what happened to the T-wolves?? 2 words: Kevin Martin Hes cooled off: 14.5ppg on 39% shooting, 29% from 3 in the month of December People asked why Presti didnt re-sign K-Mart this summer??? THIS IS WHY!!!!!! Cant go long term with a 30 y/o SG who is injury prone, inconsistent, allergic to defense, and imo reached his ceiling
Rubio is overrated. Love doesn't make as big of an impact because you can't throw the ball to him and let him work. He's a Millsap on turbo with a better 3pt shot. You also can't throw the ball to Martin and let him work. He needs to play off the ball and have someone create for him. Basically there is no real threat on this team to create something for himself or his teammate out of nothing, and be a triple threat himself.
Skip called him out on twitter today too "Kevin Love goes scoreless in 4th as TWolves lose at Lakers. Too often he comes up small down the stretch. Star, not superstar."
This again and again. I used to be a bit critical of Love, but there is literally no clear second option on the team. Rubio is shockingly bad, I just don't get fascination with him. He just cannot score the ball, like historically horrible.
I disagree pekovic could amd should be that guy. But adelma is using him wrong. Rick has no clue how to use a low post scorer.
Umm Rondo career shooting percentage is 48%. He's shot over 50% twice in his career. Just because his jumper is not good doesn't mean his percentage is low like Rubio
Combination of things. Tough schedule, Kevin Martin is in a bit of a slump, and there is a lack of depth. Once the schedule softens up a bit and Budinger comes back I could see them getting hot again.
The difference between Rubio and players like Rondo and Kidd is the ability to get to the rim and finish.
this is one of those perception vs reality things. the wolves are actually 10th in defensive efficiency right now. they are also 10th in offensive efficiency. the perception is love/rubio/martin is great for offense but kills your defense but it isn't playing out that way. we see this a lot. golden state is often thought of as a high-scoring, great shooting team who needs to learn to play defense. they are actually 7th in defense and 13th in offense. they need to get better at offense actually. those 2000's denver teams with melo and iverson were always thought of as these great offensive teams that never played D. in reality they were a fast-paced team that took a lot of jumpers and they were fairly balanced between O and D. people thought when we got adelman that our D fell off big time from jvg, and yet we actually were 2nd and 4th in D the first 2 years under adelman. minny's two biggest problems right now seem to be a) everybody not named love/pekovic/martin has a horrible true shooting percentage. they have 3 guys playing sizable minutes in rubio, cunningham, and barea and rubio's 46.6 TS% is actually the highest of the 3. that is atrocious. and brewer's 51.5 TS% isn't great given that he takes more than 10 shots a game. b) their predicted win loss right now is 16-11. so they seem to be somewhat unlucky in their actual win/loss record at the minute.
With Love and Martin hey have the 2 biggest providers of empty stats in the NBA. Love is not a go to scorer, and he plays bad defense. He is a great player, just not nearly as good as his gaudy stats would suggest. We all saw what Martin is. Awful D, decent scoring, and a disappearing act when it matters most. Combine that with Rubio, the most incompetent scorer I have ever seen to play major minutes.
I think the reason they're not any good is that Love is the biggest stat sheet superstar (SSSS) of all-time. You may also refer to him as an on-paper superstar (OPSS), superstar on paper (SSOP), or star on paper only (SOPO).
while the lack of team success is cause for concern, it will be interesting to see if it holds up if he leaves minnesota. the last 3 years, his RAPM has ranked 18th, 5th, and 8th in the league, and he hasn't had a negative defensive RAPM in any of those years. those numbers seem to indicate his production isn't hollow and that his teammates are the problem. but maybe he's somehow fooling the formulas and not producing wins.
I'd like to see a comparison of his teammates to Duncan's in 2003 when he won the championship with basically nothing good around him. But hey, Love probably has better stats.
Rubio will never be more than he is now. The guy has been a pro for 10 years now without improving his shot. He has gotten better with experience but he is essentially the same player he was when he was 15. A whiz kid that can throw some of the best looking passes out there with very creative angles, but not much else.
duncan's 2002-03 and love's 2013-14 PER and WS/48 are very similar. however, in terms of RAPM duncan had a huge 10.3 that year that love has never come close to (6.2 in 2011-12, which is very good). so according to RAPM the difference is fairly large, but certainly doesn't account for the whole difference in team performance. in terms of teammates, i looked at the spurs supporting cast RAPM in 2002-03 and love's teammates in 2011-12 since that was love's last healthy season that stats-for-the-nba has numbers for. i used the top 8 in minutes after duncan and love as the supporting casts (numbers ordered by minutes played). Code: duncan love -0.5 -1.5 1 -3.2 -1.6 -1.8 0.9 1.2 6.3 0 1.6 -2.2 -3.6 -2.3 -3.9 -2.1 as you can see, 5 of love's 8 are worse than anyone in duncan's top 6 and only one of them gets into positive territory. and duncan's last 2 are steve smith and steve kerr, who essentially didn't get off the bench in the playoffs when it really mattered. i don't have a great feel for converting RAPM into wins, but if i just convert it into point differential, then i would say the top 8 supporting cast was worth about a 15 win difference and duncan was worth about 10 wins over love (25 wins is pretty close to the difference in the two teams for 82 games). so while duncan was much better than love, i don't think anyone disputes that and that is why no one talks about love as the alpha dog on a contender. but it looks like love could be winning 50 or so a year with a prime duncan supporting cast.
