Y'all need to quit your bitching about Nuggets fans. Just shoot your shit and expect the same in kind. I'm happy we have a rivalry, it makes the games more interesting.

Let's keep our complaining to the refs, Jokic's hypocritical temper tantrums, and the Wolves occasional lack of fucks given, yes?

I just watched Game 2 of Lakers vs OKC and damn, the refereeing was shameless. OKC players were flopping everywhere, reaching and fouling constantly, yet somehow barely getting called for it. What made it even worse was the OKC announcer acting like every outrageous whistle was completely justified, gracefully defending every bad call like it was normal basketball. At this rate, Jaden is probably gonna get one tech per game once we face this Thunder team in the conference finals if this is how refs are treating OKC opponents already. Feels impossible to play physical against them without getting punished while they get away with everything.

I just find that interesting, really.

with the offseason in full swing and with me just recently getting into basketball, i picked up nba live 2000 for the ps1 the other day as a fun little time waster and nba history lesson. seeing all the guys on the 99-00 wolves team, i was wondering what players people really loved back then, or from the past in general, that weren't the star(s) on the roster.

so, who's your favorite, or favorites? got any cool stories to tell about them? please share; really wanna delve into some wolves history!

Sorry if this has been posted already

We have had a lot of fun role players and hopefuls over the years, who were some of your favorites during their tenure here? I'm talking about guys who have probably been forgotten, guys you loved for whatever reason at the time.

Seems kinda low for a guy tied with the most DPOYs

Additionally, former Timberwolf and MVP Kevin Garrett is listed as the 3rd greatest of all time

The Knicks went through the Hawks, 76ers, Cavs and an inexperienced, exhausted spurs team. They also had 5 more days of rest before the finals than the Spurs. The wolves, even if healthy, would likely not have gone through the Nuggets, Spurs, Thunder with KAT. We wouldn’t have been able to keep Naz or trade for Ayo with 2nd apron restrictions. It would’ve been a much thinner roster with the amount of the cap that KAT, Ant, and Rudy would’ve all taken up.

Knicks were very fortunate that Brunson was willing to take a pay cut for this first big contract. The wolves still made the right move, because we added a young stud prospect in Beringer through that trade and have multiple smaller contracts that we can more easily move now instead of one $60M contract. And we were able to hold onto Naz.

I’m just happy for KAT. This is the closest I have felt to a championship since the KG Celtics.

Apologies for the long post but as you hear constant gaslighting nonsense, some actual facts need to be mentioned. The tldr is the title. Now for some facts.

1. When Kuminga was traded to Atlanta they were barely holding on to the 10^th seed. With him they went 13-3 and he brought them out of the play-in and into the playoffs. Most of those wins they won by a lot. All this while playing injured and for most of these games barely being able to jump. When he missed 2 games later in that stretch, Atlanta got blown out vs. Houston, and barely managed to beat the mighty, among the worst records in the league, Kings. Even for the Kings they almost had to have him in order to win. Significantly, during the harder games later in that stretch they needed every minute of his play to win those games. To stress, he did this injured and on minutes restriction, coming off the bench, and leading a secondary squad of not very good players.

During the playoffs Kuminga and CJ were the clear leaders who enabled Atlanta to get a 2-1 lead over the eventual Champions Knicks. They were the only team who managed to get 2 wins from the Knicks and even Wemby, Cleveland, any other star player you want on those other teams didn’t manage to do that. During those wins, besides Kuminga and CJ, mostly everyone wasn’t very good. Kuminga in the 2 wins was allowed to close (instead of Dyson Daniels) and play significant minutes, during the losses he didn’t. During the series Jalen Johnson wasn’t very good, but he’s a Klutch player so people aren’t allowed, it seems, to say much against him. NAW didn’t manage to score much.

These are facts. Not opinions. If this doesn’t define a winning player I don’t know what does. By definition, almost all he did with Atlanta was win. Before him they didn’t, and during his stint when he didn’t play they looked bad. (You can watch them against Houston or the Kings.) Doing all this while still injured, so Atlanta can make the playoffs.

And yet you hear all the nonsense people say like he needs to prove that what he does leads to winning. They are just gaslighting the audience.

1. If you want to look at other periods with the Warriors, every time he got chances it led to winning. When Wigging left the team, JK took his spot and led the warriors again out of the play-in and into the playoffs. A lot of winning. When Wiggings came back for the playoffs, Kerr immediately took Kuminga out of the lineup which further cemented their relationship break. This was already during his second year in the league. 

2. When Draymond was suspended for 20 something games, Kuminga took his place, and again, a lot of winning.

3. Previous to last year, when Kuminga played and Curry didn’t play, Kuminga led the team to win the majority of those games. When Kuminga was injured and didn’t play, Curry couldn’t lead the team to many wins, so much so that they felt they had to go and get Jimmy Buttler as they were about to fall out of the play-in even.

Etcetera. You can look at many such stretches. Kuminga is a winning player to the extreme. These are facts, not opinions. But the gaslighters keep repeating one after the other how he needs to prove he is a winning player.

People are sleeping on how much of an impact Kuminga has on winning, as the talking heads, not him, just focus on scoreboard watching. This isn’t Kuminga’s mentality, it is his detractors. 

Maybe it’s his physicality which rubs off on all the other players, maybe it’s the impact of his aggressiveness, or other elements of his game, but his play has constantly led to impressive winning. These are just facts.

Almost everything said about him is just nonsense gaslighting. People can conjecture on the sources for it.

The Timberwolves are very much title contenders this year. It’s exciting. It all depends on health. If they’re healthy, they can beat OKC, and maybe the Spurs (depends on the young Spurs players jump).

Ps. if people want to ask why then didn’t Atlanta keep him. It was all about egos. Atlanta players are all lower draft players who got to start and are jealous for their role and wanted to make sure he doesn’t interfere with their new found starting role. During the playoff games they often didn’t want to pass him the ball and preferred losing (while he did pass the ball to them). You can see that even though the Knicks solved how to beat Atlanta, Quin Snyder didn’t adapt at all and change his starting lineup (playoffs are always about adapting), not wanting to hurt anyone’s egos. Instead they just lost by more and more points each game until the very embarrassing last game. Onsi either needed to trade many of them or let go of Kuminga, which is what he did, as I don’t think they were takers for their other players.

(Don’t also forget that Atlanta’s coach and front office talent evaluation actually chose to play against the Knicks instead of against the Cavs in the playoff. They could have probably gotten the 5^th seed but chose not to. The same brain trust that decided to add the moron and Kuminga hater Tim Bonetemps as special advisor or something to their front office. I wouldn't take cues from them.)

Ant on the other hand, is a great leader who wants to elevate the other players, and the other starters here are also not threatened about their roles, so I think it will work great here with the Wovles pack.

Jaden has the talent and skill to be the #2, the Pippen to Ant's Jordan, if you will, but I won't. But there's something holding him back. I don't know what it is. It feels like he is hesitant to step up and be that role for some reason. Any thoughts on this? It just seems like he's almost there, but something in his brain won't let him. I'm just frustrated seeing him take that role for a game or two and he's amazing, but then go back on it. Does he feel like Randal should have that role, so he steps back for him? Is Finch coaching him to step back? I don't know, it just seems like he could be great, but something is blocking him from stepping up.

"The main thing I tell him is to just slow down with me," Gobert said when asked what he has learned about screening for Ball. "You don't need to go fast, because I'm going to give you an advantage."

"I told him to watch some clips of me and Joe Ingles' pick-and-rolls," Gobert continued. "You don't need to go fast, I'm going to give you an advantage. You can walk."

What do yall think about Rudy’s comments?

NBA league owners have unanimously voted to add expansion teams in Las Vegas and Seattle. With these news, the wolves are likely to be moved to the Eastern Conference. The wolves are in extremely close proximity to the bucks, pacers, bulls, pistons, Cavs, and raptors, and not very close to many Western conference teams. What’s your thoughts about moving to the Eastern Conference? I think it would work out very well for us

Starting 5 is now basically confirmed to be

Lamelo

Ant

Ayo

Jaden

Rudy

Do we try to sign another PF on a minimum contract for some depth alongside Beringer? K Love maybe?

For entertainment purposes, I don’t want him suspended because beating the Spurs with him on the floor is way more satisfying. But if we’re being consistent, that’s Draymond-level stuff.

People say “he has no history” like that should matter. Are we supposed to wait until he builds one first? What exactly makes that elbow different from throwing a punch?

Looking at the standings today it finally feels like every team is pretty much where they should be. The only significant change I could see is Wolves jumping to 3rd or dropping back to 5th, but let's assume they don't have any major skids here in the last 20 games. At first glance these brackets don't look too different. No matter how you slice it you have to best OKC and the Spurs to get to the finals. If you think about how Denver is going to be though it actually makes the path as the 3 seed quite a bit easier.

Assuming the Nuggets can get healthy in time for the playoffs they will be difficult for anyone to beat in 7 games. As the 4 seed (or 5 seed) we play them in the first round and it might be a coin toss for us to even advance past that point. If we can crawl up to the 3 seed it's very likely we don't even see Denver PLUS the Thunder would play them in the second round. If we have to face OKC in the playoffs I would much rather do it after they have a 7 game series with Jokic than after they sweep the Warriors and we're the ones dragging out a long series with the Nuggets. Facing the Spurs in the second round isn't great, but OKC is the alternative so I'd take that lesser of two evils.

From an article in the Athletic today. Good trade Tim

60-22

You now have to open the CFA app PRIOR to 10:30AM the following morning to "claim the offer" and redeem it later in the day. CFA apparently wasn't happy with how popular the offer had become. Pretty fucked up move if you ask me.

I understand he’s not the greatest offensive weapon but a core part of the wolves identity for these past three playoff runs have been the outstanding defense. Rudy had Jokic’s number this year.

If we trade him away for a package that includes guys like Jalen Brown or Lamelo Ball that helps take pressure off Ant and helps out shooting and playmaking immensely, (I know how bad this team needs a point guard) but I really don’t think Naz is the Jokic or Wemby stopper that Rudy is. Love Naz and glad we’re keeping him.

Just wanted people’s thoughts.

Probably isn’t the best time to say we’re on the right track lol