In short, shooting, defense, and the 3 ball are why Minnesota struggles despite what seems like a team ready to compete atop the West. Check out Kevin Love's shot chart compared to LA's. Love is a 31% shooter from everywhere on the court combined, minus his shots within 5ft of the hoop, and his shots taken from behind the left, top arc. Add in his top/left arc shots, and he's still a 34% shooter from everywhere but 5ft from the rim. That's their best player? Add in that Love doesn't draw double teams, can't create his own shot with his inferior post game, and his poor defense with an inability to affect or block shots, and you've got a decent start as to why Minnesota is struggling. Love's monster stats are a product of him setting up shop underneath the basket, where he is quite adept at getting rebounds and making shots at the rim. In fact, 40% of his shots are within 5ft of the rim. If Minn has more shooters that allowed Love to get 50 or 60% of his shots down low, I have no doubt they would have greater success. Rubio can create for others, but not for himself. This tends to cover for the lack of TWolves that can create their own shot, but also hurts the team because he is such a poor shooter himself. Martin is the only legitimate outside threat on the team. Compare that to Portland, who has Wes/Batum/Mo/Dame/Wright. Minn doesn't shoot the 3 well as a team, nor do they defend it well as a team. Just look at their game versus a Harden-less Houston team, who shot 17-31 (55%) versus their own paltry 8-23 (31%). You simply aren't going to win games that way.
ToB and BF - thanks for the insights. I haven't watched Minnesota play recently. I noticed their hot start, and that Marin was playing really well, but wasn't aware that other than Martin, their 3FG% was so bad. When Bricky Rubio is your second best 3-point shooter, you're only going to go so far. BNM
Point differential is likely the strongest indicator for play-off success, the other being road wins.
Interesting... One was sure that minny would be fighting for top 4 based on the differential, yet uncertain on us, having a +2 on minny in this same model. Another interesting find is the blazers are road warriors 6-1, while minny is 2-6; yet minny has a better shot at getting 4 than the Blazers. Oh I forgot minny has a beast of a player. Wait?! Doesn't Portland have a beast PF too? I'm confused!
Knowledgable people like magnifier, natebishop, and myself all knew we were gonna be much improved after what Neil had added to the team. Mags and I had us as top 3 seed. Nate had us at 5 seed. The people who had us at 7th to as low a 11th (SI) simply haven't paid attention. We were a great starting line up last year. Better starting lineup than teams like Grizzlies and Warriors. We just didn't have the backups they had. Once we added Mo, Dorell, Robinson, and CJ, not to mention getting us an actual center with upside, it should've been obvious to all that we were going to be a major player in the conference. As for the Wolves, they have a lot of good pieces but they aren't a top 4 seed. Love is a flawed "superstar.". He can't defend, he shoots too many threes, and he hasn't shown he can lead his team to a winning record.
Love's defense and Rubio's shooting will prevent this team from going far. A first-round and out team, like the KG era. Kevin's defense is blatantly horrid -- don't contest, box out and hope for a miss, pad rebound stats. Lawson would've turned that team into a real threat. Oops. Trading Burke and passing on CJ will haunt that team like Lawson.
Covering my own ass? No, I think the Blazers are better than I predicted, so I was just plain wrong. And while I'm sure I felt that anything higher than a 7th seed was probably too high, I don't recall mocking anybody for it (and no, telling people that I think they are wrong is not "mocking them").
Thanks... Nik is absolutely a respected poster. Don't want him to think I don't think anything different than that.
Dumb thread. The Wolves have only won 2 games this year against teams above .500, and they've lost to the Cavs, Nuggets and Wizards, below .500 teams. The difference in our strength of schedule right now is only 2%. And our beating those teams contributes to their lower SOS. We beat the Bulls (while they had Rose), won in Denver, in Golden State, Beat San Antoni, so I'd say we have more impressive wins on our resume then they.
