Wolves Updates 8/27 Part 2
by SG on Aug 27, 2010 6:04 PM CDT
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Love and Rubio in FIBA World Championship and more
From Jonah Ballow/Timberwolves site: Love, Team USA Prepare for Worlds
Krzyzewski discussed Love's role following the impressive showing against Greece, "Not so much his standing but the fact that we can use him at different times. It’s not going to be always Tyson (Chandler) coming in for Lamar (Odom), it depends on situations. But he had a very strong performance. I thought Danny (Granger) did a good job too… it’s tough to play everybody. I thought they showed great attitudes, we’re in good health, and it will be situational with those guys."
Moving forward, Love adds an important dimension to a team that only features one 7-footer. Obviously, his rebounding efficiency is a valued attribute but Love also creates offensive scoring opportunities with his passing ability. On the defensive end of the floor, expect Love to jump in front of streaking opponents inside the FIBA's trapezoid lane.
"He's the only guy on our team that takes charges, and can get in the post, and put a body on some of these international fours and fives that are big and strong. He's going to help us down the road, coming up," Ronzone said.
From Henry Abbott/TrueHoop: 10 Things to Watch in the World Championships
2. Ricky Rubio unleashed
Although Minnesota general manager David Kahn has been maligned for picking a player who stayed overseas, the truth is that Rubio is developing nicely, and his rights may be the Timberwolves' most important basketball asset.
One of the sad things about this tournament is the great many players who will miss it due to injury, and Spanish point guard Jose Calderon is near the top of those who will be missed.
However, having the young and flashy Rubio as the unquestioned leader of one of the tournament's best teams will make for good viewing, and good basketball.
From Jerry Zgoda's twitter account:
#Timberwolves will face Tyreke-less Kings in season opener. Evans gets 1 game NBA suspension today for his reckless driver arrest
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Bring me the head of DMC!
Breaking down cognitive dissonance and group think since gasoline was cheap.
by Flagrant on Aug 27, 2010 6:12 PM CDT reply actions 1 recs
Pekovic
will out ugly DMC!
Breaking down cognitive dissonance and group think since gasoline was cheap.
by Flagrant on Aug 27, 2010 6:13 PM CDT reply actions 1 recs
Heck Yes
DMC will score, but Darko will defend solidly and Pekovic will beat DMC up on offense. I don’t know this, I just predict it.
by 123farve567-612 on Aug 27, 2010 7:27 PM CDT up reply actions
Love is better than Odom and Chandler
Especially in this format, with defense being keyed by the quickness of our wings, not by strength or size advantages from our big men. I’m confident he’ll outplay them when given the opportunity; I just hope Krzyzewski isn’t too stubborn to reward him with more playing time.
Pekovic dropped 18
in a game last night against Italy, Montenegro lost by 1, 72-71. Andrea Bargnani had 34 points for Italy. Pek also played 32 minutes in the game, but only had 5 rebounds, Bargnani had 4.
by NorthernLights666 on Aug 27, 2010 7:54 PM CDT reply actions
What's up with Pek's lack of rebounding?
He doesn’t look soft. Are there fewer missed shots in Euro games?
Examing him in most video,
when the ball is up for rebound, Pekovic will jump for the ball, instead the ball will bounce over him.
SnP posted a link on FanShot about Pekovic’s scouting report;
http://nbaplaybook.com/2010/07/26/overseas-scouting-report-nikola-pekovic/
needs to box out
and push his man away from the ball with his strength and let the ball come to him. I don’t think its effort, but just technique.
No one is getting Rubio's rights unless they pry them from our cold dead fingers.
by TheEvilProfessor on Aug 28, 2010 10:03 AM CDT up reply actions
Good thing we have
Rambis, Laimbeer, and Love to teach him.
by NorthernLights666 on Aug 28, 2010 1:38 PM CDT up reply actions
Rebounding in Europe
Pace is significantly slower. Plus, we play only 40 minutes a game. The average Euroleague game had 71,44 possessions per team last season, in the NBA it was ca. 95 if I remember correctly. EL teams have a 3FGA/FGA ratio of ca. 34 percent, so the nature of the missed shot is a little different too. I don’t know how exactly that influences big man rebounding though. There’s the consesus that long shots produce long rebounds, but there’s no data on that. I only read on 82games once that close range shots and three point shots produce a significantly higher number of offensive rebounds than midrange shots. Well, the midrange game is virtually non-existent in Europe.
Looking at Pek’s rebounding percentage in the Euroleague last season:
OR% 9,990; DR% 10,801; TR% 10,415
That’s bad, there’s no way around it.
by in-the-game on Aug 28, 2010 6:02 AM CDT up reply actions 1 recs
Agree
Unfortunately we can’t use the quirks in the Euro game to explain away Pek’s poor rebounding. All you have to do is look at his own team and see that he’s usually the 3rd or 4th best rebounder, which is pretty sad considering the fact he’s probably their biggest, strongest player. You’d think with his build, he could easily hold position on the defensive glass and snag rebounds without even leaving the floor. I can’t believe a coach hasn’t worked with him on this. It’s amazing how he is so good at using his body to seal off his man and create space on offense, yet completely abandons this strategy on the glass. Weird.
by Rascal Flatts on Aug 28, 2010 10:03 AM CDT up reply actions
Nice summary.
I can’t remember ever seeing you around here before, but if you’ve got more where that came from, I hope you stick around.
Yes- It's a Welcome Change from the Standard Commentary
“Love is Fat”
“DMC is Fat”
“Love’s a 6th Man”
“You must not watch the games”
by Jose Cordoba on Aug 28, 2010 12:37 PM CDT up reply actions
On a Unrelated Note
The last two FIBA games show Kevin Love’s value as a Complimentary Player. If you surrond him with talent- he’s a historically great rebounder.
by Jose Cordoba on Aug 28, 2010 12:42 PM CDT up reply actions
How historically great?
Well, I’ll tell you.
There were 73 missed shots in today’s game and 21 missed free throws. Because I’m not willing to go through the play-by-play and pick out each missed free throw on its own, we will assume:
A) 11 of the 21 missed free throws were available to be rebounded.
B) Teams created rebound opportunities at the same rate with Love in the game as with Love out.
That’s 73 + 11 = 84 rebound opportunities and 13 minutes for Love / 40 minutes in the game = .325. 84 * .325 = 27.3 rebound opportunities. Love had 10 rebounds, which means his total rebound percentage was 10 / 27.3 = 36.6%. Holy crap!
Follow up
The best single-season rebound percentage since the stat began in ‘70-’71 belongs to Dennis Rodman in ‘94-’95, 29.7%. His second best ever was 26.6%. In fact, Rodman holds the eight highest recorded rebound percentages in history. The best non-Rodman rebound percentage was Jayson Williams in ‘95-’96 with 23.8%. Love wins.
Follow-UP
Surrond Love with Joe Dumars, Isaiah Thomas, David Robinson, Scottie Pippen, or Micheal Jordan. This says nothing about Love being 4 years younger than Rodman was a Rookie- Currently.
What would K.Love’s Rebound Rate be surronded by this type of talent? This is why I get such a kick from people on here comparing his game to Eduardo Najera.
by Jose Cordoba on Aug 28, 2010 6:14 PM CDT up reply actions
WTF Evans?
1 game? Are they serious? He could have very easily killed someone. Combined with the VERY public nature of his recklessness, and the general bad PR for the league that represents, I would have expected more.
Is it just me? I feel like he should have gotten at least 5-10 games for that crap. No wonder players pull crap like that, they don’t have any real consequences.
And if you had been speeding
would your employer make you take a day off?
This is just more of David Stern making professional athletes live by Women’s Christian Temperance Union rules. Treating grown men like children while paying them as if they were gods.
No autopsy, no foul.
It wasn’t just speeding, it was reckless driving. It also was on tv and it gave a bad name to the Kings and the NBA (his employers). There are plenty of people who get fired for doing damage to their company names.
Really?
When’s the last time you heard about a high speed chase in which they told you who the speeder worked for?
Back in the day I wrote over 7,000 resumes for clients. Yes, people do get fired for their personal conduct but those firings are usually illegal, invariably tied to drug or sex crimes, and almost always speak to the unprofessional nature of the employer.
Celebrity status doesn’t wash either. Would Lindsay Lohan have been fired from a movie in progress if she’d been driving Evans’ car? I highly doubt it. Would Wimbleton force a tennis player to forfeit a game because of speeding? Has any PGA golfer ever been suspended for personal conduct not related to the game?
American professional team sports are the original nanny state. Owners take kids from the ghetto and try to turn them into model citizens and then punish them when they come up short. The NFL at least only suspends players for outright felonies, not misdemeanors.
No autopsy, no foul.
There are plenty of places where the newspapers report everyone that has been arrested. I lived in one of those places and people did get fired for things like that. I also speak from experience when a year ago my wife and I were hit by someone who was driving recklessly, he almost smashed into my wifes door and our car was totalled. He was supposed to start a new job the next day and they found out about it and they let him go.
And besides, Evans did end up in the news and we even got to see video of what he was doing. If he wouldn’t have been caught or if it hadn’t become public knowledge it would be a different story but we aren’tlaying “what if”.
Now I'm really curious
as to where you live. I wasn’t citing small town rules. I grew up on a farm in a rural part of Iowa and understand how the gossips rule in small communities, and that small town newspapers publish all the arrests. That’s not typical of metropolitan areas which, after all, are where most people live.
No autopsy, no foul.
I have lived all over the US. The place where I have seen the police records was in Minot, ND. They do that all over ND. Where I live now is Richmond, VA and I am not sure how his company found out about about the accident. He probably had his licence taken away and he might have needed it for the job, he also was driving without car insurance.
I was in public accounting
after every busy season, we had to go to a late spring or early summer training course for our continuing education credits. Every year, some staff would go all college days on a town and give our accounting firm a bad name. Several were let go of every year for a couple of years. They then banned hard booze at the company functions.
Most people don’t get sent home for a day…they just get fired.
No one is getting Rubio's rights unless they pry them from our cold dead fingers.
by TheEvilProfessor on Aug 28, 2010 4:24 PM CDT up reply actions
That's directly work related
How often did that firm fire people for getting drunk after work when not at business functions?
The new hire fired in Richmond though was nailed because employment is at will and in your first 90 days especially it’s very easy to be fired without recourse.
Anyhow I got out of the career support racket because employers don’t play by the rules/law any more anyhow.
And the bottom line to all of that is that it’s probably wise to live your life just the way your boss lives his/hers, or better. One of the “changes” that got me to retire from resume writing was finding out that federal agency promotions in MN were being impacted by which church the employee attended services at.
And that’s about as off topic as it gets!
No autopsy, no foul.
all of this was after hours or on the weekends
and not work related. People would get hammered at a function and then leave, cause some drama around town and create too high of a profile to draw attention to themselves.
No one is getting Rubio's rights unless they pry them from our cold dead fingers.
by TheEvilProfessor on Aug 30, 2010 9:11 AM CDT up reply actions
so basically Pek is just a flat out shitty rebounder
that kinda sucks. was hoping he would develop into our starting C, since he’s easily offensively better than Darko. good thing we got the white hope to eat up 14 or so a game.
I kinda got the sense
that rebounding at the level of Love in Europe is something of a lost art. And I’m probably mistaken about this, but I thought that the video analysis of Pek linked to earlier suggests that the reason for poor rebounding is more often just poor positioning or mistiming. These are things that should be easily improved upon (although the proof in that pudding will be Darko).
Doing a quick BBall-Ref search of Euro-Centers off the top of my head compared to some Wolves players (in bold), though, reveals this:
Rodman – career 23.4 TRB%
(Kevin Love – career 21.2 TRB%)
Biedrins – career 18.4 TRB%
Sabonis – career 17.7 TRB%
(Big Al – career 17.7 TRB%)
Zaza Pachulia – career 15.5 TRB%
Vlade – career 15.4 TRB%
(Kandi – career 14.9 TRB%)
Darko – career 13.8 TRB%
Luc Longley – (OK, not Euro, but still) career 13.4 TRB%
Rasho – career 13.3 TRB%
Rik Smits – career 13.3 TRB%
Nenad Krstic – career 12.6 TRB%
Stan Love – career 12.4 TRB%
Bargnani – career 9.8 TRB%
Not sure if this means anything other than that Darko compares reasonably well as a rebounder to solid backups and spot starters around the league as a big man rebounder. Again, not to get back into this argument again, but the idea with starting Darko from Rambis’ perspective is that his defensive and passing abilities make him more valuable to us in our system. If that baby hook ever starts to fall regularly Darko will be legit starting material league-wide. Also, was amazed to see that Darko is a better rebounder than Rasho, although to be fair Rasho’s numbers while with us were closer to 15% than his career average. Still, I consider Rasho the best center in Wolves history, so I’m surprised.
"Styx might be the mullet of bands."
Jefferson
I think the one thing we shouldn’t underestimate was Jefferson’s work on the defensive glass. I really think we could get exposed on the O-glass by opponents this season, especially when Love is out of the game.
by Rascal Flatts on Aug 28, 2010 10:07 AM CDT up reply actions
I'm worried about this too.
Beasley and Wes Johnson were phenomenal rebounders at their position in college. One of them will need to find a way to carry that production over to the next level.
What i've gathered
Through reading articles is that Pekovic (or Shrekovic as i like to say) has a great post game that makes up for that. In other words he does the things K Love is weak at ,good ol fashion bodybanging in the post. Something we lost with big Als departure. Maybe they can learn from eachother.
by bringthesun on Aug 28, 2010 6:50 AM CDT via mobile reply actions
Which is why he is best used off the bench
He appears to be a monster on offense, but then has some real blind spots like rebounding.
by Rascal Flatts on Aug 28, 2010 10:06 AM CDT up reply actions
I Come to CH for Hoops Talk
But I stay for the Fashion Chat (can’t believe those prices on Oakey Sunglasses and Nike Shox!
Is just disinformation…
by Son of Gerald Green on Aug 28, 2010 5:02 PM CDT reply actions
A little Gay-Love in the highlights
A Kevin Love outlet being dunked by Rudy Gay.
by Ski U Mah Gopher on Aug 28, 2010 6:28 PM CDT reply actions
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