Wolves Pre-season Game 3 Recap: Marko’s Return!

I wasn’t able to catch the game Saturday night in which the Wolves improved their pre-season record to 2-1, by defeating the Chicago Bulls 82-75. Just looking at the boxscore quickly, a few things stick out:

• Holy crap Carlos Loozer sucks. On top of that, he plays below-average defense and is getting paid a bazillion dollars per year. It would be a real shame if the Bulls lost the infinitely better all-around player in Taj Gibson, because they couldn’t move/trade/dump/amnesty Loozer. 
• HOLY FREAKIN CRAP MARKO JARIC IS BAAAAACK!!!  He only had two steals and two fouls in ten whopping minutes, but he’s back in the NBA nonetheless. And the world is a better place.
• The Peksecutioner had 16 points and 17 boards! Wow. Epic huge STUD.
• Looks like Roy and SHVED also had pretty sweet boxscores, so that’s nice to see.
• Hey Derrick Williams… what the hell happened? Following up your 25 point game by shooting an O-fer on eight shots? And only 2 points? That’s discouraging.
• 69 total fouls in the game? How is that even possible?!? Good grief, talk about the refs screwing the pace of the game. That’s a foul every 41 seconds of game time!  Absurd.

But again, like I said I didn’t see the game. However, long-time valued TWolves Blog forum member BonK DID indeed watch the game, and apparently quite closely. Hit up our TWB Forums to check out his post in the Official Wolves -vs- Bulls Game Thread, and/or all the other plethora of T-Wolves and NBA discussions that we’ve got going on every single day.

Here’s what BonK had to say about the Wolves-Bulls game Saturday night:

I watched this game at high attention, after not seeing the squad for over 6 months. The refs really tried hard to make this game completely unenjoyable. And the boring Chicago announcers didn’t help the cause either.

The Good:

Big Pecker was easily the STUD of the game. Why did he play 39 minutes?! Why didn’t Steamer play in the 2nd half? Why did Kobe have to hit that raw? Tyranasaurus Pex looked awesome though. He is like a 98% post pass catcher, while Darko was like a 50% post pass catcher. Once he gets the ball in the down low it’s 2 points for the good guys. As automatic as you can get in the league.

Roy looked just fine. Showed some range and played smart. I was giddy seeing him in that Wolves uni on the court for the 1st time.

SHVED! Make it rain! Euroflair!

D.C. – Cunningham was nice. Total blue collar/dirty work/insert your favorite cliche here player. Every team needs a guy like that on their bench. DC > Lou.

Ricky smiling in a suit behind the bench.

MARKO! Classic Marko game. Did he even take a single shot? His 5:00 shadow wasn’t as deep as usual. I was disappointed we didn’t get a vintage 3 point attempt with a foot on the line from him.

The Bad:

Lou. He really shot 2 for 8?! Man, it felt like 2 for 13. He had my dad chanting “Bring back Darko!”. Which reminds me, Darko & Wes were both in our starting lineup at this time last year. Now they wouldn’t even crack our top 10. That’s progress. Back to the point though: Lou has zero touch.

The Caged Lion. Way to follow up your 25 point performance. DWill looked like garbage out there. But I will say he did look a LOT slimmer.

Budinger – He played 36 minutes? Dude I barely noticed him out there. And we needed offense.

Taj Gibson – I love hard, physical play as much as anybody. But I thought he was taking some very unnessecary hacks at people for a preseason game.

The Ugly:

K. Love as a no show because he slept with his elbow hanging off the bed. Not a good look. Way to show up for the fans. Diva.

The refs. NO FLOW to this game. That 2nd quarter was especially painful to watch.

JJ Barea. My scapegoat for the season. Will he make the 12 man roster once Rubio is back? Probably, but it’s no guarantee. I can’t wait until the first “Dress Malcolm Lee and sit JJ” debate that will occur on roughly January 5th.

Thanks for reading, and make sure to stop by again tomorrow to check out our T-Wolves 2012-13 Season Preview, as well as come discuss the Wolves vs. Haifa game tomorrow night!