Official thread to follow the exploits/failures of the T-wolves led by former Rockets head coach Rick Adelman and the highly anticipated arrival of Ricky Rubio who some say is the next great passing pg while others say is the next Euro bust. Rubio wont be the only talented new arrival, as lottery pick Derrick Williams and JJbarea will also be making their t-wolves debut. Projected lineups Darko/BMiller Love/Randolph Beasely/Williams Johnson/? Ridnour/Barrea/Rubio IMO this team has alot of talented players, unfortunately most of that talent is either only of the scoring variety or largely unfulfilled or unproven. While Adelman is a great coach and has a long history of success, he also doesnt have a long history of handling bad teams. Adelmans coached two bad teams during his career, resurrecting one (Kings) while failing miserably in the other (Warriors). Adelmans first year with the Kings which was also Chris Webbers first, saw the Kings improve from 27-55 to 27 and 23 and making the playoffs. Adelmans first year with the Warriors saw a 10 game inporovement from 26 wins to 36 wins, followed by a decreased to 30 wins the following year. Will the Adelmans tenure with the 17 win T-wolves follow the Kings or the Warriors?
oh, god. Now we have two of these threads. I'm going to start a redundant Hayes / Jimmer thread in one day, if this isn't locked.
oops my bad, didn't notice. I guess save the in season discussion etc for the other thread, I would however like to see the poll results which ends opening day. So far I'm quite surprised at the early count. I guessed they'd end up being one of the worst 5 teams in the league.
Saying, "some say Rubio is the next Euro bust" implies that he was actually regarded as a decent player prior to coming to the NBA. When he was actually regarded as a huge scrub in Euroleague. So I'm not sure how he can be called a "bust", if he fails to do well in the NBA, since he was already considered a bad player, prior to playing in the NBA.
Rubio is gonna be something, if you have watched the training camp videos, the players are raving about playing with him. He has been bored playing with crappy players over in Europe, he will take off in the NBA. DD
Oh yeah, those Wolves players are so great. Wow, that roster just screams superiority over Barca's roster. Not a single "crappy player" on that Wolves roster.......... Yeah, wonderful, they are "raving about him in practice". Gee.......is this the same Rubio that is the most over hyped player in history? Is this the same Rubio that is nicknamed "the practice wonder with no game day skills" in Spain? Is this the same Rubio that totally dominated all Barcelona practices, all Spanish national team practices according to all media accounts and yet could never play even half decent in an actual game? Seriously............is this the same Rubio are you just imagining things? OHMSS
What exactly is Kevin Love going to do to make Rubio better? Rubio can't shoot. Rubio can't score. Rubio can't properly run a half court offense. Rubio can't properly run the pick and roll. Rubio can't even pass that well in the half court set offense. Rubio is bad at set play call execution. Please explain to me how Kevin Love is going to magically fix all of this. I'm eager with anticipation to get the explanation for this.
Is it possible for a mod to change the thread title to simply the poll question, since apparently this thread is a duplicate? Surprisingly (to me anyways) the vote so far has the majority favoring the Wolves to be in the top 2/3 of the league with less than 40% forecasting them as one of the 9 worst team this season.
Winless Rubio is as good as I thought he'd be though. Adelman is just overrated. This team will be top 10 in the lotto.
...so NBA.com is offering the free preview of the NBA broadband service so I watched the Twolves/Thunder debut of Rubio and I gotta say, that kid is a legit NBA point guard and Adelman seems to think so too. Rubio got the crunch time minutes in a tight game with OKC - a game they would have won if B-Easy wasn't such a ball stopper. Here is a sample of his work from that game - he has some work to do, but you can't teach the type of court vision and passing skill that he has. Dare I say, the Twolves were exciting to watch with Rubio running the point. I was just as skeptical as the rest of you - especially after seeing him a little bit in last season's Euro games ESPN was streaming online but he looked comfortable out there in his debut and I for one will be very interested in seeing more from him. Thoughts about Rubio's debut? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afG61sd8OQs
