Howlin' T-Wolf

What a heart breaker. They get the monkey off their back in Denver, come home and start out the game rocking (first 5 minutes were the best 5 of the season imo), slip a bit in the third (as usual), only to come back and be oh so close to getting their first winning streak of the season.

Flip Saunders once said way back when he was the Wolves coach (and he may have been repeating someone I don’t know honestly) that the most important 20 minutes of a game were the first and last 5 minutes of each half. Well the Wolves won two of them (1st 5 of the game, 5 before halftime) lost the third (5 after halftime) and pretty much split the last 5.

The Gameflow is here to help you see the runs.

Personally I am still excited to have seen two things in the game, 1) The non-triangle offense, which includes fast breaks off turnovers and quick outlets, Jefferson post-ups, and pick and roll’s for Flynn and/or Sessions, work quite well and I would say about 75% of the time (other than Jefferson getting tired down the stretch and a few rookie plays by Flynn) and 2) The triangle offense still only work about 10% of the time. Most especially in the third quarter Sessions tried to run it with most of the 2nd unit and it resulted 2 or 3 times in him forcing a bad pass to a guy that wasn’t really open. The one time (the 10%) was a great PNR off the pinch-post where Brewer got an easy weak side layup. (Jim Peterson went so far as to recall how many times Pippen would get easy buckets from that play. Alas Brewer is no Pippen.) This is the same play that worked a few games back with Cardinal and Sessions. Again when it works it’s a beautiful thing. Unfortunately by my expert guessing it’s about 65% less effective than “our new offense.” What exactly is our new offense? Well it’s a nice little hybrid of the things I listed above. The good news is that it appears the team is really moving away from the triangle. For as John Hollinger put so nicely in his chat on ESPN on Wednesday:

The shift [from the triangle to uptempo] is long overdue, it’s painfully obvious that they’re running a system designed for talented wing players with the worst wing talent in the league.

Nice way of breaking it down plain and simple if you ask me.

By the way if you didn’t know it that first half was the Wolves best half of the season. (Four Factors are below) As Bill Simmons like’s to quote Herm Edwards as saying, “We can build on this!” Well Wolves fans I think we can. We’ll find out tonight against New Orleans.

Halftime 4 Factors, or aka The Best Half of Wolves Basketball this Year