Yes. What really propelled the Bulls in 88 into the 2nd round of the playoffs was ROOKIE Grant's 7ppg and ROOKIE Pippen's 7ppg. Rather than MJ's 35ppg.
So, more than 2 seasons in, what's going on in Minnesota? - The team is sitting at .500, after finally having a relatively healthy season. The team should be better judging by their point differential, but their history of blowing close games is becoming a trend and hard to dismiss as a coincidence. - Rubio has essentially the same strengths and weaknesses. He also gets benched a lot for JJ Barea. - The pre-Adelman legacy continues to haunt the Wolves (using top picks on Jonny Flynn, Derrick Williams and Wes Johnson still hurts the team, for example). But the team also has Adelman and Flip Saunders' stamp on it already: Chase Budinger (acquired in a trade for a draft pick that turned out to be Terrence Jones) and Kevin Martin are "Adelman guys." Derrick Williams was traded for Mbah a Mute, who isn't getting much use. Shabazz Muhammed and Giorgi Dieng were Saunders draft picks, when he traded Trey Burke for these draft picks. - Adelman may retired after this season-- both he and the team have the right to opt out of the final year of his contract this summer.
smh at the clowns in this thread trying to take shots at Adelman. For a coach thats proven to be as good as he has over 2 decades, people are blaming him for the faults of the T-Wolves. These parrots probably don't even watch the games.
I love RA, but I do criticize him for getting "his guys" paid money they are not worth. Brad Miller, Kevin Martin, Chase Buddinger. The problem with the wolves started when they hitched their future to a player who happens to be the worst shooter in NBA history. He's Dennis Rodman bad.
I've noticed he's getting benched a lot in the 4th quarter of close games in favor of Barea. Their was that crazy stat at the beginning of the year where he was he 4 pts total in all their close losses decided by 4 pts or less (11 games).
Who do you blame (or credit) for Budinger and Kevin Martin? Is it not safe to think that Rick had a hand in these decisions? Whose decision is it to sit Rubio for Barea? Isn't it up to the head coach? Adelman is better than the guy he replaced, but if he is responsible for something, should we ignore it just because he did a good job in prior stops? The thing is, there is almost no argument that Barea is better than Rubio. Look at raw +/-, or RAPM or any statistical or non-statistical information out there, Rubio is just a better player. Barea just kind of sucks. He takes a lot of shots and hits some, but his overall scoring efficiency is actually quite low-- TS% of .480.
I blame the piss poor team thats assembled. The parts don't fit and their starting PG is one of biggest liabilities in the league. The whole is usually greater than the sum of the parts, but in this case it is a complete disaster and much worse. KL while amazing, is a piss poor leader that stat pads to a shameless extent. That hawks game yesterday should be evidence enough. At the end of the day he just stands there acting like its not his fault either, I'm really starting to think he's not the player we all thought he was.
-Adelman has a hand in "assembling" this team. He's been around for 2.5 years and numerous roster changes have been made on his watch and likely with his substantial input (which he asked for when signing with them). By now, it's Adelman's roster to a significant extent. - Ricky Rubio is a fine talent despite his lack of scoring. The team is substantially better with him on the floor. No way should JJ Barea be getting 38% of the PG minutes, including a ton of crunch time minutes, over Rubio on a long term basis. - Adelman had a similar problem in Houston of sticking with certain players too long. In 2010-11, the team was consistently horrible with Jordan Hill and post-injury Aaron Brooks (look at their on/off +/- on the season) and yet they kept on getting minutes. These minutes were a big part of what led to the team missing the playoffs. This kind of stuff is why I think it is valid for Morey to push for Chris Finch and more analytics being included in coaching decisions.
Maybe JJ Barea is like Adelman's new Brooks Although Adelman's a great coach, I always had a problem with him playing his favorites over what's best for the team especially when his favorites usually plays non defense.
Rubio is a backup point guard. When you suck at scoring that much, you should be relegated to the bench. He makes Pat Beverly look like Ty Lawson. Love will never win a championship as the best player. He needs to play next to a shot blocking center where his skill (defensive rebounding and space eating) will play into letting the center roam and be aggressive blocking shots. Yes, he is perfect for us. RA isn't bad but personally I am more of a fan of Lurch.
RA is a fair coach. I'm with you - Lurch is better. Not sure either of them is one of the greats of the league, but neither one is in the toilet either. Problem with Adelman's system is shown up in close games. All the good teams go to ISO plays in the last minute or so of a tight contest in order to eliminate turnovers, expose a mismatch, and actually get a shot up. Adelman doesn't have 'that guy' who can make his own shot from outside the arc, so he's stuck trying to run a 'system play' - which, unfortunately, doesn't seem to work so well in the last minutes (different officiating? Not sure why, just that's the way it goes). Kevin Love definitely needs to play next to an 'eraser'. His D is very poor, and offers nothing in the 'guarding the rim' side of things. Needs to be next to someone elite in that area to succeed.
While I love Pekovic and Love, they are just a bad combination. Put either next to a shotblocker and you have a great frontcourt. Adelman has been Using Pekovic to little last year, I watched a lot of Wolves last year, this year not so much so I do not know if Adelman had been using Pekovic right. The wolves are just a badly assembled team with a coach who does not use them properly (atleast last year).
The end of Rick and Ricky <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Likely. Hard to handicap. Don't see it taking all 2 weeks though. RT <a href="https://twitter.com/twolvesfan">@twolvesfan</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/DarrenWolfson">@DarrenWolfson</a> Expect Adelman out by this time next week?</p>— Darren Wolfson (@DarrenWolfson) <a href="https://twitter.com/DarrenWolfson/statuses/454600227341611008">April 11, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
