The Minnesota Timberwolves Offseason Thread - Kris Dunn at No. 5 in Most Recent DX Mock

2015-16 NBA Preview: Andrew Wiggins Might Be The Next Carmelo

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6:30 AM By NATE SILVER, FiveThirtyEight.com

The Minnesota Timberwolves are very likely to improve on their 16-66 record — and very unlikely to make the playoffs. Beyond that, almost anything is possible. If everything goes well, we could be mentioning the Wolves in the same breath as the New Orleans Pelicans in next year’s CARMELO preview: a team that’s on the verge of becoming a title contender. There really is that much upside on the roster among Andrew Wiggins, Karl-Anthony Towns and Ricky Rubio.

But they could also be a total disaster. For now the Wolves are a collection of misfit toys, full of players who are a little too young, a little too old, a little too one-dimensional, a little too injury-prone. They also don’t mesh particularly well together, leading to trouble finding good looks on offense and disorganized, lackadaisical defense.

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So take CARMELO’s 29-53 projected record for the Wolves with a grain of salt. It’s a rough guess. More to the point, it doesn’t matter all that much. If the Timberwolves somehow hang around the .500 mark because of surprisingly good last-gasp seasons from veterans like Kevin Garnett and Kevin Martin, it’s not going to do much beyond worsen their lottery position. This year is more about how their young players develop, instead. No player is more important to their future than Wiggins, so we’ll start our CARMELO-guided tour of the roster with him:

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In many respects, we created our CARMELO projection system because we were curious about players like Wiggins. On the one hand, he was a regular starter in the league at age 19, which is usually a very good sign. On the other hand, though Wiggins scored 16.9 points per game, he was one of the least efficient regulars in the NBA according to advanced statistics such as Real Plus-Minus. Our assessments of Wiggins last year ranged from decidedly pessimistic to guardedly optimistic, often sparking ire from T-Wolves fans who were sure they were watching the league’s next superstar.

But that was before CARMELO! Now we have CARMELO, and it’s on the optimistic side. CARMELO thinks Andrew Wiggins has a chance to be the next … Carmelo Anthony.

Anthony, Wiggins’s No. 1 comparable, is a good example of what Wiggins’s upside could look like. In Anthony’s rookie year in 2003-04, he was a high-volume but fairly low-efficiency scorer, averaging 21 points per game on 43 percent shooting. Middling scoring efficiency is one of the more forgivable flaws for a young player, however. Both shooting technique and shot selection can (and often do) improve with practice and experience, especially for a player on a young, rebuilding team whose teammates are improving alongside him. Some of CARMELO’s breakout picks this year, like Marcus Smart and Elfrid Payton, fit into exactly this category.

But whereas CARMELO is enamored of Smart and Payton, it’s more tentative in its affection toward Wiggins. The reason is his defense, which cost the T-Wolves about 2 points per 100 possessions while Wiggins was on the floor last season. Wiggins’s D will likely improve, but he could wind up a lot like Anthony: very good, but between mediocre defense and average efficiency, not quite as good as his box score stats suggest.

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Ricky Rubio is one of the NBA’s bigger outliers, ranking near the top or bottom of just about every statistical category: stellar passer, but turns the ball over a ton and is one of the league’s least efficient shooters. He is a good defender and is younger than you might think (25), having been drafted by the Timberwolves in 2009 when he was just 18, so he still has time to improve. Indeed, CARMELO’s projection for Rubio is fairly optimistic, relying on precedents like Jason Kidd and Rod Strickland, who developed just enough scoring touch to become cornerstone players.

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CARMELO likes the No. 2 pick in last June’s draft, D’Angelo Russell, slightly better than No. 1 Karl-Anthony Towns. But this is nonetheless a pretty good projection for Towns. True, his top two comparables (Andrew Bennett and Greg Oden) couldn’t be more discouraging, but that conceals some favorable names (Chris Bosh, DeMarcus Cousins, Anthony Davis) just a bit further down his list. A plus with players like Towns is that they can be average-or-better defenders almost as soon as they enter the league, even as they’re figuring out their offensive games.

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Although CARMELO sees high reward — coupled with high risk — for Wiggins, Rubio and Towns, it’s less convinced that Zach LaVine will ever become an above-average NBA player. As my Grantland colleague Zach Lowe explains, LaVine was simply overmatched last year, forced into playing more than 1,900 minutes as a pro after having been only a modestly effective amateur at UCLA. LaVine could turn into a league-average player like Monta Ellis — his No. 6 comparable — but even rebuilding teams like the T-Wolves will invest only so many resources in trying to develop the next Monta Ellis.

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Oddly enough, the Wolves have a fair amount of frontcourt depth, so Gorgui Dieng could see his playing time decrease despite being one of Minnesota’s more effective players last year. He has a relatively common profile for a big man, and one that tends not to age all that well: good defender, excellent shot-blocker, but limited by his inability to create his own shots.

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Kevin Martin has always been a miserable defender, so his offensive game has to be superlative for him to be a worthwhile rotation player. Instead, he’s showing signs of age, having posted his lowest true shooting percentage since his rookie season last year. Martin would have more value as a 10-minutes-per-game offensive sparkplug off the bench for a contending club than as someone who’s still logging starter’s minutes.

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Sometimes CARMELO comparables are eerily resonant. Shabazz Muhammad, a former high school slam-dunk champion, draws comps including Harold Miner (his No. 1 overall comparable) and Cedric Ceballos (No. 6). Both Miner and Ceballos won the NBA slam-dunk contest but were minus defenders and otherwise never quite gelled as NBA players. At 23 this season, Muhammad is far from a lost cause, but the Wolves have a lot of other projects who might be higher on their priority list.

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CARMELO slaps the “scrappy veteran” label on Kevin Garnett, which seems to woefully underbill his accomplishments as a 15-time All-Star. But that’s what Garnett is at this point, with his defense and rebounding skills still largely intact but no longer much durability or ability to contribute on the offensive end. His return to Minnesota as a sort of player-coach is a nice story, but he has just enough left that contending teams could eye him for frontcourt depth down the stretch.

Nate Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight. Follow him on Twitter - @natesilver538.
 
KG hasn't gained a pound in 20 years :lol:

You look at the dudes who lasted in the NBA until close to 40.....they know how to maintain their bodies.

Excited for the season. I never was a huge Sam Mitchell guy but I'm interested to see what he can bring. He's got the eye in the sky on him though so we know he's being told many many things to stay in line.

As I've also mentioned several times I'm anxious to see how these minutes are going to be distributed this year. All these cats need development. Now - we are talking about the T-Wolves here, and that means half the team will be hurt by the ASG anyway so :x

Season Goal should be improving Wiggins and KAT into stars (number 1 thing hands down)....and team shooting for 35 wins.
 
Mitchell already givin up on the LaVine starting idea :lol: Wiggins has moved for now to the 2 guard spot.

140 preseason minutes so far LaVine is 11-46 FG (.239), 2-11 3PT (.182) and 13 TO's.

Players like LaVine, Tyus, etc. IMO are still so young and green they need to go play in the D-League somehow. The NBA still needs a proper minor league system especially when they are going to continue to let in all these 19 year olds who are not close to being NBA ready.
 
Tyus Jones definitely needs to be in the Developmental League for much of this upcoming season I think, and it seems like he will be based on some of the comments from the AP's Jon Kraw + the Lavine from starting SG to backup PG thing.

Sam Mitchell tells the media that Zach Lavine is the Timberwolves starting SG and Kevin Martin is their backup SG so long before the season... but why? There are no advantages. The clear disadvantages are that things don't go according to plan and you have to make a move which is basically a public change-of-mind (since you've already told them that your starting lineup was going to include Lavine, but halfway through the preseason you've switched that).

Just say, 'We're just trying out different rotations, seeing which guys mesh well together, and that's a decision we'll make on opening night.'

Boom.

Then, nobody's talking right now about how Lavine lost his starting SG spot in the preseason, and you don't have to come forward with a rationale or reasoning.
 
^ Yup, agreed.


Jerry Zgoda ‏@JerryZgoda Oct 21 - It could change by Wed, but Sam's 10-man rotation now looks like this; Ricky, Wigs, Prince, KG, KAT and Zach, KMartin, Bazz, Bjelica, Gorgui

This leaves out Tyus, Andre Miller, Adreian Payne, and Pek.
 
Taylor: Flip Saunders will not return to coach Wolves this season

Wolves’ leader has been hospitalized since September.

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By Jerry Zgoda Star Tribune OCTOBER 23, 2015 — 10:46PM

Five days before his team opens its regular season, Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor said Friday that coach and president of basketball operations Flip Saunders won’t return this season because of complications resulting from his treatment for cancer.

Diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in June, Saunders has been hospitalized since early September.

When asked Friday if he expected Saunders to return to his jobs, Taylor paused and said: “Not this year. I just think his illness, I mean, it’s serious. At this point, if he came back I still think he’d have a hard time to recover all his energy and all that because he has been in the hospital for a long time.”

Shortly after Saunders was hospitalized, the team promoted associate head coach Sam Mitchell to interim head coach and expanded General Manager Milt Newton’s duties. The Wolves announced that Saunders was taking a leave from the team for a period estimated in uncertain terms, other than it would be months rather than weeks.

Doctors treating Saunders called his disease treatable and curable when the Wolves announced his diagnosis in mid-August. At the time, the team said Saunders intended to continue working while he received chemotherapy treatments, which he had completed by the time he was hospitalized in September.

Taylor called the developments “an unbelievable situation we hadn’t anticipated going into this season” and said he talked with the team’s players about Saunders’ condition and his influence on all of them as coach, chief basketball decision-maker and franchise part-owner during a team dinner at Taylor’s Mankato home earlier this month.

“I don’t care how old you get or how experienced you get, these friendships that are in your lives are so important,” said Taylor, who has employed Saunders two different times and known him since shortly after he bought the team in 1994. “They do affect your heart and your mind on a daily basis.”

Taylor said he and Saunders had talked enough throughout the summer that there has been a “blueprint” to follow that includes such things as buying out young forward Anthony Bennett’s contract before training camp began.

Taylor said Newton and Mitchell have the authority going forth to make trades and player personnel decisions in Saunders’ absence.

“We haven’t put anything on hold,” Taylor said. “Milt’s handling it just the way I’d expect him to. He tells me what he thinks, and we talk about things, just the same as I did with Flip. Milt’s just stepped in. Sam has to be his own coach. He won’t do things exactly as Flip does, and I wouldn’t expect him to.”

In September, Taylor told team employees to leave Saunders and his family alone so he could rest and heal. Asked how much he has visited or seen Saunders in these past weeks, Taylor said, “Well, I’m aware of daily what’s going on, that’s the best way to tell you.”


http://www.startribune.com/taylor-f...return-to-coach-wolves-this-season/336494291/
 
RIP flipper

Know we talked *** about his coaching decisions but I hate to see him go out like that and so suddenly :smh:
 
It's staggering to me (and yet we're constantly reminded) how sudden cancer can spread and develop. Somber day all around. Flip Saunders will be missed.
 
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RIP.

Cancer sucks. Terrible.

Franchise is in neutral mode now once the shock of this levels off - one guy had all those duties and now he's gone. Glen Taylor's ownership plan too really was to transition this team off to Saunders-led group and leave.
 
:smokin

Nice start.

Rubio - 28 PTS, 14 AST
Towns - 32 MIN, 14 PTS, 12 REB

If Rubio is finally healthy that is going to be THE key factor for the team this season.

@ Denver Friday night!
 
@DanBarreiroKFAN: From Saunders family: Private memorial services this weekend in Twin Cities. Public memorial celebration of Flip's life later this year...

...
 
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