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It's a state of the wolves edition here on a Monday of flagren house. We got the sports dad, Judd over there. I'm Phil Mackie and this episode presented in part by a great glorious place down the street from Target Center called bricks worth just a couple blocks away from the arena. They even have the signature Nasrid hazy IPA that you can get your hands on.
And I want to tell you about the wings of the Detroit style pizza, but the wings in particular, I love dry rub wings and they have some of the most creative, incredible dry rub wing flavors. They've got cool ranch Dorito flavored dry rub wings. It's you got to check it out bricks worth in the North loop for home games, pre game, post game, great spot to bring friends and for away games is belly up or find a table near one of the big TVs and watch our favorite basketball team. The OG location in Burnsville too is a great spot.
So check them out bricks worth our friends here on flagren house. So our guy, Dex is on a honeymoon. 20 Kyle was in Hawaii like for a week and now Dex is in Hawaii for a week. We're just sitting here.
It's pretty nice out today in the 20s. My house always there. Well, yeah, it's easier to when you live on the West Coast to take it. That's a long flight.
It's worth it. It's always worth it when you get there, but like the 11 hours to travel kind of aggressive and sports. Yeah, you'd rather just watch like Hawaii on TV probably. But let's go through our state of the wolves here.
The overview. 12 and 11 is their record. Yeah, they are currently ninth in the Western Conference. They're three in one since we lasted state of the wolves a week ago.
Ninth in the Western Conference, six games back of the number one seed. I'll get you the offensive and defensive updated net ratings, but they have a 43% chance to make the playoffs now according to ESPN.com. 76% chance to make the playoffs via basketball reference. So those numbers are going up.
That's good. Only a 0.2% chance to win the whole thing to win the LOB ESPN.com. Excuse me, and a 0.7% chance to win the LOB according to basketball reference.com. If the playoffs started today, the wolves would be in the plane.
They are the nine seed. They would be, I guess, hosting 10 seed Phoenix. So you get another Phoenix matchup. And then the winner of that game would go on to play whoever loses the seven eight games.
You have to plow your way through the plane if it started today on the defensive and offensive net ratings. So offensively, the wolves are 20th in net rating, but defensively, they're all the way up to 6th. And that's a tick down from last night because they the defense has been great for like two weeks, except for the third quarter last night, which we can incorporate in this discussion. But we'll start with you, sports dad here.
Wolves vibes are blank right now. On the upswing. They're on the upswing. Wolves like things have gotten to a place now where we're sort of back where it's supposed to be.
It might not be perfect yet, certainly is not. But two weeks ago, right before they finally turned things around and after Ant went after his teammates publicly for the first time, I declared this at that time, a team in crisis, a team in crisis. It was chaos. You know, guys weren't listening.
Ant did not lie. He laid out for you everything that was going on. And it now feels like that did a lot of good. It was an extensive talking point, actually, on the ESPN telecast on Friday night, since that was a national telecast.
And they were talking about what that meant. But I would say that it's now it feels like if everyone isn't on the same page, at least they're not flickering constantly, and they're trying to play nice. And that will go a long way. This team is too talented to be pulling the stunts that they were three weeks ago.
So I'm not going to go overboard and say it's all fixed, but I do feel like it's in a far better place than it was. Yeah, I'm going to say wolves vibes are still buffering. It's a little bit like when people try to watch that Tyson Jake Paul fight on Netflix a couple weeks ago, right? You're like, you're watching and then oh, this is going, okay, it's going well.
And all of a sudden it starts buffering and it freezes on Mike Tyson's ass in the locker room. Yeah. And then over and over and over back. Now there's a women's fight happening.
It's the defense absolutely back minus the third quarter last night where they gave up 44 points and we're kind of all over the place. Some of it too is like if you give that golden state team, even with the, it's like a remade version of it. But once they get the ball moving and they get out in transition and bang, bang, buddy healed in the corner for three, Steph Curry. I love buddy man.
He's a fun player. Fun shooter. Yeah, he's there to chop threes. Coming up.
Coming up. They have a bunch of just kind of smaller switchable pieces. And so the Warriors and the Warriors also, you know, they hate the Tender Wolves. They hate Rudy Go-Bear.
They just got clowned on their own home court two nights beforehand and they showed some pride there in the third quarter. Those two teams just jogging at each other the whole night last night too. I will say like the Dremon stuff at the end, he's doing, he goes in, he dunks on Rudy kind of he like glows by Rudy and gets a dunk and then he does like the sleep thing. And I love it because I hope these teams eventually play in a seven game series, but they were acting like the wolves didn't just shove it right back at them 48 hours beforehand.
Now they were coming up and back and I get that. I think if you were to have told us and we kind of said this at the end of the week, hey, they're going out clippers and then two games against the Warriors. They're going to take two out of three. Are you good with that?
Look, we all just said, yeah, I like certain things about that game last night, but the overall result, yeah, you would if anyone had said they'll split in Golden State two games back or back to back with the day off. Yeah, yeah, you take that. And then you get them again soon and now you get a few days off, you can practice a little bit and then the Lakers come back to town. I think toward the end of this week, right Friday, but let's start with the positive here.
What is your favorite current wolves thing? Okay, I'm going to give you my current. So I came up with this on Saturday and it got sort of blown up last night, but I'm going to broach it because I feel like it's a good discussion point. Okay.
So in the first 19 games of the season, Julius Randall played an average of 34.3 minutes per game. I have this exact. You brought this up in the next three. And here's what I liked about it.
Okay. So this is sports. I'd like in the next three that came down to 24.9 minutes per game. Now last night, it was 37 16.
So that sort of blows up, you know, to current day, but my favorite thing was the fact that Chris Finch brought Julius Randall's playing time to a point that I thought was far more advantageous to the Timberwolves. So the way that I would spin this into a favorite current wolf thing is you have an answer in front of you for like you have a template for what works. You've got line of combinations that clearly dominate and then you've got some that are kind of clunky in long term. You want to see if you can work through the clunkiness so that you just have more good line of combinations.
You don't have to do anything after 20 games. But to your eyes, I saw I noticed the same thing. Like, you know, he's on the court again to close this game and they are getting their asses kicked on the offensive board. So you want some exercise out there, but 37 minutes.
So small sample size alert. But when Julius Randall plays 27 minutes or fewer, the wolves are four and oh, and the average result of those four games is a 25 point wolves victory. When Julius plays fewer minutes. Now you could say cause and effect.
Well, part of the reason why he's playing fewer minutes is because they're leading big in the fourth quarter and therefore Luke regards is in the game. But I think I think there's some causation in here, not just correlation in that when he plays fewer minutes and you allow the other players who are have better chemistry, just better net ratings with their pairings to shine, it works better. When Julius Randall plays 35 minutes or more like he did last night, the wolves are four and seven so far this year. So even if you just take that, right, they're four and seven when he plays 35 minutes or more.
And what's their record? 12 and 11. So they are there eight and four when he plays fewer minutes. Small sample size, we're not even halfway through December yet, but I think you have hit on it's up to them at this point.
Right. And I think that's why it's like a little bit less and allowing some of the other pieces to rise up and shine is better for their overall chances to put good lineups on the court. And I guess I understand if Finch thought because of the rebounding that he wanted Julius out there, but I would also say that there was times. So I watched the second half and I would say that there were also times where I'm like, is this the are these the best matchups for him?
Like Golden State, how can I put this as nicely as possible? Julius Julius is interested in the game at times seems to come and go. It seems to wane. Yeah.
I just don't know that you want him out there against the team like that as much as he was last night in here. I'll give you the perfect example of why third quarter back to what you talked about, which is when the world's really struggled on defense. One of the reasons why was Golden State went to use a football term up temple, right? Like they were like, if there were at least two or three times when the fan dual sports North cameras lost track of Golden State because they moved the ball so quickly.
Yeah. Julius was out there for some of that and Julius was as useful as I was on my couch watching it. So if I if I threw this at you, well, no, let me pass over. So Julius, I want to see his screen.
He's playing in terms of average minutes. I might be wrong on this. That's 33. Okay.
33. I was going to say, I thought for a while I thought it was actually more than he was playing with Tom di Bido, which would have been a red flag. They have scaled him back two minutes from work, but he's still playing 33 minutes a night. But there was to your point, there was a possession last night where the Wolves are on offense and I think Julius drove in missed a shot, thought he got fouled and here come rebound Golden State, here comes Golden State.
And if you watched Chris Finch on the sidelines, it was like watching, it was like he was on the rail watching the Kentucky Derby with a newspaper in his hand or a program. Golden State is flying back the other way and Julius is kind of like slow to turn around as he kind of, you know, and Finch is like waving at me. He's like, go get back down. I don't know.
Stretch my tongue. Get your ass back down there. But I'll give you two other things. My favorite because I think there's a lot of meat still in the least favorite things, not for griping purposes, but like to work towards solutions.
They've got a bunch of solutions that are intriguing here. One of my favorite Wolves things is despite the fact that he was really bad down the stretch last night, Anthony Edwards continues to be one of the best three point shooters in the entire league. So on this road trip, he goes four of nine, four of 10 and five of nine against the Clippers and Golden State. Golden State by the way, one of the best three point defensive teams in the league and against Golden State goes nine of 19 from downtown on the season, 10 and a half attempts per game and he's shooting 43% from downtown.
And there's still some bad shot selection in there too. Like you could you could optimize that even more because I would say of those 10 attempts per game, two or three of them are like out of the flow, out of context, pull up heat check or hero ball threes. And if he were to just even, I'm not saying you can't ever take a hero ball three if you're a player of his caliber, but if you were to cut one or two of those out of your game and weave in some more productive possessions, but the fact that he went into the gym as a good three point shooter already and has become if the season ended with 10 attempts per game and 43%, that's like one of the greatest three point shooting seasons in NBA history. And it's not even fully optimized.
So that's special. Now on the flip side, last night, they're trying to figure out who handles the ball. Got some guys out there for size and defense. Yeah, the second.
The fourth did not go well. Yeah, offensively, it was just a butcher. It was clunky. And then it's weird because so my analysis of that too though, is it got clunky, right?
And when it gets clunky, and 100% is like, OK, screw it. I'll just try to win this game myself. And then you get the hero ball problem because it felt like, and we'll talk about this, I think in the least favorite things, but it definitely felt like Ant went sort of rogue. And that's when he struggles.
Yeah. Yeah, he just needs. It's hard when you put him out there in those situations and he doesn't trust two of the five players to do anything offensively. Right.
And he then, and some of this is he has to figure it out. But he then feels like, well, screw it. I'll just take this over and go one on five and it's a problem. And that type of bleep the world mentality is what you need to be a top superstar in the league.
But it was just a little bit clunky last night. Two other just quick favorite current wolf things, the defense before last night had a four game stretch of holding opponents to 92, 80, 80, and 90 points. And go bare was phenomenal. Yeah, go bare all over the place.
And outside of the third quarter where the Warriors scored 44 points, the defense was actually really good for most of that game last night too. And then Nikki Alexander Walker specifically, just like again, his shot making last night, he's just such a Swiss Army knife player. And he's kind of becoming, I think, more known around just the league and casual fans. I mean, he was a throw in for that Dilo and Mike Conley trade on the outside looking in.
And he winds up being this key piece that might be a long term guy, but he is an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season. So you're gonna he's playing himself into a nice, nice 20 plus million dollar contract with somebody. So that's what I was going to say. So I think at the end of the day, much like we discussed earlier today on Purple Daily, where cousins departure opened up room to create a better team.
I think it's going to crystallize right or wrong. It very well might be right that Carl Anthony tells departure to the Knicks was to keep not and not. Yeah. Like, because I think both of those guys, if you don't trade Carl, both of those guys are gone.
And the thing about Nas, for instance, is right now his shot, which at times is phenomenal, is not falling. But have you ever noticed that even when he's not shooting well, he brings something like he's always bringing something to your point. So line up combinations with Nas. I can't remember the last time that you went through a combination and said, Nas is the problem here, right?
Like they got to get Nas out of there. For the most part, it's always positive. And now is the same way in the fact that you might not always be shooting great right now. I think he definitely is, but he brings something.
He contributes something. So I do think that the departure of of cat for a large degree was to try to keep both of those guys. The question is, if you're either one of them, do you test the market because Nikhil might get paid elsewhere too. It's I don't know.
His agents probably telling him you should definitely test the market to see. I mean, Nas Reed basically did not like to your point test market value. But in terms of guys who fit the timeline, who are versatile, who have that dog in them, right? He checks all those boxes and he's only 26 years old still.
So he has to be one of the top priorities as you get closer to next summer. But that's going to be tough because if he keeps playing this way, and it's tough too because like he's not your starting point guard, in which case he probably still comes off the bench. There's another team given like a starting two guard role somewhere. If that's what he's interested in.
But he gets minutes, you know, he's out there enough and he's oftentimes closing games. It feels like too. So they are finding a way to get him 24 minutes a night off the bench. He's found a really good role here.
I will say that. Yep. Yep. Okay, before we get to our least favorite wolves things, which will include some stuff from last night, Nick Leylaw is here as the exclusive personal injury law firm of flagren howls and score on our podcast.
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So okay, what is your least favorite current wolves thing? Let's talk about it last night. Last night, I know that the team actually had a good week, but I think that this is a pretty good discussion point. It is the fact that point and more importantly, point nine Mike Connolly was a disaster.
It was an absolute disaster. So that game was incredibly close down to the point where the wolves in the fourth quarter at one point had a lead still like that was a winnable game that that was not out well. It's two games in three days in Golden State. We won one screw it, right?
That game was a winnable game in which the wolves I think were up by 11 at one point when I watched the game at least anyway. So watching how things unfolded on the floor offensively as well from the wolves standpoint without Mike Connolly out there was a disaster. And that's on Chris Finch. That's his choice of rotation and playing time.
But at some point in time, I am feel astounded that they didn't get Connolly back out there if nothing else to calm things down. So this goes back to how Finch does things. And I know that he is a good coach, but I really thought that if you continue to try to make that work, it's going to be a problem. And I know that Mike Connolly is old and I know that he definitely wants to keep a cap on how much he plays per game.
But that was my easily least favorite wolves. Yeah, but like last night, I guess this one's right into my least favorite current wolves thing, which is the lineup that finished that game was a disaster. And I'll piggyback off you. So I believe it was Ant and Kiel, Jayden, Julius and Rudy were the five main to close that game.
And okay, so why would they choose those five guys specifically as things are sort of eroding down the stretch? Well, from what I can surmise, they wanted some extra size and rebounding. So like Julius and Rudy are the two best rebounders on the team. Jayden provides some size because the Warriors had 14 offensive rebounds in that game last night.
They were just cleaning up second chance points. So part of it is you don't want to go too small because then that problem gets exacerbated even more. They want I think Finch wanted to kill was hot. He was making shots.
So he wanted to kill out there, but also he wanted Jayden to hassle Steph Curry. So it's like, all right, well, the keel's hot and he's just like a great cog in any lineup. We want Jayden to hassle stuff and we want two rebounders out there because we feel like we can take advantage of their smaller lineups. But it has to be out there.
Five. So are you going to start just taking I guess you take the keel off the court and put Conley in or you could go really small and take Julius off and put Conley in and now like Nikhil slides to the three and it's and now you're going really small. So I get why they wanted some of those guys out there. But at the end of the day, like don't overthink it.
You need someone to help initiate offense and calm things down and the stretch like that. Like you could tell you could it felt frenetic. Yeah. And you brought this up earlier in the show when a lineup like that is out there and that lineup has been effective at times.
If you're Anthony Edwards and you're looking around and Rudy doesn't really provide much offense unless it's a lab and Jayden has been mostly atrocious offensively lately. Well, I don't there's 40% of the guys out here. I don't trust. I'll just go get my own because I'm the one who can get a bucket right now besides Julius.
So not that Ant should be exonerated because it's up to him to when your point and it is on you to unlock your teammates to some extent and knows that and I think in the fourth quarter and my status of the week is surrounding crunch time ineptitude. But yeah, it feels like Finch oftentimes leans way too much into lineup combos that just don't work well and he's stubbornly trying to make something work that isn't. But that was really tough to watch that game. He rode last night and watched the 10 point lead at the half go away in the third, but then the wolves kind of come back.
They go on their run and then Golden State and then he get punked like that too and just watch like dream on green do the go to sleep celebration. The whole thing was bad, bad taste at the end of what Wanda being a good road trip. Yeah, I just feel like Conley would have been the adult on the floor and it felt like with how they finished the game. They didn't have that.
Yeah, they didn't have that. And yeah, that's a good question. Because I didn't feel like Julius added a lot there. So do you know small, but here's the thing too, you know, I feel like go bare is and I don't know if the stats back to some.
I feel like go bare is a better player when Conley's out there because Conley knows exactly what he wants from him. There was a sequence last night where Conley is dribbling the ball and literally motioning to go bare what to do. Yeah. And that gives him more confidence.
Like I do think there's a conversation on go bare to be had about his mental mindset at times. And like when he feels wanted and included. You're right about the Conley go bare connection is it is an inherent thing. Like they work really well together.
They play off each other while they trust each other. It gets it, but he doesn't have the same. Okay, Rudy, here's what you need to do exactly right now. And if you do it, you'll probably you or you have a much better chance to get a bucket.
Yeah. I'll give you this too from our guy, Jase Fridrich, Twin Cities dot com. Crunch time in Neptune is what we'll categorize this next. Maybe this blends into our stat of the week.
But in terms of everybody on the roster, net rating per 100 possessions in crunch time, which I think is defined as like the final five minutes within five points or something. Mike Conley is the only positive contributor, positive net rating on the entire team. So Mike Conley is a plus 13 net rating in crunch time. That's plus 13 points per 100 possessions.
The next best player on the team is Julius Randall at a minus 14. And then Ant is a minus 19 and a half J. And minus 21 Nas Reed is actually a minus 123 and a half. He's been really kind of small sample sizes, but in those close games, it's been really but the whole team is a train wreck in close games.
But if Conley is the only stabilizing force, I almost feel like you just have to start with Mike Conley's on the court period, Anthony Edwards is on the court period because he's Anthony Edwards and the other three spots are just up for whatever the match up stick take that night. But if it's a close game late, Conley has to be on the court. So last night, for instance, Jaden on Currysil. Yes, not every single waking moment, but no, but I'm saying like if Currys out there and it's crunch time, you probably want Jaden out there.
One about their to half. Yeah, a lot of things get switched and that's that's what I call on on Jane was awful. Like that was not a foul. And Jane predicted that though on Friday because they said, Hey, you're doing really well.
No, he's like, I'm not going to call for fouls. But his exact what was I know I will again. And he did on Sunday. So yeah, so I think the decision last night really comes down to Julius and or Rudy can't be on the floor.
But Rudy defensively is an absolute force. So it's probably Julius. Yeah. But then you're going to give it up size.
Well, you're giving up size, but you're given but when you don't give up the size, you've basically got a chaos. Yeah, I think you would what you have to do is all right, in the absence of size, Jaden and Ant have to rebound them. Okay, because Rudy's going to rebound. Yeah.
But you guys have to clear out and rebound. So it's a overall great road trip, great road trip and your defense outside of that disaster third quarter is back. And these are all positive signs, but they're definitely still working through what to do in close games late and what line of combos to to put in the game in those spots. If there's a takeaway from today's episode, I think it's this.
But you how Julius Randall is handled is not yet perfect. Agreed. I don't think he should ever play 37 minutes. No, unless he's, you know, unless it's the once and every 10 where he's about to drop already and you just got to clear out.
And I also think that there needs to be a constant cost benefit done on on when he does play especially at important times. Do you get what you think you're going to get? No, it's not the week here for you. It's something they have to clean up, but per 100 possessions, the wolves are 25th and turnover rate offensively.
So they are turning the ball over just under 17 times per game. Oklahoma City, by contrast, the best team in the West, turns the ball over six fewer times per game, 11 times per game, Boston, 12 times per game. And that may not seem like a lot, right? Five or six fewer turnovers, but at least once per quarter, you are giving up a possession and the other team gets an extra possession.
Right. And that could be an extra let's call it four to six points in a game that you're just dribbling off your leg for no reason or throwing a dumb pass or whatever. Pop your leg. Yeah.
So they got to figure that out. But the wolves are much more back on track than they've been at any point this season. They got some time off between now and the inserted game against the Lakers because of the end season tournament or the NBA Cup. And we'll see what they do with those practice days.
All right, sports, dad. Good session here. Stay of the wolves. We'll hit you with a few more episodes of flag and howls before the week is over.
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