[Music] so we've got some bad vibes out here with the Timberwolves if you missed it we had a very tight game in Toronto coming into crunch time Julius Randle had yaka purle on him and wanted to go to work with the shot clock winding down but Rudy had a size advantage on Scotty Barnes near the rim you can see Randall wave him out of there before Rudy pouts and just starts walking Barnes is beside himself that the rests haven't called the 3sec violation yet and his vociferous celebration goes on as Randall is completely dejected as
he walks by before Anthony Edwards goes off clearly disgusted and rightfully so as this is a crucial part of the game not the time to be making statements about teammates not passing this seems amusing to the bench as Luca Garza is laughing Les is smiling Elston turner seems trapped between amused and disappointed what's worse is that Rudy decides to punish Barnes for his excitement over the call by sizing him up and hip checking him to the floor it's one thing to send a message to an opponent early in a quarter but but certainly not when
they're in the bonus and get two free throws which sparked a 10 to1 run that ended the game an is upset at him again and looks to the bench if to say can you get him out of here the crazy thing is that Rudy has done this before earlier this season he had another size mismatch in the Lane Randall ignores him to ISO and this time the 3 second violation isn't intentional which kind of makes it worse everyone has their internal clock counting when they're in the lane starting in grammar school and this all begs
the question why would Randall be so averse to throwing the ball to Rudy in the first place well I'd recommend sitting down if you have a chair because you're not going to believe some of these plays actually you might since this is something I've been documenting for Rudy's whole career I imagine it won't come as a surprise to know that Rudy has the worst hands in the league it's partly because his arms are so long that it's hard to control limbs like this but the fact that they become only incrementally better at handling the basketball
over his 11 years in the NBA is confounding to me and I'm sure it makes his teammates very wary of propelling the Rock in the air towards his hands granted Julius Randall has gotten nine assists from Rudy including this one later on in the Raptor game as he draws purle to him and gently hands off for the dunk basically Rudy can manage to Corral short passes when they're thrown softly enough and he need only take one step maximum to get to his jump and finish there's no shortage of Clips like this when a player drives
draws the help and Rudy can send it forcely down through the iron but the effect that turnovers like these have on his teammates is immeasurable as each one gets worse than the last passes that a normal Pro should easily grasp and finish elude him in a chorus of flailing elbows wobbly wrists lack of hand eye coordination and embarrassing gasps from the crowd that all serve to make his teammates more and more reluctant to passing him the ball in fact give credit to Randall for trying to throw him another pass after the pouting 3 second call
but Rudy promptly muffs it to the other team and in Rudy's vernacular the P to resistance comes at the very end when Randall tries to shovel him a tough pass to put the exclamation point on a bad loss it is a little strange that Rudy would have gotten so upset down the stretch at not getting the ball considering he's often ignored down there early in the game Randall doesn't even glance in his Direction when he's got over a foot of height advantage in the lane same mismatch here and McDaniels also ignores him to do a
little Drive attempt before swinging the ball to the left side it was an turn to stare at Rudy for a few seconds until he gives up and gets out of the lane against that same Scotty Barnes from the fourth quarter Fiasco Randall runs a pick and roll with Rudy gets caught in the air in a must pass situation begins to throw the ball to him before giving up the advantage gained by kicking it out from the lane to the three-point line watch Rudy on his cut after screening for Edwards who takes both Defenders with him
it's almost like Rudy is a ghost with his hands up in their offense and a minute before the 3se second violation Randall no doubt sees Rudy down there with a shorty and decides to shoot the open three instead and finally Rudy calls for the lob when Randall's Drive forces Rudy's man to rotate but he ignores that to kick it to the corner for a bad Miss by McDaniels that Rudy had no hope in coring despite his effort even after the ball got away from him when I examined the Wolves offense last season it was always
strange to me how often they look to get the ball to Rudy I guess they wanted to reward him for all the def defense he was playing which makes sense but when you saw him turn the ball over like this or even struggle to make a successful catch that turned into a score it made me wonder why coach Finch was playing with fire like this what became apparent to me was that Conley was really the main guy willing to pass to Rudy while his other teammates would avoid it as much as possible Conley is playing
less minutes this season and the offense in general has gone away from giving it to Rudy so much as evidence in these touch stats credit to the coaching staff for limiting his touches especially when you see how much lower his points per paint touch output is it's just not worth giving it to him down there and as a result their offensive rating rank is a lot higher than last year's although the raw number is lower generally teams start out slow on offense and improves over the course of the Season replacing Carl Anthony towns with Julius
Randall shows an edge to cat with Randall not too far behind but Randall holds the ball a lot longer isolates a lot more and as a result the team itself is passing a lot less this year which could all contribute to the bad vibes as guys get frustrated by not even touching the ball the real problem is the defense which is plummeted from number one in defensive rating rank last year to 14th this year Randall is certainly a culprit as he foolishly reaches in from one pass away while Rudy was already in perfect position to
contest the shot check Rudy's reaction after the shot goes goes through the net Randall gets stuck ball watching while his man cuts behind him and then amusingly goes to close out to the corner while buet dunks it and Rudy gives Randall an icy glare but give credit to Randall for this deal as he rotates over perfectly before the Raptors can take advantage of the mismatch down low the team as a whole has struggled to defend basic plays with Rudy dealing with the ball on the handoff Alexander Walker is supposed to tag the rle man which
he does but then allows him to keep going to the rim for the lob Rudy flares at him as Alexander Walker demonstrates that he did make contact with him and he gets beat on a simple back cut from the postentry passer giving up the easy layup team wide breakdowns happen as well as Toronto runs a Spain pick and roll where Barnes screens the ball screeners man Randall steps up to switch onto the ball and does call this out but McDaniels ignores that to stick with the ball as well Rudy gets confused and foolishly stays with
Barnes in the perimeter instead of taking the cutter and notice the benefits of having a rim running big that your offense wants to pass to Rudy isn't immune to the bad defense either as he just lets purle beat him to the spot and grab the offensive rebound and at the end of this game both Rudy and Randall foolishly try to pressure the rebounder 90 ft from the hoop putting Rudy in a hopeless position to try and stop the break and alleyoop to the brim that helped seal the game Rudy has been the anchor of a
number of elite teams throughout his career and as a result was rewarded with a massive threeyear EXP extension on his contract for $110 million but is that really worth it for a player who ranks this low in defending shots within 6 feet this year he normally ranks higher so let's give him 10 more games to improve but it's possible that the way the team defense is shaping up his effect won't be nearly as severe so what you have left is a center no one wants to pass to because he commits a high volume of turnovers
including setting illegal screens with needless pushing and shoving ruining whole possessions before they can even get started while every big man in the league tries to get away with as much physicality as possible he's so big and awkward that he simply can't escape the watchful eye of those pesky refs whose job is made infinitely Easier by overt displays of player control like this oh and also struggles against teams with three-point shooting centers a position more and more Elite teams are adding to their roster and that has me worried that this wolves team won't be able
to make a Deep Run in the playoffs
