Jarred Vanderbilt Discussion: The Vandalorian

vando came in after haliburton had canned a three. haliburton tried it again and vando blocked it. next time haliburton tried it, vando harrassed him into an airball. this is the value. haliburton thought he was going to just drill a couple stepbacks and claim momentum. no sir. his teammates saw that, too, and realized this game was going to be different.

 

TWO air balls in a row!!

 

did you notice Minnesota has 4 players in the top 10 of defensive rating? And they are sitting at the top of the standings. Quite an interesting shift in focus this year I'd say, and it's obviously working for them.

I like that we have good length and some offensive versatility to go with our outstanding D. Our GM put together a pretty solid team, and since we have a COY candidate, with some health, you have to feel pretty good about our chances.

 

Hark! The Oracle is dropping knowledge!

The weird thing is that the Timberwolves got better, after shedding, D'Angelo, Malik, Jarred and Taurean. It seems counterintuitive that we look to adding these guys, as key to our resurgence.

Perhaps it's the impact of AD and Cam this season? The rest of our roster is just better balanced? It will be interesting to see how we matchup with Minnesota in the two games later this month.

 

On the Minny side, it's a few things...
- you have to have a very particular roster to work with their "twin towers."
- health. KAT, Rudy and Conley haven't missed a game yet. That's rare and don't expect it to hold up.
-Ant has made strides. Stats look the same as last year, but to the eye test... he's progressed. Take a game like that Boston win where he took their heart and soul in the 4th and OT on offense and defense. He's better defensively this year and that started with Team USA. He's improved his defensive rating by 6.1 this year.



AD is the great eraser. I don't think anyone can cover up for a player better and put them in a position to succeed if they're willing to compete defensively.

 

jsm beat me to it. towns missed most of last year, and edwards has decided to defend.

dlo was a bad fit, but it remains to be seen if mike conley will be in uniform when it counts.

also, the wolves didn't trade their guys for russ or vice versa. it was as much about removing the anchor as it was about the returning players. just having three competent nba players instead of a guy who actively made your team worse for 30mpg did the trick.

 

Jaden McDaniels is an awesome 3 and D defender is the underrated component of Minnesota's turnaround here - he's competent offensive player and can switch 1-5. They don't have to use Ant on ball to end games and even when Ant is injured, McDaniels takes all the tough assessments from tipoff to the end

 

Agh..you still underestimate the impact of a healthy Lebron and AD!

 

Absolutely no one does that since it’s obvious ever since they’ve been together and it’s trolling “like” at this point to hear you say it for the 800th time.

On the other hand you deserve to be trolled over Westbrook.

 

Lol...Troll on man..Westbrook aint here anymore. That stuff doesn't bother me at all.The main thing doesn't get spoken on enough IMO. Those two are a special duo dude..I'm paying homage to that fact..every single time I bring it up. It's not one or the other...it's THEM.

Anyway..trolling is very much allowed around here, it just depends on who is doing it.

 

Vanderbilt was a big miss today vs. Dallas.

 

Going back to last year, when we first got him, and counting the 3 games (not the win over IND) since he's been back, we're 24-8 when he plays. If we played at that rate this entire season, we'd be the 3rd best team in the NBA, behind only the Bags and the T-Wolves.

But now it's his back. Damn...

 

We were winning and looking better without Russ (and the alleged "lesser" PG DLO) after the trade and LeBron OUT a bunch of games.

The market will bear out again, same as last year which of those 2 PGs deserves more money.

 

That's your opinion and that's cool, I say that we would have won with Westbrook too, if Lebron and AD were healthy . They never played more than 5 consecutive games together, the whole time Westbrook was here.
Forget Championships, We've never won consistently without Lebron and AD playing period, and the only success that we've had, was with both guys in the lineup. Irregardless of the Head Coach, or the players around them.

 

Shrug..We went 9-8 without Lebron after the Westbrook trade.

 

Better than or about the same as we were doing WITH LeBron and AD and “Russ” >> the anchor >> bricks and brain farts.

 

notice trend for clipps winning streak, cut brick minutes in half, who would've thunk it

 

yeah, the harden trade had the smaller, internal "addition by subtraction" effect we had by completely removing him.