No Outliers Tonight

(not a compliment.)

Of Williams and Beasley. Williams played okay, and he’ll get better. But Beasley…oh, man. When he let Troy Murphy go stand under the basket, I lost it. Even when he scores well in a stretch, it doesn’t really help the team. Except for the LAC game, it’s mixed with errors and miscues and consistent non-blocking out (sorry, this part also was in the LAC game.

but I’m glad to have another game tonight. Move on. The less time spent on this one, the better.

Some nights you just get beat. Nothing was good about that one going into it; Lakers were rested, no Love, that’s obviously a tough matchup for them even in good circumstances. The result was fairly predictable.

But there is no way to get both guys out there with Love and Pek holding down their spots.

It’s really one or the other, in terms of trying to get Will or AR minutes. Pretty clear we are going with Will

But the thought seems to be Love/Pek/Williams holding down the 4/5 spots with the occassional Darko sighting in certain match-ups.

Funny thing about the Clippers/Lakers stretch. Look at our shooting percentages both nights (Combine them) and you’re short of left around our average. Combine our point differential it’s probably pretty accurate how well we match-up against these teams on an every night basis.

My long-term concern is the Wolves schedule will get kind of nasty in the 2nd half of the schedule. Even these next two road games- you’d have to be thrilled with a split. I’m off the mindset the Wolves end up between (30-33) wins for these reasons. Nothing to be depressed about. But the playoffs will probably require between (34-36) wins. I’m just not seeing the wins on the schedule.

so I could get up for my 6AM ball game but man was it ugly. I have some general thoughts

1. Pek needs to see double teams coming (or quadruple teams in one case) and pass out of it.
2. Webster is starting to play well enough that I would give him all of Johnson’s minutes; Wes can get some time in the D League.
3. Rubio knows which players have the ability to finish and he’s specifically been forcing a lot of passes to Pek lately which have resulted in some extra turnovers.
4. Pek had stone hands in the first half yesterday, very unlike him.
5. Defending really long/tall guys continues to be difficult for our team.
6. Rubio IMO is too content to just come up the court and give the ball to the other guard, I’d like to see him drive and dish just a little more often to keep defenses honest, plus if they lay off into the passing lanes he might just get some easy layups.
7. Rubio’s shot is pretty much broken when his feet aren’t set receiving the ball. He can work on that next summer.
8. Rubio’s defense picked up in the second quarter but in general he just seems to have dead legs, I think the long season and high minutes per game is getting to him.
9. DWill’s 3pt stroked seems to be recovering and he goes hard to the hoop but you gotta know Fisher is going to try and get that charge. He also needs to box out and rebound a lot better.
10. Beas… lots of long 2s but did have a couple of drives and got a few FTs… He’s much less of a train going full speed when driving compared to DWill, but if he could just manufacture some contact… his defense and boxing out were terrible. Barnes in particular thrived on the offensive glass against him.

If you want to hang your hat on “yesterday was a huge aberation”, you should choose a game that isn’t:
a) second of a back to back, on the road
b) without our best player
c) against LA, in LA, where the refs are going to make it an uphill battle regardless
etc etc…
What might even the most newbie fan expect to see from a young team? Inconsistancy. But instead of seeing it as the ups and downs of a young team it’s portrayed as "anything good is an aberaton and anything bad is regression to ‘being what you thought they were’. Kinda tiring.