I would like to preface this post with the fact that I have full confidence in Rick Adelmans coaching abilities, fully believe in his philosophies when it comes to basketball, and think his offensive system is superb. I will never pretend to know as much about basketball theory or even half of the practical applications of said theories in comparison to Rick Adelman.
The offense of the Minnesota Timberwolves is crucial. This isnt so much basketball theory as an expectation of whats in store for us this season. Im not breaking any ground in telling you that the Wolves have to be good on offense. This isnt news to anybody reading this site. The Wolves need to score points and we expect that theyll need to score a lot of points in order to neutralize whatever shortcomings are there on defense. We felt this way going into last season. Points wouldnt be the problem; defense would.
Turns out that was backwards but mostly due to an injury rash that turned into an injury flesh-eating bacteria. Kevin Love went down. Ricky Rubio came back but missed significant time while needing a month or two to get back to where he needed to be. Brandon Roy never materialized. Chase Budinger went down for the middle of the season with love handles on each side of that middle. Nikola Pekovic and Andrei Kirilenko were sporadically banged up. The season fell apart before we could even see how it fit together.
And thats why the offense of the Wolves is so crucial this year. I think we see frustration this early from Rick Adelman for two reasons:
