25/12/2.⁷⁄₀.⁷⁄₁.3 In his second year, damn, no wonder people were saying he’s going up. He really was a beast. And still is. I think the criticism he receives is really stupid when considering he’s one of the guys who can never be accused of not puttint 110% in every game. But maybe there’s something with scorpios in the NBA because I feel like he’s like WB or Paolo where their imense intensity could be the key factor or could be the cause for their downfall in certain games.

I love what the Knicks did changing to KAT ran offense. They look like the Thunder East with more experience. They have decent depth also. Truly an underrated team because not one guy on that squad has a bigger than life personality. Both Brunson and Kat are pretty humble and down to earth, Bridges and OG are just solid guys who come to work and deliver, and Hart is quirky but he’s not really a big loud guy.

Yeah, KAT came in his rookie season fully NBA ready. He hit a little sophomore slump after that. After a few seasons he seemed to generally suffer from a lack of effort and easily got into foul trouble. His 3 point shooting improved, but just wasn’t playing winning ball. He had a lot of tragic personal stuff that I’m sure contributed to the malaise. When Ant first showed up there was a lot of drama coming out of the locker room over who the top dog on the team was. They seemed to figure it out after a season or two and bam! KAT got his spark back.

I’ve gone back and forth on KAT, but overall glad he’s doing well.

Jokic could never blow by Wemby like KAT did today

the shooting isn’t what forces wemby to respect the big, its the aggressiveness paired with the physicality to do something with it. Chet was charmin soft, allowing us to get away with putting Vassell on him for long stretches of last series because he isn’t strong enough, he just floated outside of the paint. We want wemby to roam around the basket, not be stuck in on ball defense. KAT was attacking the paint/wemby off the dribble with no hesitation all game, even when he misses, he still forces wemby to come over and help. which is why Hart grabbed 15 damn rebounds and multiple putbacks.

even in the minnesota series this year they had a layup line when naz reid was on the floor instead of gobert

Limiting Wemby on the defensive end provides way more impact than doing it on the offensive end since Wemby is still a much better defensive player than offensive player

hot take: the 2 best offensive centers have the best chance against wemby

Victor Wembanyama’s physique is nothing like KAT and Joker. Body mass alone…

Not only that as an avid cbb watcher KAT did not come into the league under the guise of raw offensive prowess

he was fucking ABUSING college kids as a freshman in the post, hell go watch the tourney and see how many times KAT posted up and threw the most beautiful swish of a baby hook youve seen. He was looked at as a jahlil okafor who could also anchor a defense (which is why he went over him…jahlil was looked at as a best case al jefferson, kat was al jefferson who could maybe also be an all nba first team defender)

His iq in regards to playmaking has heavily improved tho.

Its impulse control.

I feel like he has good basketball IQ just has lapses with staying composed if that makes any sense

he just needs to stop swiping and keep his hands up, if he did that he’d lose two or three fouls from his game

One of the spurs biggest missed opportunities in g1 was not going at him more when he picked up #4

Knicks went from being 2-9 in January to being 13-2 in the playoffs

And every clown who took his side back then

KAT has always been a team guy, Butlers always been a me guy

I maintain to this day, Jimmy Butler had every right to think Wolves ownership were a bunch of dumb fucks for paying Wiggins over him, and he was smart to force his way out.

But humiliating Towns and Wiggins who did literally nothing to him on his way out was a complete asshole move. Years and years later you still have guys in even the more respectable side of NBA media basically wanting to call Towns the f slur whenever they talk about his personality off the court.

Can KAT be dumb on the court? Absolutely. But he’s never lacked on heart or a willingness to do what his team asks of him in order to win.

Also worth pointing out that when those jackboot ICE fuckers were terrorizing our state, Towns was the ONLY current or former Timberwolf to speak out against it, because he’s a good fucking person.

I agree.

Andrew Wiggins had a finals moment a few years back too. Maybe its our fault.

That’s insane though right? Never before in NBA history would you dump a franchise player your team loved just bc of his salary (except for maybe if you considered James Harden from OKC, but he wasn’t a proven all star yet at that point).

To me it’s so stupid that the second apron prevents teams from keeping homegrown stars. If it was the 2010s with looser cap rules and the ability to go over the cap - KAT is definitely not getting traded. That fucking sucks for Minnesota. I don’t like that as a fan of a team I have to care this much about my favorite players are being paid (to the point where I would trade an objectively great player mainly for salary relief purposes) .

And it also straight up leads to worse basketball teams. The Wolves would objectively be better if they still had KAT and could keep NAW too. The Celtics would objectively be better if they still had Jrue, Porzingis, & Al. I’d say those teams would have a real shot at contending against the Spurs and Thunder for the next few years. I would rather see more juggernaut teams in the league at the same time.

I think the league is so dense with talent now that it’s unlikely we see a KD Warriors level of dominance anytime soon, so the second apron isn’t really doing anything except for making it impossible to keep well constructed contenders together for more than a few seasons.

They are giving him the Draymond role, except he can shoot and have offense of his own.

In the last few year with the wolves he got pretty good playmaking wise, with the few dumb pass here and there. The truth is it wasn’t really commented on because at the same time, a serbian monster kinda broke the viewpoint on playmaking from the center position.

True that he had a rough series against the Mavs but I don’t think the Wolves ever really soured on Kat. They were essentially forced into moving him to avoid the second apron. The trade was basically a survival maneuver to avoid long-term roster paralysis which has and will allow them to build a deeper roster around Ant.

Honestly Rudy had a massive impact too. The defensive identity he brought to that whole Wolves team took KAT from a defensive liability to being genuinely great on both ends of the floor

That’s because Ant has that dawg in him. KAT is another type of animal but I can’t quite put my finger on it…

it’s Book or Towns at #1

OG one too right? He was the first of his archetype right? Obviously there have been 3 point shooting centers but not ones that could dribble and play like a guard.

Or was that Anthony Davis was the first and then KAT?

It’s a second threshold to determine a tax paid by the team for spending too much money on players. Supposedly, it’s for parity, but any kind of cap or luxury tax is really a cost-control measure of teams’ overall expenses on player salaries. Also, as currently structured, it plus the supermax helps skew salaries even further towards the top players and away from the “lessers.”

You can look up the details yourself.

The easy definition is that the nba salary cap as 3 threshold with consequences.
The first one is the luxury cap, each dollars spent over this cap incurs a tax.
Next is the first apron, exceding this limit causes some restriction, of the top of my head i think you can’t do sign and trade anymore, there is other restrictions.
The last threshold is the second apron. It’s extremely punishing to be above it. You lose your MLE, you can’t trade up in the draft, you’ll lose a futur first round pick if your above it for multiple years, and many other things.

The main point is that the nba is trying to limit the over spending of winning team, in order to maintain some kind of parity to the nba

I’d say top 15ish. Off the top of my head top 10 in no order

Jokic, Wemby, Luka, SGA, Cade, Tatum & Haliburton (when healthy), Ant, Giannis, Brunson, Curry

KAT would be in that next tier of players.

top 10 player in the nba..? or are we talking about a different top 10?

Who is even top 1

He was skilled and teams believed that he could scale to being a great offensive big but he wasn’t a big scorer in college, the value came from being a defensive stud who had the bones of becoming elite on the other end, something that you just don’t see often. 

True but worth pointing out that he was more valuable on the Wolves when he became the second option behind Ant but sadly we had signed him to first option money and couldn’t afford to keep both Ant and Kat if we wanted a balanced roster because of the second apron.

Hell no, bro’s overpaid af.

Stop this nonsense… over a healthy Celtics team? Over a healthy pacers team? Over the current day pistons?