Wolves lose to Spurs in 2 OTs: What do you see?
Posted on November 6th, 2008 – 4:04 AMBy Jerry Zgoda
Consider the Wolves’ 129-125 double-overtime loss to San Antonio on Wednesday — a night when they didn’t have to face Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker torched them for a record 55 points anyway — something of a basketball Rorschach test.
Did you see the same, old Timberwolves team from a season ago, unable to seal the deal against an aging San Antonio team that arrived at Target Center with an 0-3 record for the first time since Sven Nater played for them in1973, their first ABA season in the city, and was missing star Manu Ginobili?
Or did you see the first real glimpse this season of the future, a lineup that featured Mike Miller (25 points, including 5 threes) being assertive for the first time, Kevin Love playing himself one step closer into that inevitable starting job alongside Al Jefferson and Sebastian Telfair returning from his three-game suspension by playing the point down the stretch until he fouled in the first overtime, with 10 assists?
To be sure, the Wolves again kicked away plenty of chances to win: Al Jefferson missing a late free throw in regulation that would have made it a three-point game and prevented Tim Duncan from making a a two-point basket that forced overtime. Randy Foye bouncing the ball on an inbounds pass straight to Bruce Bowen when they had a couple of seconds and the chance to win the game after Duncan had tied the game. Foye called for traveling with the game on the line right after Telfair fouled out with 1:30 left in the first overtime. The Wolves’ inability — whether they threw 6-9 Corey Brewer or point guards Telfair and Foye at him — to stop Parker from making 22 of 36 shots, many of them the jump shots they wanted him to take.
But also…Miller finally shot the ball, and scored, after spending the preseason and the first three regular-season games deferring to teammates. Love played 37 minutes, 15 more than any of his first three, and seems to be a heartbeat away from moving into the starting lineup, perhaps as soon as Friday at Sacramento. Randy Wittman said he felt the team’s pulse changed instantly when he subbed Love and Telfair into the game midway through the first quarter. Seeking better starts to games and second halves, Wittman sent Love out there for Ryan Gomes with the starters to begin the second half and for the first time Love became a crunch-time player, playing down the stretch in regulation time, most of the first overtime and much of the second while demonstrating hustle and energy if not always efficiency (4 for 13 shooting).
‘Telfair also ran the show, often with Foye playing off the ball with him, until he fouled out trying to defend Parker. Foye made a couple of big shots near the game’s end, but still struggled much of the night. I wouldn’t be surprised to find both Love and Telfair in the starting lineup come Friday in Sacramento.
53 Responses to "Wolves lose to Spurs in 2 OTs: What do you see?"
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I thought maybe after Parker hit 40 that the Wolves would, maybe, just maybe, think about trapping him to get the ball out of his hands.
What exactly is Wittman getting paid to do? I understand making Parker take jump shots, but when he makes 10 of them don’t you have to change things up? Does Wittman have a fear of double teams? I just don’t get it. The Spurs had 2 players(Parker and Dunca) that the Wolves had to defend. I know Mason Jr had a good game but I would much rather have him taking shots in crunch time than Parker or Duncan.
The Wolves kicked away lots of chances even before getting to the end. The Spurs run at the end of the third quarter — where they hit 10 straight shots — key among them.
The decision not to be starting Love makes no sense. It just shows the stupidity of the decision in the first place that the lineup is likely to change four games in.
Fun game to be at !
2 of 3 of Love’s blocks were on Duncan down low. That was pretty sweet.
You guys can’t actually think that Kevin Love had a good game can you? It’s painful watching him run up and down the floor. The Wolves need to hire him a personal chef, personal trainer, and a yoga instructor. Love looks about as stiff as they come.
why didn’t mccants ever play in the OT’s except for the last second in bounds plays? wittman is just an idiot, lets keep our most talented offensive player on the bench when we need points.
and yes Jama, most people do think Love had a great game.
Can someone please tell Al Jefferson that I’ve never heard of anyone dying from playing defense. Magic Johnson did not get AIDS because he was playing too much defense. He might be the worst defender on this team, which is saying alot!
Jama - What exactly did you want Big Al to do ? He couldn’t leave his man ever.
And yeah Love had a good game…if Duncan didn’t have his “status” he would have fouled out in the first overtime. Love was creating chaos on the boards.
The least impressive part of the game was the coaching. I don’t think anyone, including Wittman, understands what the Wolves rotation is.
The players played well (even on defense), but the coach didn’t call in the sets and adjustments that were needed to adjust to Parker, Duncan or even Mason Jr.
I’ve given Wittman the benefit of the doubt until now because this is a young team that is still learning, but a few more performances on his part on nights when his players are doing their best, and I’ll be joining the crowd that feels it’s time these players learned from someone else.
The trouble is that Randy is part of the “Country Club” as one local radio host puts it, and unless McHale goes, Wittman’s likely to be allowed a free reign to bungle his way through another season.
Anyone else notice the clock on the blog posts is an hour ahead? Someone forget to fall back last weekend?
The Wolves got whipped on the boards in OT. You can’t give up seven offensive boards in 10 minutes and expect to win.
For the most part, I think the effort was there last night. The coaching and execution continues to be a problem.
Swan
Why can’t Jefferson leave his man? Aren’t defense’s suppose to rotate?
Who was guarding Duncan more Love or Jefferson? You guys do realize that Duncan scored 30 points and had 16 rebounds, 6 offensive right?
Jama - Because if Jefferson left his man (Duncan or Oberto) they would’ve scored. Pick your poison.
Witt drew up a couple good plays for the last shots…they just didn’t all go in.
As far as the rotation, who cares about that yet ? It’ll show itself after awhile.
I did notice no Carney at all…is he hurt ? Or was he benched (rightly so) ?
Love looked like a stiff?? What game were you watching jama? The only thing stiff was your take. He was out there diving for balls and making plays. He had Duncan crying all night. Let me guess you still have a stiffy for Mayo right? Get over it.
Swan
It’s called help defense. If the PG gets into the lane someone needs to step up and stop him. A wing or guard player then rotates down to help on big man. It’s not a hard concept, teams have been doing it for years. Unfortunately this Wolves team has not figured the concept out.
How do teams stop the Wolves when Foye or Miller get into the lane?
Wittman did have a couple of decent sets out of timeouts but he also had that horrendous play that led to Foye throwing the ball away. This team will never succeed no matter who the players are while Wittman is the coach.
ombudsmen
When I say Love looks stiff I mean he has no athleticism and no flexibility. And if by letting Duncan get 30 points and 16 rebounds made him cry, I’m pretty sure Duncan would love to cry every game.
I am not opposed to the trade that brought Miller and Love over, but I think people are giving Kevin Love much more credit than he deserves at this point.
Jama - The Foye play is on Foye…not Witt…it was the exact same play that Big Al hit when drawn up. It was designed for a quick Big Al move and the wings bringing their man with them as to avoid the quick double on Al.
Love isn’t very athletic. Neither is Duncan, the best power forward in the history of basketball. What Love is showing, is that he’s way ahead of the expected learning curve for a barely 20-year old rookie. He’s not a great player yet, but he’s already a good one and this is one reason to feel optimistic about this team, even if there are other reasons not to.
The difference between Love and Duncan is three inches in height, which is huge.
I don’t know that you can say Love is “way ahead” of the curve. 10 and 6 is pretty normal production for a guy picked in the top 5.
Last time I checked Loved wasn’t matched up on Duncan all night. When he was, Duncan whined to the officials almost every play. Let’s see, Duncan looks like a stiff, Jefferson looks like a stiff, Shaq looks likes a stiff, the Lopez twins look like stiffs. Hey alot of big guys look like stiffs, imagine that. Thanks for sharing your bias against Love though.
BTW Chalmers looks like a defensive stud, thanks Mcidiot for that trade.
There were some frustrating things and some positives. All in all it was a fun game to watch and it gives me some hope that the Wolves are improving even if the Spurs were 0-3. How can the Spurs justify starting Matt Bonner? “Mad Dog” and Booth could outplay Bonner.
Tim Duncan whines no matter who he’s up against.
“way ahead” is a stretch, but I think a lot of us (myself included) have set low expectations for Love after being skeptical of the trade and reading Reusse’s column in the pre-season. He’s shown himself to be a good player who contibutes in a variety of ways. I just wish they’d add a more athletic big man to round out a trio with Love & Jefferson.
I see exactly what everyone has seen, and will continue to see under McHale, and Taylor; a dysfunctional, collective group of underachieving failures.
Nice defense, fellas.
How come Miller always looks like he’s going to get hurt on every layup? You just see arms and legs flailing….
I was really impressed with the wolves. Love was keeping us in the game at the end with his hustle plays and offensive rebounds. The points that Love gets for the wolves are very valuable. It’s almost like bonus points because hes scoring double figures in low minutes and they are all off of the offensive boards. Last year on offense, all of the rebounds went to the defense. This year, Love not only Gives us extra possessions, but he banks on them with put-backs, tips, and free throws. It’s going to be great when he gets into the starting lineup. Love Jefferson and Brewer will give us a lot of second chance points. Love also appears to be a very fast learner. I think maddog has been helping him out on defense. He looked very active, and had quick feet on that end of the floor. I know it was only one game, but it was great to see, regardless of the loss. GO WOLVES!
We need t-shirts made up of “Spank the Stank” out of the Timberwolves! McHale is floundering and this team stinks!
I would have to say that the Foye inbounding play was a horribly designed play. Everyone was bunched up with no real openings. However the turnover I blame on lack of familiarity since Miller double dekked and Foye thought he was only going to deke. But it took nearly the whole 5secs to get to that mistake further illustrating the poor design. If you look at the plays that Pop had at the end of the game you see a real difference. They had wide open players, there was good spacing, picks placed in both time and space to allow open shots. While it is possible the difference is in the level of defensive skill of the players it didn’t really appear that way. The Spurs appeared to move with purpose while the Wolves appeared to all be running around randomly. However I did think that there was one nicely designed end of game play to Jefferson.
As far as Love starting that doesn’t really make that much sense to me due to the lack of big men on the bench. Generally there will be times when both starting bigs will need a rest at the same time resulting in the need to play Smith and Gomes at the same time as the C/PF which would be a mistake. Why not just give Love more mins and allow for better rotations. It is not like we are getting killed by poor starts we are getting killed by poor 3rd and 4th quarters. Lets try to figure those out and stop whining about the starting lineup. I wouldn’t move Foye out of the starting lineup yet either since his main problem in the early part of the season appears to be confidence which could be further ruined by a demotion.
Maybe I am wrong but I thought Al played good man to man defense just is not a good help defender. Which is one of the biggest weakness for this team, there is no lane protecting shot blocker/changer. The second major weakness is a lack of a clutch rebounder. We lost the Thunder game to rebounding and the second overtime could have turned out differently if we would have rebounded when we needed a rebound. The spurs had at least 3 offensive rebounds in the last 30secs of a 1 score game. This inablility makes me think kindly of Joe Smith which should be hard to do.
The Wolves were 10th in the league in offensive rebounding last year at 11.8 per game. So far this year, their offensive rebounding has been worse than last year (10.3 per game).
When you bring in Kevin Love to go alongside Al Jefferson, you’re committing yourself to a team without a shot blocker/changer in the middle, because you don’t pay Al Jefferson $10 million a year and spend a #5 pick on Kevin Love to have them sitting on the bench at crunch time.
That means the perimeter defense is going to have to be better. I don’t put the failure of Brewer to stop Parker on Brewer — it’s on Foye and Telfair. Brewer shouldn’t be guarding point guards.
Go SPURS !
Maybe I am a little bias but 9 assist and 2 turnovers with a good 2nd overtime when forced to run the show again was not bad for Foye. He had a great baseline drive and pass for Jefferson then hit back to back big shots to bring the wolves within 3. If they would have got one of the next 3 rebounds the wolves could have finished. Yes the problem was that his 2 TOs were in the last secs of the game (not really his fault) and in then again in overtime (his fault). But 9to2 is a good assist to turnover ratio especially when playing SG half of the game. He was clutch offensively in the end. Parker had a 10to4 ratio just to put into perspective. The way Parker was playing good luck finding a point guard or defender in general to stop him. Parker already is the fastest best driving player in the league and for some reason was hot from everywhere. Usually he can’t shoot from long range but yesterday he hit everything.
I want to see more 3’s out of Brewer. I know he can shoot the 3. Can we trade back Foye for Roy. I don’t think he is going to be the player the Wolves had hoped for. Also Love is Loving it. He rocks and is a great player.
Mario Chalmers had 9 steals last night for the heat and is ranked #8 of ALL rookies so far this season, not bad for a 2nd round pick. The Wolves sure could have used his lock-down defense last night when Tony Parker killed them
Mario Chalmers and Roy. Where would the Wolves be if they had kept those 2
Jimmy B - Not really necessary NOW though is it ? 4 Games in ?
McCants is good off the bench. Brewer and Miller are fine where they are.
What kind of guard do you want ? A slasher ? A shooter ? A shooting / defender ?
Swan
You just lost any credibility you had left with that last comment. You wouldn’t trade 2 first round picks for Dwayne Wade?
I know the Heat would NOT trade Wade for 3 1st round picks. He’s one of the 10-15 best players in the league.
Swan
You just lost any credibility you had left with that last comment. You wouldn’t trade 2 first round picks for Dwayne Wade?
I know the Heat would NOT trade Wade for 3 1st round picks. He’s one of the 10-15 best players in the league.
Jimmy
There are not a lot of good guards in this league. When you have one you don’t trade them. The Wolves will not be trading for a guard with the quality that you are looking for. There’s only about 3 players the Hornets would currently trade Chris Paul for. You’re out of your mind.
For those that think Foye had a good game here is his stat line.
Pts- 11
Reb- 5
Assists- 9
TO’s- 2
Steals- 1
Minutes- 45
Yes, that is better than he has been playing but those are not great numbers. He should average 15 points and 6 or 7 assists per game. Adding that he played 45 minutes his numbers are not anything special.
jama I think we need a different guard. Who can be acquired via trade for 1 or 2 of those draft picks we have. How bout 2 #1’s for DWade or Yao
Jimmy B - You’d trade two first rounders for one of two of the most injury prone players in the league ?
Trades aren’t necessary right now unless its to clear cap space or ACQUIRE draft picks.
What kind of guard is it that you want ?
Swan Dizzle it’s not like I would trade for Oden or something like that. I don’t know which guard out there who would make an instant impact would be. Not Kidd, AI, or Nash all to old. DWade is injury prone. CPaul would cost the Wolves 4 #1’s probably. parker we would have better luck spinning hay into Gold. There has to be a good guard out there we could trade for.
What is the deal with Foye so far this year? He looks awful, I feel like he is the key to our team b/c of what he brings and so far he has brought nothing.
Dwayne Wade and Yao are not going to be traded for anyone other than Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard or LeBron. Do you follow the NBA?
The Wolves are only going to have 1 lottery pick and 2 of their picks are most likely going to be in the bottom 5 or 6 picks in the 1st round.
The Nuggets traded 2 first round picks plus Andre Miller and Joe Smith for an almost over the hill Iverson, who was making $20 million per season.
Foye’s numbers last night aren’t bad — if you ignore the fact that the guy at his position on the other team outscored him by 44 points and had one more assist.
And, again, I’ll point out that all this talk about execution down the stretch and in the overtimes could have been put to rest had the team not gone to sleep at the end of the third quarter and let the Spurs close the gap. This continues a dreadful trend from last year where the Wolves had difficulty closing quarters.
i farted
zone maybe! screen and roll is a little tougher against a zone!
The Spurs needed Parker to have the game of his life to beat this Wolves team by 2 points. It’s really not the end of the world. We cleared a lot of bad contracts out in the Mayo-Love trade. Be patient, I’m sure we will package some of those picks for better players or better picks. This team is a lot better than last year and will only get better.
The wolves scored 125 points against the spurs! I don’t care if they’re 0-3, they specialize in good defense, and we absolutely torched them. If it wasn’t for Parker’s best impersonation of Kobe Bryant, we would’ve won this game. I’m guaranteeing a victory against lowly Sacramento, and I’m excited for the Portland game on Sunday.
And to the people who are saying that this team sucks, it’s not exactly like they’ve been getting blown out every game. They could easily be 3-1, and possible 4-0 if Foye and Jefferson had actually made all of those makeable shots against Dallas. All of you idiots can trash this team if they continue to lose through the first 20 games or so. But making bitter assessments on this seemingly improved team through the first 4 games is just ignorant.
Wolves 111 Kings 94
Who said the wolves won’t be one of the worst teams in the league, OKC, the previously winless spurs without Ginobli, not good losses for a supposedly better team. I know its early but a month from now we might be trading Mike Miller and a later first rounder to try and move up in the draft or for a young pg, maybe we can get chalmers back, lol.
Patrick
The Wolves actually only scored 106 in regulation. The Spurs were giving up over 99 points per game coming into the game with the Wolves. I wowuldn’t call them a defensive juggernaut at this point. The Wolves could also be 0-4 with Sacramento missing plenty of opportunities to win that game.
You act like Parker had to work hard for his 55. That was the easiest 55 points I have ever seen in the NBA. Uncontested layups and wide open jumpers were there all night. It’s not like he was going 1 on 5 and happened to be making crazy shots.
This team will have a better record than last year and will improve.(It’s hard not to) But they have a long way to go before they even think about making the playoffs let alone actually competing in the playoffs.
