Michelobius

The double edged sword of "I wish more people paid attention to this" and "oh no, more people are paying attention to this", yes

So both. Okay gotcha. This is a particularly good thing to do it for because it would actually be kinda cool to live in a world where people cared about the NBA cup. Culturally overcoming the skepticism of a new thing is hard, even if it has no more or less merit than things we already care about

Sorry if this is piercing the veil but is this a bit or a "delude yourself until it becomes true" situation

He's under contract for 4 seasons and I'm not remotely worried about his loyalty. The Wolves are definitely not good enough this year but they won't be awful and being decent plus making two straight WCFs does buy you a lot of good will, especially if there's an obvious path forward.

I think it’s less that they didn’t think they needed to get better and more that there were limited avenues to actually improve. They’re currently caught between past (Gobert/Randle/Conley) and future (Beringer/Rob/TSJ/Clark) so patience isn’t necessarily the worst move to let the assets appreciate.

Well that’s where we disagree. He can get two feet into the paint whenever he wants. Nobody on the team other than Ant and maybe Randle is as good at advantage creation, which is the most valuable skill there is. He’ll get there.

I think the contract is fine (assuming he eventually returns to his old self) but it’s been clear to me all along that NAW would have been better to keep than him. I know it’s easy to doom and gloom while Ant is out and they’ll surely play better, but man I can’t wait for a trade.

Ideally he’s just raising his trade value (🤞) bc he Gobert and Jaden is never gonna work but somehow I doubt Connelly sees it that way and frankly it’s hard to imagine any realistic trades of Randle or Gobert that don’t make the team immediately much worse.

I hate to dwell on what-ifs but I really can't get over how obvious in retrospect it would have been to have a KAT-Jaden frontcourt. I'll admit I couldn't see that at the time, but now that Jaden learned how to rebound, playing him at PF is the move but impossible with the rest of the roster.

Put another way, I’d rather see huge positives offset by even larger negatives in a young player than having him look invisible out there. He’s young, he’s small, there’s going to be adjustments. Which is why I was so frustrated with his lack of minutes last year.

I’m not suggesting he’s currently even making a positive impact overall but it seems obvious to me that he’s doing a lot of good things (like I said, tilting the defense almost every possession). The turnovers will come down with time and that’s what’s killing his impact.

Like I said, tiny sample (0 3PA) but my honest, level-headed take on him is that he's really good at tilting the defense w/ his dribble but has to learn how to leverage that better. I'm hopeful but concerned that his shot-making confidence has been ruined by Finch wanting him to play like Conley.

In better news Rob Dillingham is averaging 19.9 points on 60% TS%, 11.6 assists, and 3.3 steals per 100 possessions. Tiny sample of course, (and don’t look at his fouls or turnovers).

This is just the "everyone in charge is 12" theory again.

And again, he's just one part of the problem. I listed some other things I think are issues but there must be more to it as well. Finch has his work cut out for him. Or Connelly does.

I agree, but in the past, he's at least been able to be a part of an excellent defense. He's never been the driver of good defense but he wasn't preventing good defense either. Seems like it's worse now.

I think Gobert has been pretty badly in most of his minutes, we really miss NAW, playing TSJ and Rob more is leading to more mistakes, and Naz's head is (understandably) somewhere else. It all adds up to some pretty awful defense.

Losing Ant is one thing, it's going to be tough to score without your top-10 player, so being 16th in ORTG after 5 games makes sense. I'll admit I'm fairly baffled by being 25th in DRTG. I know the defense has been bad but I have no idea why. Especially when the only good team we've faced is Denver.

Rob causing the turnover is why they don’t call him Rob illingham but fuck they actually should that’s sick as hell

Minott with 11-14-2 and 3 steals tonight in a blowout win vs Cleveland

This has been my default attitude ever since I was a kid and I went “oh—oh?” and my dad looked at me and shook his head and said “no” and the ball was easily caught at the warning track.

What I’ve learned from the past year is that bread and circuses work great until the price of bread doubles and the circuses are cancelled for Thought Crimes

Every day people take the most obvious thing that would be taken for granted 10 years ago (a Nazi tattoo is disqualifying for public office) and somehow convince themselves that the people saying the obvious thing are the hysterical ones.

That’s freedom baby

wtf

There are actually a number of conflicting factors here if you want to generate a narrative. Boston lost most of their best players, so that's why Minott is playing. BUT maybe all he needed was an opportunity. BUT the Celtics are now 1-3. BUT Minott's BPM in 3 games is +7.7. Etc.

Josh Minott last night: 15-9-4, +42