Six days til opener: Wolves at Pistons tonight
Posted on October 22nd, 2009 – 7:08 PMBy Jerry Zgoda
A few things as the Wolves play at Detroit tonight in an preseason schedule that concludes Friday in Sioux Falls against Toronto:
* With Big Al and Kevin Love both out, Kurt Rambis stayed with Tuesday’s starting lineup: Gomes, Pecherov, Wilkins up front, Brewer and Flynn in backcourt.
* Wolves owner Glen Taylor has been re-elected chairman of the NBA’s Board of Governors.
* Bill Laimbeer is back at the Palace, where he played for the Pistons and coached the WNBA Shock all those years. But this is the first time with the visiting team.
19 Responses to "Six days til opener: Wolves at Pistons tonight"
Sure glad Glen Taylor was re-elected. Can’t think of a better owner for the job and, apparently, neither can the other owners.
Sioux Falls has to be a prime NBA destination, right before London, Madrid, etc.
Is there any particular reason Rambis starts Pech instead of Hollins…?
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Whats that I hear? Crickets chirping?
Bryan,
Pecherov can play better defense, shoot better and rebound better than Hollins. You wrote him off after one game coming off an injury and a 1/9 shooting performance. Knee jerk - missing the the opportunity of pairing an outside shooter with Jefferson.
It took a long time, but I’m officially happy about Jonny Flynn. I like Ellington, too.
Starting Lineup:
Jefferson, Pecherov, Gomes, Brewer, Flynn.
Reserves:
Hollins, Cardinal, Wilkens, Ellington, Sessions.
We struggled at times this preseason, but at the end of the day the Wolves took away four producers from last year (Telfair, Foye, Smith, and Miller), and have basically added Flynn, Brewer (from injury), Pecherov / Hollins, Ellington / Sessions. The latter guys are all have more upside than the former, and are more complete players. If Pecherov can shoot like he did tonight, he can start and be the perfect front court complement to Jefferson. Love and Jefferson = too short and too slow. If Love can’t get his outside shot down, I don’t think his rebounding matters much.
Starting to love Flynn and will eat crow about all the negativism I brought here about him.
Flynn will be a stud someday, hopefully soon.
So, even after all the changes, we still have the Pistons’ number.
Mike B - Pecherov canNOT defend better than Hollins. Pech can’t defend better than a folding chair (or defend a folding chair for that matter)
He had a good shooting game tonight, but he’s been up and down for the preseason as a whole.
But the question was more asking if the coaches have already given up on Hollins. He was an intentional signing….Pech was an academic throw in via trade.
PS here’s the numbers for Brewer:
7 games
15ppg
3.7rpg
1.7apg
1.6spg
0.7bpg
39% shooting (from 2 and 3) and he’s getting to the line a rather alarming 7.3 times per game, and hitting 73% of his free throws.
Logically you’d expect his rebounding a steals numbers to rise….and if he can keep up this pace on the offensive end….ladies and gentlemen, we have a ball player.
Bryan,
Pecherov was injured all training camp and trying to learn the offense for the first time three games into the preseason. He only really played meaningfully in four games. Two were solid, one was ugly, and another was ok. Remember Kevin Love’s preseason last year? Wasn’t he 0-10 one game?
Hollins had a good game tonight as well, but Pecherov is a more all around player and a better compliment to Jefferson. I like Hollins, and I think we will use him. Neither Pecherov or Hollins are good defensive players, but I think Pecherov has a little more awareness out there on both sides of the court, which says something since he has had less than half of the time in practice than Hollins.
The people that already write off Pecherov (7 feet, can shoot from the outside, 23) are the same folks that wrote Brewer off two years ago, last year, summer league this year, and early on in preseason. These guys are really young, and this team has no one to fall back on. You’re going to see some ugly moments out there.
Mike B. you should not overlook K. Love’s rebounding in an uptempo offense, his rebounding is key for the fastbreak offense. Also, his offensive rebounding is off the charts. 2nd chance points kept us in a lot of games last year, which mostly came from K. Love.
Brewer will flourish in this offensive scheme–uptempo and ball movement, triangle creating lanes, open shots, and weak side crashing for boards. Same for Pecherov, especially once AJ gets back in there, ball movement-spacing and double teams on AJ will provide open shots. We are actually turning into, at least have an offensive scheme, that will force teams to pick their poison–let AJ go w/o double teams or double and pick who you want to leave open.
Pecherov can shoot, Love can shoot and crash the boards, lanes for Brewer, Sessions, Flynn. Not to mention having Ellington and Gomes to come off the bench and hit open shots.
It all comes back to Rambis’s quote a few weeks back: shoot the damn ball when your open, thats their job. If they don’t/can’t make it..then its my job to find someone who can.
Love it.
Seems Wilkins has a good grasp of this offense, team seems to play better when he gets more minutes. Be interesting to see how first few games of the regular season go.
Arenal, yes I also think that Wilkins has looked good so far. He seems to know what he is doing, and what the team is trying to do, in Rambis offensive scheme. (I haven’t really noticed his defensive presence.)
I have a question does anyone think that Pecherov, Hollins or the new guy was as Songalia? Songalia was ahead of Pecherov in WA, Hollins the best that can be said is that he has not looked good. The new guy is a castoff. I have liked some of the trades and moves we made but at the 4 and 5 I do not think we have improved.
Yes, I know no one expected AJ or Love to be gone for any length of time but we still needed a 3rd and 4th guy to backup Love and AJ. Pecherov,Hollins and Jawari none of which can play. Sure Pech can shoot but all Euro can, he can’t play D and in real games he will not be able to rebound. Hollins is a project with a capital P. Jawari has been dumped on us. This looks really bad until Love comes back.
So all of the talk about picking up Brewer’s option seems to be moot right? He has proven himself this preseason and the decision should be an easy one.
The new question is did Pecherov show enough last night for us to pick his $2.4 million option?
Songalia was a 2 year contract, I will take a dip in our 3rd big when we are in a rebuilding stage and need that raw cap space for next season.
Hollins is stronger on D and Pech is stronger on O. Songalia is just more well rounded.
Seeing as how we got cash from the Mavs along w/Jawai for basically nothing, i’d take teh gamble on seeing what he’s got and how hard he works. especially this year..this is the time to do such moves. if we don’t like him, we don’t bring him back and basically had him free for a trial run. whats the drawback there?
Wolves will definitely NOT pick up Pech’s option for next season.
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