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Tag: Tom Thibodeau

Seth Rosenthal: Randle’s “Rare” Turnaround Fuels Knicks’ “Dream of a Season”

May 11, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Julius Randle’s shooting and playmaking have improved considerably in Year 7 as the University of Kentucky product prepares to lead the Knicks into the playoffs for the first time in eight years (ACDixon).


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Seth Rosenthal, video producer for SB Nation’s Secret Base, makes his triumphant return to discuss his beloved Knicks’ superb season in the face of extremely low expectations coming into the year. They’ve done it through seismic shooting improvements from Julius Randle and second-year guard R.J. Barrett, inspired bench play from Derrick Rose, new head coach Tom Thibodeau’s seamless fit and much more highlight in the episode. Also included: A discussion of where the franchise is headed and where it stands with the playoffs just around the corner.

6:10-6:55: “As a fan of the team who has been stuck in his apartment for the last year, what a thing it’s been to be able to depend on a player and a team like the Knicks to sort of cheer me up at the end of the night. I wasn’t counting on that. And it’s just the way Randle has turned his performance and his career around during this incredibly difficult year has been really inspiring, and it’s meant a lot to me. And it’s hard to fully describe. … I was searching around ESPN Trade Machine for ways to dump him for, like, Cory Joseph like four months ago, five months ago today. And now I’m ready to extend the dude. I’ve never seen anything like it as a Knicks fan, and the timing could not have been better.”

7:58-8:10: “This is what we’ve been waiting for. This is why you take a gamble on a player. This is why you sign him to an initial sub-max contract. He’s 26 years old right now. Pay the dude.” Continue reading

Bill Bohl: “Everything Makes More Sense When [Jimmy Butler’s] on the Court”

February 13, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Under coach Tom Thibodeau again, Jimmy Butler is leading the league in minutes per game in his first season with the Timberwolves (Catherine Salaun/Creative Commons).

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A little more than six months after our latest Timberwolves-themed episode, things are looking pretty good for the team currently fourth in the West. Aaron checked in with Billy Bohl, writer for ESPN True Hoop’s A Wolf Among Wolves to discuss a slew of topics, including but not limited to coach Tom Thibodeau’s minutes allocation, 22-year-old phenoms Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins, and Jimmy Butler’s multifaceted impact on the organization’s success. Feel free to wolf down some highlighted sections below:

10:00-10:51: “I think it [the third seed] is preferable [to the fourth seed]. But again, you don’t want to look too far ahead…I wouldn’t want to face Russell Westbrook in a playoff series. Right now if they were the third seed, the Thunder would be the sixth seed. No disrespect to them obviously [but] I would much rather face Portland in the first round. It’s hard to decipher just which route you’d want to take. To be perfectly frank, I don’t think they’d have a chance against Houston either. I think they’d be in big trouble in the second round no matter which of those two teams [Houston or Golden State] they faced.”

15:05-15:56: “The Wolves aren’t terribly deep, especially on the wing, and they need Karl-Anthony Towns to be on court when Jimmy Butler is sitting. So they have to stagger those minutes, and that ends up driving up Karl’s minutes a bunch. I don’t worry about it too much as far as Wiggins or Towns is concerned. The part that troubles me a little: I try to be as optimistic as I can, but Jimmy Butler has already had a couple little tweaks to his knee this season. Continue reading

Ward-Henninger (Western Conference Preview): OKC Has “Operation Shutdown Potential”

October 16, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Russell Westbrook will be looking to follow up on his MVP season alongside the Thunder’s two high-profile offseason acquisitions, but guest Colin Ward-Henninger foresees chemistry challenges ahead (Keith Allison/Flickr).

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Colin Ward-Henninger of CBSSports.com helps preview the talent-loaded Western Conference after an action-packed offseason replete with key player movement.

8:54-9:52: “Paul George actually had a higher usage rate and more touches than Melo last year, and we all know what Russ [Westbrook] does on the court. And he had a hard enough time playing with Durant, and then when Durant left, we saw the madness that happened last year with just the NBA record usage rate of like 40 percent or something like that, which is insane, and it’s hard to just turn that off. I think it’s going to take a while…I think it’s going to be very difficult. I think that Paul George is going to have the hardest time adjusting, because I think he’s going to be the one who’s expected to take fewer shots. Melo, we hope at this stage in his career understands that he’s not the No. 1 guy or even the No. 2 guy in this case, but you never know. And these are two guys that can opt out of their contracts, Paul George and Carmelo Anthony. So if they get 20 games into the season and they don’t like playing with Russ, there’s some Operation Shutdown potential there.” Continue reading

Tim Faklis: Timberwolves Primed for Playoffs as 5 or 6 Seed

August 4, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Andrew Wiggins, just 22, has been mentioned in Kyrie Irving trade rumors, but Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor says he wants him in town for the long haul (Jose Garcia/Creative Commons).

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The Minnesota Timberwolves have missed the playoffs in each of the past 13 seasons, while finishing with more losses than wins over the last 12. However, the tide is about to turn, according to our guest, Tim Faklis, who contributes to A Wolf Among Wolves, Wolves Wired and FanSided’s The Step Back. He argues that the team’s active offseason, highlighted by the blockbuster trade with Chicago that landed Jimmy Butler, has placed it firmly in win-now mode. Tim touches upon a wide assortment of topics, including the Timberwolves’ expected improvement and whether or not they should try to trade for the Cavaliers’ Kyrie Irving. Let’s see if these excerpts leave you howling at the moon:

3:20-4:02: “He [Butler] is not a dynamite perimeter shooter, but pretty much every other aspect of his game is something that they’ve missed, especially defensively. They were the worst defensive team in the NBA by a lot of measures last year. And Butler brings in that defensive toughness that [coach Tom] Thibodeau’s been looking for since he joined the team really… I think part of Thibodeau’s plan is to have Butler teach the both of them [Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins], especially Wiggins, how to work on that end.”

12:02-12:39: “Jeff Teague has been up and down from season to season in terms of his 3-point shooting. The hope is that he’ll be up in Minnesota with guys like Butler, guys like Wiggins, guys like Towns there to initiate most of the offense and him just to kind of bring the ball up and then play. Continue reading

Keith Smith: Clippers Face “No-Win Situation,” Celtics Target Hayward

June 30, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Chris Paul’s exit further complicates the Clippers’ and Blake Griffin’s looming decision of how to handle his unrestricted free agency (Keith Allison/Creative Commons).

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Though the free agency period does not officially begin until July 1, the landscape of the NBA has already shifted dramatically after the draft, a few franchise-altering trades and a couple front-office shake-ups. To help us sort through all the madness of the last week and predict the remaining changes to come, we’ve brought on Keith Smith, who covers the NBA for Real GM and Fan Rag Sports, and has been presenting detailed analyses of each team’s offseason plans on his show, NBA Front Office. With Keith, we break down the ramifications of the blockbuster trades that sent Chris Paul to Houston and Jimmy Butler to Minnesota, discuss the fallout of the Knicks and the Cavaliers severing ties with executives Phil Jackson and David Griffin, respectively, and, of course, try to forecast the eventual landing spots for Paul George, Gordon Hayward, Blake Griffin, George Hill, Paul Millsap and all of the other high-profile free agents and likely movers this offseason.

7:03-7:30: “One of the things that’s really funny about the Blake Griffin question is you can see it going one of two ways. You can see Blake Griffin saying, ‘Forget it. We can’t replace CP3. I’m not gonna be able to win here now. I want to move on. I want to get out of here and go somewhere else.’ Or you could see Blake Griffin saying, ‘Finally, it’s my team. I have it to myself. I don’t have to deal with this guy yapping at me all the time, and we didn’t necessarily get along great.’ So that’s where it becomes really tricky.”

Continue reading

Patrick Fenelon: “There’s Nothing Wrong With (the Timberwolves’) Offense Right Now”

November 12, 2016 / / 0 Comments
Through seven games, the 21-year-old forward is shooting north of 63 percent from 3-point range (Erik Drost/Creative Commons).

Through seven games, 21-year-old Canadian Andrew Wiggins is shooting north of 63 percent from 3-point range (Erik Drost/Creative Commons).

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The 2-5 Minnesota Timberwolves may be on the cusp of something very promising, but they’re awfully young. Under new head coach and president Tom Thibodeau, that inexperience has likely already contributed to three losses by a combined 10 points. Close losses notwithstanding, the offense, led by Andrew Wiggins, Zach LaVine and Karl-Anthony Towns, all 21 years old or younger, has been electric, as has the 3-point shooting in particular. Timberwolves expert Patrick Fenelon was gracious enough to join the show to discuss these three phenoms, the prospect of Minnesota improving its team defense, rookie point guard Kris Dunn’s strengths and weaknesses, and a whole lot more. Get teased with some excerpts below:

2:53 – 3:21: Fenelon begins by explaining what has been causing the Timberwolves to blow leads in the third quarter of games: “You wonder if it’s just a weird quirk of youth thinking that they can just sit back and play prevent defense. It’s just a layup line really is what happens in that third quarter. If you look at shot charts, you’ll see that one guy is coming in there and getting layups over and over again. They just stop playing defense. And then turnovers happen.”  Continue reading

Previewing the 2016-17 NBA Season With James Herbert

October 19, 2016 / / 0 Comments
James Herbert

James Herbert picked the rise of the Utah Jazz as his most compelling storyline of the NBA season (sixersphotos/Flickr).

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On this episode, James Herbert, NBA writer at CBSSports.com, joins the show to run through the most compelling storylines for the fast approaching 2016-17 NBA season. After an offseason filled with ample player movement and coaching changes, James helps us navigate the new landscape of the NBA, including which teams he thinks improved their chances and which he believes regressed. He also opines on possible breakout players, gives his season award predictions and offers his thoughts on the increasing social activism among NBA players and in professional sports in general.

1:40-4:38 Herbert is very high on the Utah Jazz’s prospects for the season. Here’s a taste:

“I just think they’re gonna be a monster this year. I think a lot of people really expected them to be that breakout team last year — some thought it would even happen the year before, they’d make it to the playoffs — but I think this is really the year that it’s going to happen. They should have been a playoff team last year. They just barely missed out, and that was when they didn’t really have a point guard for the whole season…so I’m a bit more bullish on them than I think even most NBA hipsters are…I think they’re seen as this big team, this enormous team that plays power basketball because of [Derrick] Favors and [Rudy] Gobert, but they can put Trey Lyles and Boris Diaw there as their frontcourt with their bench unit, and they can match up with small teams too. I think it’s really about versatility in the modern NBA, not just going small, and the Jazz have the pieces to play pretty much any way.”

11:03-11:50 Like many analysts, Herbert sees a significant drop-off after the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors. Here’s what he had to say concerning the near-inevitability of another Cavs-Warriors Finals: Continue reading

Sean Highkin Talks Bulls’ Frontcourt Depth and Hoiberg vs. Thibodeau

November 4, 2015 / / 0 Comments
Can Derrick Rose and the Chicago Bulls put together another strong season? (Jim Larrison/Creative Commons)

Can the Chicago Bulls put together another strong season? (Jim Larrison/Creative Commons)

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This week, Sean Highkin of Bleacher Report, NBC Sports and Sports on Earth gives us a detailed glimpse into the Chicago Bulls, a talented team that returns much of its roster but is playing under a first-year NBA coach in Fred Hoiberg. Sean highlights the many differences between Hoiberg and his predecessor, Tom Thibodeau, including Hoiberg’s considerably more easy-going nature. He also provides us the latest on Derrick Rose and explains why Chicago’s dynamic offense could make up for most of what the team figures to lose on the defensive end. Among other topics, Sean breaks down the Bulls’ impressive depth in the frontcourt, touching upon why Pau Gasol and Joakim Noah have rarely taken the court together. Despite the Bulls’ 130-105 drubbing in Charlotte, which occurred shortly before the interview took place, Sean looks forward to another strong season in the Windy City.

Music: “Who Likes To Party” by Kevin MacLeod

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