GOOD COP: Nikola Pekovic put together a 20 & 12 in 32 minutes.
BAD COP: Pek missed 6 free throws, had a game-worst -24 (correlation, not causation, to be fair) and Coach Terry Porter weirdly limited his best player to 32 minutes of action. This, after playing just 29, 29, and 27 minutes in his last 3 games, respectively. What does TP have against his best active player?
GOOD COP: The Wolves got the better of the famous Kevin Love/O.J. Mayo draft-night swap.
BAD COP: Tonight, they wish they had O.J. He had 20, 9, and 7, in a whopping +30 performance. Meanwhile, K-Love hasn’t had his surgery yet. (It’s scheduled for tomorrow.)
GOOD COP: Dante Cunningham has a nice mid-range jumper.
BAD COP: Tonight, Dante had a TERRIBLE mid-range jumper. He was 6 for 18 in the game, and… well, just go check the shot chart.
GOOD COP: Alexey Shved is a PDWolves fave. Awesome young player and cool dude.
BAD COP: Shved had a road trip to forget. 1 for 7 tonight. 0 for 7 last night. When it finally seemed like he was getting off the schneid with his second three-pointer in short sequence, the ref whistled it off for kicking out his leg. That’s how it’s gone for Shved in the past few games. Hopefully it’s just a short slump in his own game, and not effective scouting adjustments by the rest of the league.
GOOD COP: Ricky Rubio made two shots (one from downtown!) and only missed one. He also played an all-around nice game. Lots of energy, nifty passes, and positive contributions. He was a +7 off the bench in a blowout loss, if that tells you anything.
BAD COP: His shooting mechanics need overhauling. (Paging Shawn Respert…)
GOOD COP: This nightmare of a road trip is over.
BAD COP: The best team (arguably) in the Western Conference comes to town on Thursday Night, for Primetime TNT. Things won’t any easier when Chris Paul and Blake Griffin visit Target Center.
Season Record: 16-19
Punch-Drunk Wolves 
Pingback: Not So Golden Globes: Wolves Lose Again - MN Sports Daily
I’m afraid to watch the Clippers game and didn’t see last night’s game (date night! — Argo)
What this team needs is a has-been shooting guard with problem knees and good leadership skills who (understandably) just can’t hang up those sneakers. Where can they find one of those?
Nathan–
You made the right call on the Argo date. ‘Twasn’t pretty last night.
Man, as much as I’d like to think Brandon Roy would help, he does nothing for the three-point shooting woes, and does nothing to help the team’s inability to run the floor in transition.
They really need Rick Adelman back. And Kevin Love back. And probably another shooter on top of that.
argo F yourself
argo F yourself
but seriously, they were about 15 seconds and a less crowded hallway away from getting killed.
Yeah, Brandon Roy will not help. Great player, but he’s toast. Hopefully he does not read this and try to prove me wrong by pursuing four additional weeks of alternative treatments.
I think the Wolves need a wing defender and a shooter. Ideally this would be one person, but that seems like too much to ask.
I want to like Terry Porter and I don’t know how much, if any, of the recent losing is his fault, but … I have no confidence in Terry Porter.
I wonder if but not for NBA hiring conventions, it would be better for these assistants to get head coaching gigs in the D-league or elsewhere to gain more experience as a head coach.
Does experience as a HC matter or is it an innate ability to connect with people and motivate them? Adelman was head coach for six years at a community college before he was hired as an assistant. Would he be as good a coach if those six years as HC were replaced with six additional years as Jack Ramsay’s assistant coach?
It’s tough to pinpoint the best formula for becoming a successful NBA coach. Larry Bird (and now Mark Jackson) did well with only playing experience. Same with Kevin McHale, though he had a long run in a front office.
Phil Jackson (I think) and many others learned by head coaching in the CBA.
Lots of new NBA head coaches like Jacque Vaughn were longtime assistants.
This is correct, but it frustrates me because finding a good coach seems to involve so much uncertainty. Evaluating already hired coaches also seems difficult, although in some cases (Rambis) it is obvious they are bad. Even Rambis had his defenders after one season in MN.
I’d like to read a well-researched article about how the Spurs identify coaching candidates. Then again, Sam Presti (Spurs alum) hired Carlisemo to coach the Thunder. But he cut bait early in season two and installed Brooks. Why did he suspect Brooks would be a better coach? A good coach?
Mike Woodson was an interesting candidate before Adelman entered the picture, because his Hawks teams went from terrible to very good (and then dropped down to “just good,” on his watch. A coach who successfully builds from the bottom like that seems like he must know what he’s doing.
Sure enough, the Knicks immediately improved when Woody took over last year (and this year). Lots of variables go into team success that a coach can’t control, but, like you say, in some cases it is obvious.