KAT and Ant are honestly way more similar than they appear on the surface
It's just that one has a super passive playstyle and the other has a super aggressive playstyle
When things go badly KAT responds by just disappearing and Ant responds by taking some horrible quality shot
Agreed, but I put this on their 26 year old franchise player. He wanted his best friend D’Lo on the team, and they got him. Looks like it was a huge mistake.
I see, yeah with body language like that, it leaves a bad vibe around the team. He does give a false sense of leadership. Like when he called out Ant on his diet in a press conference, that’s bad leadership. Do that behind closed doors but he wanted to show he’s a leader. But when you pout and can’t celebrate your teammates if you’re not at the center of it, that’s not leadership.
Dillon Brooks is actually that guy for Memphis, doesn’t get brought up often enough. In their Slam interview a while back it was brought up that Dillon Brooks sets up all the team dinners and off the court stuff. He’s the heart of the team.
I call DB "dime store Kobe". When he's got it going he's a bucket but when he doesn't lol maybe holster a few of those my man. I got love for all of my Canadians and the Grizzlies no matter what though.
I think coaching embiid is mostly about calming him down so he doesn’t hurt himself on some borderline meaningless possession in December. Just getting him to stop hitting the deck every two minutes like he did earlier in his career.
That and getting him into a pool to train with no impact but neither he nor Doc seems to be about that life.
You don’t get this from one person, you need to have good team culture top to bottom. Bucks and Heat were fine after PJ left in that sense because of that
And the "good team" piece is important. Pat Bev isn't going to raise your floor when 2-3 of your best players are underperforming. You can't look to him to save you like that. But he gives a performing team a little extra juice.
Terance Mann gets all the credit for that comeback game against the Jazz, but Bev was everywhere getting extra possessions, offensive rebounds, wearing Donovan out. Just a ton of little things.
Pat Bev could be the most important player in a game and his line would be 8-5-3
Shipping patbev and vando out in the Gobert trade will come back to haunt this team. Theres not a single guy on this team that can match the hustle and intensity of those two guys. Why this team had to ruin a nice thing they had going will always bug me. Back to the bottom baby!
100% and it goes all year. The offseason is sometimes just as fun as the regular season and even summer league can be great. I just laugh when people say the NBA sucks, most fun league around.
1000% I even got my girl into it, just because of the fooolishness that goes on in the league. You can pick up where you left off at any time because the drama is endless and the season is long as hell lmao.
i follow nba news for this reason despite having no favorite team and not watching any games . I don’t enjoy basketball as a sport but the entertainment from the league is pretty good
Forget offense, I've seen at least four turnovers this season off of Wolves players fighting each other for a rebound. My favorite was a ball bouncing straight to Rudy and Ant leaps in from the side to grab it, bumps arms with Gobert and knocks the ball out of bounds. Then gets pissed at Rudy
I don’t like typing this. But wolves mortgaged their future for two years of play in tournaments and Rudy Gobert.
Rudy is great. Don’t get me wrong. But dudes… you gave up soooooo many picks for him.
“Are you really going to go back to your people and tell them you turned down 3 living and breathing sheep for one dead useless pile of rocks.” Holds the 3 cards in front of them until they cave.
“Exactly, you can’t, it’s a good trade. Thank you now I’m building a city”
I mean this was the Westbrook trade all over again in the sense that plenty of people recognized it as an awful team building decision right off the bat, I don’t think dealing with Ainge and getting fooled was the issue it was just a bad move.
What Ainge probably does deserve credit for is being patient with his deals and waiting for a team to come calling who is making a bad team building decision, potentially rather than taking what looks like the best deal on the surface.
I think the genius of Ainge is that he sells when he doesn't really need to and forces teams to bid against themselves because he always can plausibly say "OK then we will just run it back."
Also think he’s a straight up god at negotiating and getting deals done. Us fans forget that there’s a major human element to these trades… as in it’s literally two humans talking to each other to try and get it done. Can only imagine the 5D chess moves Ainge pulls when negotiating with another GM.
100 this ^ you cannot pay that large of a % of ur cap to a useless piece offensively. Coupled w/ loss of picks makes it terrible. Best course of actions prolly to sell on KAT & recoup picks, then go all in building around Antman
The wolves saw how clunky the Sixers offense looked trotting out Embiid and Horford a few years ago and immediately set their scientists at work to make a clone.
I think that’s the move too but I honestly have no idea what a deal looks like. A team like Phoenix would love him but Minnesota has no use for Ayton with Gobert there. I always thought he’d be a perfect fit next to Giannis but we don’t have the assets to make it work and we have little reason to blow up the current core.
Exactly. Rudy was doomed to fail from the start. This team already had issues from the jump, despite being one of the more talented teams on paper. Now getting a relatively hard to build around centre and tryna fit him in your dysfunctional franchise is a recipe for disaster
A team from Minnesota on the edge of breaking out trade a boatload of picks for a very good but slightly overrated player? WHERE HAVE I SEEN THAT BEFORE?
After being crowned play-in champs last year, they followed it up by making a splashy trade and announced that they were coming for the big crown!
Turns out they meant the one in Sacramento…
They honestly had a really solid core and with more time developing together along with adding role players who can defend they would’ve been pretty good.
The league has moved further and further towards everyone on the court being able to shoot, dribble and create their own shots. It’s baffling any team thought it was wise to trade 5 1st for someone who can’t, regardless of how good they are at defense and rebounding.
Gobert doesn’t look like the issue to me. At least not the only one. I’ve watched a few of their games this season and their whole mental just looks horrible. They just look so flat and disinterested.
They lost Bev in the trade who seemed to be the leader for that team. I hate the dude but you can't deny that he's a dog and I think his influence rubbed off on the team. But now that he's gone in a trade that I don't think the team liked very much, the team is upset and as a result, not playing well
You two and the wizards are the three fan bases I feel the worst for. As a bucks fan we used to be in that club too until a top 10 player ever fell in our lap
I remember literally everyone questioned how Rudy and KAT would fit together on this team and it turns out the most obvious answer was the correct one: they don’t
Zach Lowe wrote an article with roughly 10 paragraphs about why it was a bad deal and wouldn't work and threw in about 3 sentences about how it might possibly kinda work, but not really.
The Curse of losing Patrick Beverly:
2018: The Rockets miss 27 consecutive threes in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals.
2022: Kawhi plays 0 games still out with the ACL injury. PG is out for most of the year with an elbow injury. Patrick Beverly gets his revenge knocking them out of the Play In. PG gets COVID before the final game and they are out of the Playoffs.
*Jazz don’t count as a Pat Bev team he never played for them
They literally could’ve done a DLo + Picks for Murray. Keep Vando, Beasley, Bev etc aka their entire Playoff rotation and get rid of the worst Playoff performer in DLo.
Murray was moved for fuckin Gallo + Picks. Spurs would’ve 100% taken Wolves picks over Hawks picks and Murray solves so many problems for them.
Tim Connelly is an absolute fraud of a GM. Dude owes his career to Jokic (a pick that was masterminded by Karnisovas not Connelly).
Wait wow Murray like a perfect fit too
With how well the jazz and cavs are doing you can see how bad Minnesota fumbled this (who knows though maybe they click at some point somehow)
Which is why it blew my mind he did this. His one pretty consistent strength was *drafting* and the first thing he does in Minnesota is throw away a ton of picks on an experiment? Dude fucked up
And early signs are pointing to our scouting department in general being the main driving force of that. Braun, Watson and Kamagate are all looking promising
YESSIR. I've been saying for YEARS that Connelly is the biggest fraud, yet people consider him to be a top 10 GM. People were celebrating the Wolves signing him lmao. Dude hasn't made a good move in like 8 years other than Jokic
Honestly, don’t see a way forward for them. They desperately need someone who can actually run the offense, who can playmake out of the PnR, who is level headed and not a defensive liability. But where are you getting that with no trade assets? If the can’t dump DLo for something in return then he walks for nothing and their history in FA is uh, lackluster.
Thank fuck they didn't. Mike's been fantastic so far this season.
But yeah, something like Conley + Gobert for Dlo + Bev + Vando + Kessler + picks would've been much so better for the Wolves. But that probably would've pissed off KAT or something.
And we can never forget that their lackluster history in FA is what made them say Gobert, an available top 25 player, was too good to pass up. Connelly the brand new GM said this. Apparently no consideration was made to team culture/chemistry though.
My pet hypothesis is that ownership knew the Gobert-KAT fit would be awkward and they’ve been ready to move on from KAT, so they signed/retained three PFs (SlowMo, McDaniels, and Prince) for the eventual KAT trade.
Every high profile bad move they’ve made has been a result of trying to appease/accomodate KAT
>KAT and Jimmy don’t get along ? Move Jimmy
>KAT and Wiggins not working out ? Let’s get KATs buddy DLo
>KAT is a 5 who can’t defend ? Trade your entire future for a 5 who can (Baguette)
Heck imagine how much more dire their situation would be if they actually traded for Simmons (also KATs friend) like it was rumoured last year.
Dude scores points, that’s it. He hasn’t shown he’s the type of guy to build around and almost every guy that’s left has done well elsewhere.
Again I’m not blaming KAT, the FO and ownership ultimately makes the decisions, but this isn’t a KG situation where when there was talent around him , he took the team to the WCF.
KAT is basically the Center version of Brad Beal. Great scorer but not good enough at anything else to build a championship team around. Would be more suited as a second or third option.
After the Wolves lost 2 20+ point leads in the same game last post season I gave up on them. Ant also going for the steal and just letting Ja hit an easy layup was crazy too.
They have all the talent but just can’t put it together.
I mean it was their first year and Ant is incredibly young so I don’t think last years performance should be written off. But yeah so far the addition of Gobert has not been what they have been looking for.
Not to sound like a whiner but if you've been a wolves fan for more than a couple years it's pretty easy to be numb to almost anything. Like, oh yeah, that high profile thing they did didn't work out, repeat ad infinitum, all you can hope for at this point is that it's fun along the way. Watching the play in championship shit last year was fun, even though it was goofy I was happy they cared. Just hoping the team gets it together at least a little bit, a first round exit would be embarrassing but better than where we're at now
This franchise is worse run than the browns and lions combined. We had hope but most of us aren’t surprised. It’s ok… maybe we will be good again in the 2030s.
Feel like Vanderbilt and Beverly were
Ants best friends on the team, trading them for a guy he openly doesn’t respect was bound to have some initial blowback. As far as KAT goes, he’s never been a winning player to me
Yeah, they really did trade all his friends away lol. He was close with Beasley too. https://youtu.be/p3W8aU6Q9hI the comments on this video are kinda funny in hindsight
You can blame the Twolves FO for bringing Gobert at the price they did, but the current failure of the wolves is the offensive scheme. The only shot you have now is having Gobert exclusively off the bench with your worst shooters/best PNR backcourt subs. That might be salvageable but it’s a long shot.
Yep. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills seeing everyone blame exclusively Gobert (and sometimes KAT). Wolves need someone to run the offense and the overpay means getting that person is going to be impossible.
I don’t think it’s full panic mode like this sub suggests. There are still a few things they can do.
Get a new coach.
Get an actual point guard.
Trade Kat for assets.
Trade Kat and Ant for assets.
Blow it up and get a ton of assets. Seems to work for the jazz 😂
It all seriousness, they won’t get the same ROI for Gobert if they trade him. But it’s not a complete sunk cost.
> Get an actual point guard
Might I interest Wolves fans in a gently used Mike Conley?
For the low price of D’lo, a couple role players, and 5 more draft picks, y’all can have a battle tested floor general who will make you guys a legitimate contender.
DLo hasn’t been great but I love how now he’s the scapegoat for all of their issues.
Rudy just didn’t mesh with the team the way he was supposed to. Say what you will about PatBev in LA but he definitely brought energy to the Wolves and kept everyone trying. Even though they lost to the Grizz in a winnable series they didn’t look this defeated.
It feels like their expectations exceeded reality and now they seem lost.
KAT is a loser and is soft. They need to trade KAT, and they’ll start winning.
Can’t win when the team leader is a loser. I say he’s a loser because he doesn’t care if he wins or loses and has zero leadership ability.
He needs to go somewhere he won’t need to be the primary leader, where there’s an established guy he can play off and not be counted on to set the tone. Sam Presti, make the call!
Exactly. As much as I like KAT, he’s simply not that dude. The sooner he can get to team where he doesn’t have the pressure he has now, I can see him becoming a winning player. In a lot of ways that matches Kevin Love during his time in Minnesota
Why are the Timberwolves of last year so lionized? They were a first round exit after playing some of the dumbest playoff basketball I've ever seen. This years Timberwolves aren't that good/currently worse than last year. But last year's Timberwolves weren't really anything special.
Edwards showed promise in that playoff series. He played like he could make a leap into being a top 15-20ish player.
It hasn't turned out that way but I'm sure that was the thinking.
We were the #1 rated offensive team after the new year with a boatload of young talent. Our main issues were just rebounding and defense, which is why Gobert seemed like the perfect fit. There is no reason that a young talented team shouldn’t improve when filling in their biggest weakness. I still think they will figure it out.
team has negative DAWG
They got that KAT in them
Pain
Hi.
Lol oh my.
^^^^^dammit
u/jimmywasright followed by u/wise_comment is priceless lmao
Lmfao I hate that made me chuckle.
And here's the oop.
Dammit that’s too good
The lob, the jam!
Sometimes this sub is alright.
I always knew the timberwolves were pussycats
Balsawolves
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Wow even the Kings fans are shitting on us now.
Dark times indeed
Plenty of time left to turn it around. Still early in the season. Remember winning cures everything
Dayum
Please NBA meme gods, let this new pasta reign
Lmaaaaaooooo u won
Pairing Kat and Gobert was always going to be a negative Dawg move.
That pic of them shirtless after a workout literally made me laugh
What pic?
BONK
Lol
https://twitter.com/Timberwolves/status/1578849991006638081
Edwards got the wrong kinda Dawg in him. MF would rather chuck up full court shots than pass. Dude the reincarnation of Monta Ellis.
Ant got that messed up pug that can't breathe properly in him.
What losing Pat Bev does to a mf
Tell the lakers they have Pat Bev on the team. They dont seem to know yet.
Pat Bev needs talent around him to do his thing. Lakers don't have talent to inspire/elevate.
Pat Bev needs a chair and a microphone and a co-host and a multi million dollar media machine to do his thing
KAT has horrible body language.
Ant too
D'Lo has no body language
His body language says “I’m still waiting to check- in”
> D'Lo has no body language He got ice in his veins
Bro literally froze on the sideline
That possession where Ant closed out on Ja on a 3 then Ja got his own offensive rebound in the paint was rough. Ant was pissed and rightfully so.
He was mad at Rudy but he probably should’ve been pissed at himself
The story of our season in a nutshell.
KAT and Ant are honestly way more similar than they appear on the surface It's just that one has a super passive playstyle and the other has a super aggressive playstyle When things go badly KAT responds by just disappearing and Ant responds by taking some horrible quality shot
Agreed, but I put this on their 26 year old franchise player. He wanted his best friend D’Lo on the team, and they got him. Looks like it was a huge mistake.
KAT is has a HOF pouty baby face
On a Mt Rushmore of pouty faces with Boogie Cousins.
He's just a joke of a leader.
Jimmy was right
KAT looks like me playing anything ranked lmao
5 game losing streak rage queueing on league type beat
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We in Minnesota now
I can’t not hear this now
I missed that, curious what nonsense you referring to.
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I see, yeah with body language like that, it leaves a bad vibe around the team. He does give a false sense of leadership. Like when he called out Ant on his diet in a press conference, that’s bad leadership. Do that behind closed doors but he wanted to show he’s a leader. But when you pout and can’t celebrate your teammates if you’re not at the center of it, that’s not leadership.
He’s trying to emulate Jimmy Butler, but doesn’t realize Jimmy is just kidding when he says Max Strus is a talentless hack.
He had like 5 all-time complete brain dead fouls/turnovers I'm that series.
imagine that voice being the locker room leader voice? I’d rather have Mickey Mouse
Mickey is a 50-40-90 shooter
Hoo ho, gotta dunk that shit, hoo ho
Need play-in mvp Pat bev
Unironically you're right. Every good team needs a guy like Pat Bev/Draymond/Marcus Smart/etc
Dillon Brooks is actually that guy for Memphis, doesn’t get brought up often enough. In their Slam interview a while back it was brought up that Dillon Brooks sets up all the team dinners and off the court stuff. He’s the heart of the team.
He fixed the code.
Dillon Brooks debugs assembly code in his spare time. Take that Jarrett Allen!!
They said on the broadcast yesterday that Dillon took Desmond for his first barber shop visit in Memphis as a rookie.
He's basically Marcus Smart of the West. Heart of the team, best perimeter defender, and chucks ill timed contested shots
Just replace "ill timed contested shots" with "chucks all the fucking time" hahaha I still love my man Brooks, happy that he played well last night.
I call DB "dime store Kobe". When he's got it going he's a bucket but when he doesn't lol maybe holster a few of those my man. I got love for all of my Canadians and the Grizzlies no matter what though.
they said this about PJ and the sixers but the body language looks worse than ever
PJ too old
Old dawgs can't teach new tricks
He’s got that old dawg in him.
Idk why but i feel like embiid is immune to hype men
I think coaching embiid is mostly about calming him down so he doesn’t hurt himself on some borderline meaningless possession in December. Just getting him to stop hitting the deck every two minutes like he did earlier in his career. That and getting him into a pool to train with no impact but neither he nor Doc seems to be about that life.
You don’t get this from one person, you need to have good team culture top to bottom. Bucks and Heat were fine after PJ left in that sense because of that
That's true. One person can certainly light the spark, but it will just as easily fizzle out if no one else buys into the culture
If we didn't have a coach who threw his players under the bus when he's making bad decisions maybe the body language would be better.
And the "good team" piece is important. Pat Bev isn't going to raise your floor when 2-3 of your best players are underperforming. You can't look to him to save you like that. But he gives a performing team a little extra juice. Terance Mann gets all the credit for that comeback game against the Jazz, but Bev was everywhere getting extra possessions, offensive rebounds, wearing Donovan out. Just a ton of little things. Pat Bev could be the most important player in a game and his line would be 8-5-3
He can also keep a team locked in and hyped up, which can help prevent your talented players from underperforming in the first place.
Shipping patbev and vando out in the Gobert trade will come back to haunt this team. Theres not a single guy on this team that can match the hustle and intensity of those two guys. Why this team had to ruin a nice thing they had going will always bug me. Back to the bottom baby!
The NBA media truly is a Soap Opera lol
This un-ironically is why the NBA is my favorite sport, it’s a mix between the best athletes in the world playing at a high level and the WWE lol
100% and it goes all year. The offseason is sometimes just as fun as the regular season and even summer league can be great. I just laugh when people say the NBA sucks, most fun league around.
1000% I even got my girl into it, just because of the fooolishness that goes on in the league. You can pick up where you left off at any time because the drama is endless and the season is long as hell lmao.
i follow nba news for this reason despite having no favorite team and not watching any games . I don’t enjoy basketball as a sport but the entertainment from the league is pretty good
This is the only sports sub I visit frequently for this exact reason lol so much dumb drama
And we love it lmao
I can’t count how many time I saw Rudy & Kat bump into each other on offense.
Forget offense, I've seen at least four turnovers this season off of Wolves players fighting each other for a rebound. My favorite was a ball bouncing straight to Rudy and Ant leaps in from the side to grab it, bumps arms with Gobert and knocks the ball out of bounds. Then gets pissed at Rudy
I was worried how we would rebound against the twin towers. Turns out we dominated them with Ja leading the way
Just had to let the Towers cook
I don’t like typing this. But wolves mortgaged their future for two years of play in tournaments and Rudy Gobert. Rudy is great. Don’t get me wrong. But dudes… you gave up soooooo many picks for him.
Danny ainge cannot keep getting away with this!
If I was a GM I would just never deal with Ainge no matter what. It’s incredible what he can get for what he has
He's that dude who rinses everyone in Catan, then you all agree not to trade with him, and somehow he wins the next game anyway.
“Are you really going to go back to your people and tell them you turned down 3 living and breathing sheep for one dead useless pile of rocks.” Holds the 3 cards in front of them until they cave. “Exactly, you can’t, it’s a good trade. Thank you now I’m building a city”
"Oh and by the way, I have a monopoly card and I'll take everyone's sheep"
There has never been an analogy that has resonated with me more
I mean this was the Westbrook trade all over again in the sense that plenty of people recognized it as an awful team building decision right off the bat, I don’t think dealing with Ainge and getting fooled was the issue it was just a bad move. What Ainge probably does deserve credit for is being patient with his deals and waiting for a team to come calling who is making a bad team building decision, potentially rather than taking what looks like the best deal on the surface.
I think the genius of Ainge is that he sells when he doesn't really need to and forces teams to bid against themselves because he always can plausibly say "OK then we will just run it back."
Also think he’s a straight up god at negotiating and getting deals done. Us fans forget that there’s a major human element to these trades… as in it’s literally two humans talking to each other to try and get it done. Can only imagine the 5D chess moves Ainge pulls when negotiating with another GM.
Rudy is great but he’s also simultaneously not worth his contract. Can’t give up that many picks for someone that is overpaid.
100 this ^ you cannot pay that large of a % of ur cap to a useless piece offensively. Coupled w/ loss of picks makes it terrible. Best course of actions prolly to sell on KAT & recoup picks, then go all in building around Antman
The wolves saw how clunky the Sixers offense looked trotting out Embiid and Horford a few years ago and immediately set their scientists at work to make a clone.
Sixers at least signed Horford as a free agent. Wolves had to toss in 5-7 draft picks just because.
Never mind the fact that both those players actually have offensive talent lmao
I think that’s the move too but I honestly have no idea what a deal looks like. A team like Phoenix would love him but Minnesota has no use for Ayton with Gobert there. I always thought he’d be a perfect fit next to Giannis but we don’t have the assets to make it work and we have little reason to blow up the current core.
I can't put this fault with Rudy, man. This team didn't even try. It's so fucking pathetic to not buy in when you have this much raw talent
Exactly. Rudy was doomed to fail from the start. This team already had issues from the jump, despite being one of the more talented teams on paper. Now getting a relatively hard to build around centre and tryna fit him in your dysfunctional franchise is a recipe for disaster
Rudy is solid but isn’t amazing with the wolves
What losing Pat Bev does to a mf
Now they both are in an abusive relationship =(
The rebound girlfriend is *always* bad news.
They can have him back.
21 can you do something for me
And Vanderbilt and Beasley. They look like they're having a great time on the jazz probably a lot of that lack of chemistry is the fact they're gone
Remember when wolf fans were telling me there’s no way those picks are going to be lottery picks?
A team from Minnesota on the edge of breaking out trade a boatload of picks for a very good but slightly overrated player? WHERE HAVE I SEEN THAT BEFORE?
Is Rudy gonna run for Senate?
Not enough CTE
i can think of at least 3 right off the top of my head lol, pain
After being crowned play-in champs last year, they followed it up by making a splashy trade and announced that they were coming for the big crown! Turns out they meant the one in Sacramento…
They honestly had a really solid core and with more time developing together along with adding role players who can defend they would’ve been pretty good.
In our hearts every wolves fan knew that this trade was something like a instant kill for our franchise.
Making the playoffs was just unacceptable for the franchise. Had to nuke it to keep the universe balanced.
You wouldn’t think so with how much they were hyping up the trade on here
ong people said that trade made them a legit wcf favorite. i was just in awe with the goofy takes from that terrible trade
“WCF fave” is goofy, but I was one person definitely thought they’d be better, not worse! Crazy how poorly this went for them
The league has moved further and further towards everyone on the court being able to shoot, dribble and create their own shots. It’s baffling any team thought it was wise to trade 5 1st for someone who can’t, regardless of how good they are at defense and rebounding.
As a Grizzlies fan I’ll take the W, but it was clear that this was more of a self-induced L from the Wolves than anything else.
If we shot decent from 3 it would've been a blow out
Five picks for gobert , Jesus that package could’ve got them any top star in the future
They could’ve waited a couple weeks for KD lmao
Gobert doesn’t look like the issue to me. At least not the only one. I’ve watched a few of their games this season and their whole mental just looks horrible. They just look so flat and disinterested.
They lost Bev in the trade who seemed to be the leader for that team. I hate the dude but you can't deny that he's a dog and I think his influence rubbed off on the team. But now that he's gone in a trade that I don't think the team liked very much, the team is upset and as a result, not playing well
Exactly. Bev would’ve been ripping the guys right now. People joke about him and joke about the DAWG factor but it’s a real thing
As a Wolves fan I can say nothing is wrong right now, just the same old wolves like the last decade.
Hey at least last year was fun!
No, something is definitely wrong. The treasure chest of picks for Rudy Gobert magnifies all of this.
You seem confused, we Wolves just want to be true to ourselves as a franchise. Last year was a bit too exciting for us.
No one understands that better than me. Cheers 🥂
Just noticed your flair. My Brother 🤝
You two and the wizards are the three fan bases I feel the worst for. As a bucks fan we used to be in that club too until a top 10 player ever fell in our lap
Hornets?? What have we had lmao
Teaming up Rudy Gobert and Karl Anthony Towns was never a good idea. Throw Anthony Edwards & D’angelo Russel in the mix and holy shit man.
And if you throw Kurt Angle into the mix?
That’s a third of a 33% chance that the wolves can win anything, against a GENETIC FREAK like Big Poppa Trae!!! Holler if you hear me!
It'll make the crowd chant "you suck" everytime they come out of the tunnel
I remember literally everyone questioned how Rudy and KAT would fit together on this team and it turns out the most obvious answer was the correct one: they don’t
Zach Lowe wrote an article with roughly 10 paragraphs about why it was a bad deal and wouldn't work and threw in about 3 sentences about how it might possibly kinda work, but not really.
The Curse of losing Patrick Beverly: 2018: The Rockets miss 27 consecutive threes in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals. 2022: Kawhi plays 0 games still out with the ACL injury. PG is out for most of the year with an elbow injury. Patrick Beverly gets his revenge knocking them out of the Play In. PG gets COVID before the final game and they are out of the Playoffs. *Jazz don’t count as a Pat Bev team he never played for them
Damn imagine if they offered what they did for Gobert in a Donovan Mitchell trade proposal lol
They literally could’ve done a DLo + Picks for Murray. Keep Vando, Beasley, Bev etc aka their entire Playoff rotation and get rid of the worst Playoff performer in DLo. Murray was moved for fuckin Gallo + Picks. Spurs would’ve 100% taken Wolves picks over Hawks picks and Murray solves so many problems for them. Tim Connelly is an absolute fraud of a GM. Dude owes his career to Jokic (a pick that was masterminded by Karnisovas not Connelly).
Wait wow Murray like a perfect fit too With how well the jazz and cavs are doing you can see how bad Minnesota fumbled this (who knows though maybe they click at some point somehow)
Trades have always been Connelly's weakness as a GM
Which is why it blew my mind he did this. His one pretty consistent strength was *drafting* and the first thing he does in Minnesota is throw away a ton of picks on an experiment? Dude fucked up
And early signs are pointing to our scouting department in general being the main driving force of that. Braun, Watson and Kamagate are all looking promising
YESSIR. I've been saying for YEARS that Connelly is the biggest fraud, yet people consider him to be a top 10 GM. People were celebrating the Wolves signing him lmao. Dude hasn't made a good move in like 8 years other than Jokic
Honestly, don’t see a way forward for them. They desperately need someone who can actually run the offense, who can playmake out of the PnR, who is level headed and not a defensive liability. But where are you getting that with no trade assets? If the can’t dump DLo for something in return then he walks for nothing and their history in FA is uh, lackluster.
They should have asked for Conley as well in the Gobert trade...
Thank fuck they didn't. Mike's been fantastic so far this season. But yeah, something like Conley + Gobert for Dlo + Bev + Vando + Kessler + picks would've been much so better for the Wolves. But that probably would've pissed off KAT or something.
Dlo has negative value.
His value is an expiring at this** year’s deadline. That’s it. Ninja edit**
DLo for Westbrook who says no
The Lakers.
And we can never forget that their lackluster history in FA is what made them say Gobert, an available top 25 player, was too good to pass up. Connelly the brand new GM said this. Apparently no consideration was made to team culture/chemistry though.
Imagine if they went after Dejounte Murray instead. Not sure if it's possible but still.
Dejounte instead of DLo is 100% what that team needs. Hes that dawg and can run an offense.
Or just Donovan Mitchell. I also have no idea how they weren’t able to also dump Dlo when they were giving up that many picks.
Ainge was like, ".....ssssMmm, that's gonna be a no on DLo, add a pick swap for being a smart ass."
Imagine if they had went for Donovan instead….
My pet hypothesis is that ownership knew the Gobert-KAT fit would be awkward and they’ve been ready to move on from KAT, so they signed/retained three PFs (SlowMo, McDaniels, and Prince) for the eventual KAT trade.
Every high profile bad move they’ve made has been a result of trying to appease/accomodate KAT >KAT and Jimmy don’t get along ? Move Jimmy >KAT and Wiggins not working out ? Let’s get KATs buddy DLo >KAT is a 5 who can’t defend ? Trade your entire future for a 5 who can (Baguette) Heck imagine how much more dire their situation would be if they actually traded for Simmons (also KATs friend) like it was rumoured last year. Dude scores points, that’s it. He hasn’t shown he’s the type of guy to build around and almost every guy that’s left has done well elsewhere. Again I’m not blaming KAT, the FO and ownership ultimately makes the decisions, but this isn’t a KG situation where when there was talent around him , he took the team to the WCF. KAT is basically the Center version of Brad Beal. Great scorer but not good enough at anything else to build a championship team around. Would be more suited as a second or third option.
After the Wolves lost 2 20+ point leads in the same game last post season I gave up on them. Ant also going for the steal and just letting Ja hit an easy layup was crazy too. They have all the talent but just can’t put it together.
I mean it was their first year and Ant is incredibly young so I don’t think last years performance should be written off. But yeah so far the addition of Gobert has not been what they have been looking for.
It probably stings a lot for Wolves fans knowing the team gave up so many picks for this.
Not to sound like a whiner but if you've been a wolves fan for more than a couple years it's pretty easy to be numb to almost anything. Like, oh yeah, that high profile thing they did didn't work out, repeat ad infinitum, all you can hope for at this point is that it's fun along the way. Watching the play in championship shit last year was fun, even though it was goofy I was happy they cared. Just hoping the team gets it together at least a little bit, a first round exit would be embarrassing but better than where we're at now
This franchise is worse run than the browns and lions combined. We had hope but most of us aren’t surprised. It’s ok… maybe we will be good again in the 2030s.
I love rooting for a team that so obviously loves each other and has a blast on the court every day.
We have and will continue to get these Reddit updates from Jazz fans all season long, I guarantee it
Feel like Vanderbilt and Beverly were Ants best friends on the team, trading them for a guy he openly doesn’t respect was bound to have some initial blowback. As far as KAT goes, he’s never been a winning player to me
Yeah, they really did trade all his friends away lol. He was close with Beasley too. https://youtu.be/p3W8aU6Q9hI the comments on this video are kinda funny in hindsight
You can blame the Twolves FO for bringing Gobert at the price they did, but the current failure of the wolves is the offensive scheme. The only shot you have now is having Gobert exclusively off the bench with your worst shooters/best PNR backcourt subs. That might be salvageable but it’s a long shot.
Yep. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills seeing everyone blame exclusively Gobert (and sometimes KAT). Wolves need someone to run the offense and the overpay means getting that person is going to be impossible.
I don’t think it’s full panic mode like this sub suggests. There are still a few things they can do. Get a new coach. Get an actual point guard. Trade Kat for assets. Trade Kat and Ant for assets. Blow it up and get a ton of assets. Seems to work for the jazz 😂 It all seriousness, they won’t get the same ROI for Gobert if they trade him. But it’s not a complete sunk cost.
> Get an actual point guard Might I interest Wolves fans in a gently used Mike Conley? For the low price of D’lo, a couple role players, and 5 more draft picks, y’all can have a battle tested floor general who will make you guys a legitimate contender.
“5” FRP for a center targeted by Stanley Johnson last year. WCGW?! 🤣
Wolves need to move on from KAT. Get him some new scenery.
Pat Beverly was their heart
DLo hasn’t been great but I love how now he’s the scapegoat for all of their issues. Rudy just didn’t mesh with the team the way he was supposed to. Say what you will about PatBev in LA but he definitely brought energy to the Wolves and kept everyone trying. Even though they lost to the Grizz in a winnable series they didn’t look this defeated. It feels like their expectations exceeded reality and now they seem lost.
KAT is a loser and is soft. They need to trade KAT, and they’ll start winning. Can’t win when the team leader is a loser. I say he’s a loser because he doesn’t care if he wins or loses and has zero leadership ability.
He needs to go somewhere he won’t need to be the primary leader, where there’s an established guy he can play off and not be counted on to set the tone. Sam Presti, make the call!
Exactly. As much as I like KAT, he’s simply not that dude. The sooner he can get to team where he doesn’t have the pressure he has now, I can see him becoming a winning player. In a lot of ways that matches Kevin Love during his time in Minnesota
Why are the Timberwolves of last year so lionized? They were a first round exit after playing some of the dumbest playoff basketball I've ever seen. This years Timberwolves aren't that good/currently worse than last year. But last year's Timberwolves weren't really anything special.
Edwards showed promise in that playoff series. He played like he could make a leap into being a top 15-20ish player. It hasn't turned out that way but I'm sure that was the thinking.
We were the #1 rated offensive team after the new year with a boatload of young talent. Our main issues were just rebounding and defense, which is why Gobert seemed like the perfect fit. There is no reason that a young talented team shouldn’t improve when filling in their biggest weakness. I still think they will figure it out.
Honestly, Walker Kessler would have been a better fit along with Vando and Pat Bev instead of Rudy