Welcome back Wolves

Well it's been a few days since the NBA started it's "second half."My favorite team has played 2 games, Friday and Saturday night. While the Wolves won 3 of the 4 games before the break and then dominated the all star events that they were apart of the success has not translated in the ensuing days.

Playing fringe post season teams from both conferences, the pups came up small. I'm not going to break down either of the games since nothing too special happened but over the early weekend they were the only sports team worth reporting on.

So here goes
I really want to stay positive on this team because there are plenty of things to like about it and be optimistic about. So even after more losses I'm going to try to extract whatever positive facts I can. I'll go chronologically and start with Friday night's positives.

1.  6 of the Timberwolves players scored double digit points.
1. 5 of those scorers have less then 3 years of experience.
2. The top 2 scorers are still only in their second years.
2. They were not out rebounded in the game
1. The top 2 rebounders in the game were on the Wolves
3. They also had nearly 50% more assists then the Grizzlies (25 - 17)
4. Finally, 100%. 31 - 31 free throws. One of the most underrated stats but often indicative of success or failure. Hopefully it can lead to success next time but for now, going perfect from the stripe is absolutely noteworthy.
5. 3 pt shooting. 42% isn't great but making 11 is a good number.

I'm not going for fluffy positivity though so now comes the negative.

1. First and foremost, the score. Not getting enough points is the most important stat in all sports. It was a close loss, but I hate that excuse. There was a point in the game were Minnesota was up 40 - 30 and the final score was 109 - 104. So in about 2 1/2 quarters the wolves gave up 79 points and scored 64. Not a great recipe for success.
2. Turnovers. Minnesota gave up the ball 20 times, to only 13 by Memphis. 

I didn't intend to go so positive considering that they lost the game in poor fashion, but I do want to stay positive so I'm glad I was able to extract that many good things from one game.

Lets take a look at the knickerbockers now.

1. Three players over 20 points in the game with another at 14. Not as good as the night before but still a good performance.
2. They had a big edge in assists again, 24 - 17
3. The team only committed 7 turnovers and 11 fouls in the game. That's in comparison to 16 & 19 respectively for NY.
4. Rubio dished for 16 assists on his own, one less then the Knicks had as team. 

The team came out on the short end of the score again but it isn't clear from the statistic's why that is. I know I could read the summary and figure it out but aside from the negativity that should come with another loss I don't really feel like finding a reason to gripe.

They weren't good enough to win for 2 games and hopefully they can make the necessary adjustments to get win 18 on Monday night. As played out as it is, the teams still really young and statistically speaking, is performing decently. They're just not good enough, yet!

So welcome back, hopefully the small sample size is not indicative of the remainder of the season!