The Timberwolves now sit at 13-4, the current #1 seed in the Western Conference, almost 1/4 through the season.
Rudy Gobert defensive rating: 102.3 (#1 in the league)
KAT defensive rating: 104 (#2 in the league this year / averaged 109 historically)
Timberwolves: 106.6 (#1 in the league)
If they make the finals this year; are we still saying it was an overpay?
The other thing the trade does is put our young core in a winning environment every year. Look at what’s happening with Cunningham and Green. They have been in losing cultures for the first years of their careers and developed some real bad habits. Tatum and brown came up in a winning culture and have developed better because of it
Wish Wiseman, Kuminga, and Moody got that message…
Warriors has been bad at drafting and developing since they had their 1st title. lol
What are the respective good and bad habits?
On a losing team maybe you don’t make the right pass for the situation bc the guy your passing to sucks and you don’t trust him. On a winning team/culture maybe you always make the right pass even if the shooter is slumping because you trust the process. Similarly on a bad team you feel like you need to force things to compensate and on good teams you don’t.
Nah look at Banchero. He was in a losing environment and is developing great.
He has Joe Ingles on his team.
Generally speaking, one year likely isn’t that damaging (in OPs example, Ant was also on a bad team year 1). It’s the sustained losing that kills you, especially when the games get feel meaningless from the jump.
I’d also argue that Orlando wasn’t that bad last year. They had that horrid start (what was it, 5-20) but then were competitive the rest of the year and played like .500 ball and won 34 games (with a few tank games down the stretch to suppress that number).
But who knows. Some dudes come out of bad situations no worse for wear. Other dudes can never shake the bad habits. And the one must also wonder whether the bad habits were the cause of the sustained losing rather than the other way around.
Even a team that conceivably went “full tank mode” like the Thunder had the good fortune of CP3 turning his career around there, which led to SGA getting real competitive games at a young age while learning from a top player at his position. Then you have the 6ers who imbued “don’t worry just wait a few years” into Embiid and Simmons bones and now they can never seem to get it done in the playoffs. There’s definitely something to not letting your team toil in mediocrity or worse for too long of a stretch.
it’s just young players acquiring bad habits.