the team play with intensity. I think Love is competitive and self-motivated enough to get down on himself when he doesn’t perform well. That is not helpful for success, but it’s not the same as being uncompetitive. While I too see some plays where he doesn’t hustle, in the half court set he works hard almost every play. The rebounds don’t magically fall in his lap; he is actually out there wrestling against big bodies on almost every play. And that’s both ends of the court. As a rebounder, you don’t really get to mail it in on many possessions, since you have to be active even if your man is not involved in the play. I do think he can develop additional skills as a help defender, but I think most of his deficiencies in this area come from indecision rather than laziness.
I see effort from most players out there, and I think skill level is more an issue for most of them. Jefferson is the guy I’m not sure about. I really think he cares when he’s out on the court, but it looks like there’s no defensive effort. I’m willing to concede it might be more related to skill and focus combined with physically being not up to it. But, I’m not really sure. Even on the offensive end he never really fight for position down low. He settles for receiving the ball too far out of the block, and may work to repost, but won’t bull himself into position. He doesn’t have the same taste for the scrum that Love or Dark have.
MN Wild fans can probably relate
Jacques LeMaire had a similar way of dealing with players when he thought they weren’t hustling or lacked focus. Several of his players whined as well…Funny, now the whiners are losing on other teams or out of the NHL, while Jacques is leading a team that gets it and has a chance to win the Stanley Cup.
Stick to your guns Rambis.
I figured someone would throw a Gaborik back at me
and I can’t disagree, but he is sooooo good it is the exception to the rule.
Also, had he bought into the LeMaire system it would have been better in the long run.
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