Can't think of a superstar that fits better than Kevin Love

[white men can't jump]

One thing to also remember about Love (and Minny especially) is that if he were to be traded I'm sure the East coast would be something he might consider over staying in the West. He's a west-coast guy but it is easier to get into the playoffs in the East, and I'm sure Minny would not want him traded to a competitor.

Interesting point about the East. But sometimes that doesn't matter.

As for the last part, sometimes you don't have much of a choice. If he says "I'll only sign an extension if I get to play in these cities", then no team in other cities will put in good offers. Say if he wants to go back to LA, Minnesota may fully want to trade him there, especially if they can deal with the Clippers and land someone like Griffin (since his name has already been thrown out there with Melo).

[BigCamB]

One of the biggest reasons Minnesota underachieves is not the bench, it's the supposed "star in the making" Ricky Rubio. Everybody overrates him. He shoots TERRIBLE, almost historically bad terrible I'm talking. He is a great passer obviously but that's about it, passing, ball handling and vision. Don't ask him to play defense either, pretty much like every other European point guard to hit this league.

Gimme Lowry over Rubio 100 times out of 100. That's just me.

Not just you, Rubio is terribly overrated at this stage and Lowry is most certainly better. It's sad because I really like Rubio and all the positive things he brings to the table, and he's fun to watch when he's going well. He just hasn't improved his weaknesses a single bit which is unfortunate. I've never seen a player miss so many wide open layups.
He isn't awful on defense, but certainly overrated as people look at his league leading steals ranking and assume he is very good at it but not the case. Goran Dragic can play defense btw


Budinger only just played his first game of the season yesterday so he will most certainly make their bench better if he remains healthy and hasn't lost his athleticism from all the injuries. Although their bench doesn't seem a very happy bunch right now

[isaacthompson]

One of the biggest reasons Minnesota underachieves is not the bench, it's the supposed "star in the making" Ricky Rubio. Everybody overrates him. He shoots TERRIBLE, almost historically bad terrible I'm talking. He is a great passer obviously but that's about it, passing, ball handling and vision. Don't ask him to play defense either, pretty much like every other European point guard to hit this league.

Gimme Lowry over Rubio 100 times out of 100. That's just me.

For sure. Doesn't even look for his own shot anymore. Teams are completely abandoning him.

[BobLoblaw]

To say that Rubio plays no defense is simply not true. He's a very good defender. Besides, making assumptions like that based on a Euro stereotype is ridiculous. What's next, all African players can jump very high and all Latino American players lack stamina because of working second shifts as illegal housemaids?

Rubio is not a star though, it's funny how Kahn didn't give Love a 5 year max because he wanted to save that for Rubio. If he could shoot at a decent rate -- nothing special, just score 10-12 points at a passable efficiency like George Hill -- he'd be a top 5 point guard in the league, because the rest of his game is elite. But that's hard to expect to happen at this point.

However, the Wolves big problem isn't Rubio or his shooting. It's how that team is built.

One, lack of shooters around Rubio. If you have a poorly shooting point guard, surround him with shooters. Just common sense. Rubio can find his team an open shot despite his own inability to score. But what if that open player is Corey Brewer? Teams have every reason to leave Brewer open at the 3pt line and help on someone else. Degree of difficulty becomes much harder and often they just don't get a good shot, while Brewer takes 4 3s a game.

Two, no rim protection in the starting lineup. Which just leads to poor overall defense. Their perimeter defense is ok. But it's very hard to contain guards in this league where there's no hand checking unless you have rim protectors.

And it's very hard to play good transition defense if your bigs don't get back quickly enough and protect the paint. If you are Miami and you have two wings who can protect the rim like big men, then you can do it. Otherwise, you are going to be terrible at transition defense. Which is a massive problem for Minnesota right now.

Three, terrible bench production. I just looked at the numbers for their starting lineup. Of all the lineups in the league that played over 200 minutes together, Minnesota's starting 5 is no.8 in terms of how big a lead they gain per 100 possessions. But their bench just gives it away.
By the way, the Raptors lineup of Lowry-DeMar-Ross-Amir-Jonas is no.6 on that list:
http://stats.nba.com/leagueLineups.h...ers=MIN*GE*200

If they could somehow swap Pekovic for an Ibaka (a similar caliber player but a much much better fit) and Corey Brewer for a Courtney Lee or Terrence Ross or Danny Green, anyone who can shoot and play some defense, I think they'd be a 50 wins team instead of playing .500 basketball.

[BobLoblaw]

Also, Adelman's offense makes some sense around Love, but overall that group doesn't seem to be a good fit for the system. It needs for everyone to be good off the ball, including the point guard. I wish they could get Rick Carlisle somehow, there's no one better at building an offense from scratch to suit the personnel than him.

[BigCamB]

Massive stretch calling him a very good defender. He is certainly a lot better than the dude on the other page described him as though. I do agree, though the team just has a lot of holes. Brewer had a decent % from the corner last season I think, perhaps they were fooled into thinking that would become a trend, have him only shoot threes from there and it'd be fine. Either that or Budinger would start, but that would make their defense even worse.

[BobLoblaw]

He is very good. Anything less would be an understatement, imo.

[BigCamB]

To each his own.

[S.R.]

Massive stretch calling him a very good defender. He is certainly a lot better than the dude on the other page described him as though. I do agree, though the team just has a lot of holes. Brewer had a decent % from the corner last season I think, perhaps they were fooled into thinking that would become a trend, have him only shoot threes from there and it'd be fine. Either that or Budinger would start, but that would make their defense even worse.

Rubio is a quite good > very good defender. Why do you think he isn't? Just curious.

A bit of analysis:

Henry Abbot @ TrueHoop: http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/pos...ut-ricky-rubio
FanSided (SI.com blog): http://fansided.com/2013/03/26/ricky...ensive-wizard/

[Blacklash2k4]

He want to go to the Lakers...

Sent from my GT-I9100M using Tapatalk 2

[Letter N]

He want to go to the Lakers...

Bleacher Report agrees

[charlesnba23]

Would you rather sign Kevin Love in 2015 or make a run at KD in 2016?

[DanH]

Would you rather sign Kevin Love in 2015 or make a run at KD in 2016?

If you can sign a player of that calibre, you do it. Better two kicks at the can than one.

[Letter N]

Would you rather sign Kevin Love in 2015 or make a run at KD in 2016?

KD would obviously be the better choice both in terms of how great a player he is and how he would fit in with the team, but the more I think about it the more I could see Kevin Love fitting in perfectly with the current group and making this team into a 55 win+ team, and from there it's just a matter of luck, matchups and hard work to become a true contender.

[2kfeen]

Kevin Love is everything this team is missing.

1) a bonafide superstar
2) 3 point shooting and floor spacing
3) A post presence to slow things down, especially in the playoffs. Amir these days is really fatigued from all the off-ball movement, pin-downs, etc.
4) an efficient go to scorer, that can help Derozan flourish as a 1b/2a option on this team
5) a guy that can mesh well with JV especially by giving him the space to go to work