It might sound like an oxymoron, but Wolves coach Kevin McHale is looking to his two oldest players to bring some energy to the team.
That’s one of the reasons why Kevin Ollie (35) will start at point guard tonight at San Antonio and why McHale used forward Mark Madsen (32) off the bench in Saturday’s 109-102 loss to Houston.
“Right now we don’t have that 48-minute tenacity,” McHale said. “You’ve got to develop that as a team. Even at practice sometimes, young guys, when things don’t start going their way, they start hanging their heads a little bit. You’ve just got to dig in deeper a little bit and that’s where the veterans come in handy.”
McHale has lamented the Wolves’ rugged schedule and lack of practice time since he replaced fired Randy Wittman 16 days ago. Still, he decided to give them Sunday off after Saturday’s game against the Rockets, and the Wolves also will not practice today or Christmas Day before they fly that night to New York for Friday’s game against the Knicks.
“It’s the holidays, the guys have families,” McHale said. “The other day, I wanted to practice desperately, but at a certain point … Our schedule has been brutal as far as the amount of games and not enough practice. We’ve also got to let them re-charge their motors, too.
But here is where things get funny. Telfair’s +/- (that is, points the Woves score vs. points scored by their opponent when he is on the floor) per minute is significantly better than both Kevin Ollie’s and Rashad McCants’s, the two players who have largely taken Bassy’s minutes. Indeed, McCants’ s -.319 per minute is second worst on the team, behind only Rodney Carney. And McCants shoots a lot more than Telfair with not much better results (35%), while bringing significantly less defensive effort and playmaking ability. What’s more, of the Wolves’ ten most commonly deployed five-man lineups, the two that feature Telfair at the point are more effective by far, than any other (the sample sizes here are, admittedly, not too large).
From Mike Max/WCCO:
He might be their best player, but even Al Jefferson is being mentioned as someone the Minnesota Timberwolves need to get more out of.
He might be their best player, but even Al Jefferson is being mentioned as someone the Minnesota Timberwolves need to get more out of.
Inexplicable: Rookie Kevin Love, who has been the Timberwolves’ best rebounder, hardly gets the ball when he’s in position to score.
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