Charlotte Hornets at Minnesota Timberwolves Preview
The Charlotte Hornets go up to the old Northwest tonight to take on the Minnesota Timberwolves. After playing the Mavericks and the Spurs, you would think the Timberwolves would be a welcome respite on the schedule. However Minnesota is 4-2 on the year and coming off a victory over the Atlanta Hawks, who have beaten the Hornets twice to this point.
The Timberwolves are still dealing with the untimely passing of coach Flip Saunders, and for the second time the franchise has turned to Sam Mitchell as his replacement. Mitchell coaches a young team that is full of talent and short on experience. If you ignore the shadow of Kevin Garnett of course.
This T-Wolves team has Ricky Rubio to dish, Andrew Wiggins to leap and defend, and Karl-Anthony Towns to play down low. They can bring gunner Kevin Martin off the bench to try to fill the basket. So there are a lot of pieces on this team. The trick will be keeping them all on the roster.
Opponent: Minnesota Timberwolves (4-2)
Date: November 10, 2015
Time: 8:00 PM
TV: Fox Sports Southeast
Venue: Target Center (Minneapolis, MN)
Probable Timberwolves Lineup:
C Karl-Anthony Towns
PF Kevin Garnett
SF Tayshaun Prince
SG Andrew Wiggins
PG Ricky Rubio
The Timberwolves have one thing in common with the Hornets, there are plenty of bodies to bring off the bench. Besides Martin, there is guard Zach LaVine, forward Gorgui Dieng, and forward Shabazz Muhammad. Winning the bench battle will be important to this game.
The Timberwolves are missing their center Nikola Pekovic for now, and that is something the Hornets should take advantage of.
Minnesota has a lot of length on defense, with the exception of Rubio. The Hornets will have to be careful with their passing. This is a team coming off a game where San Antonio’s winning margin was their points off of Charlotte turnovers.
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Probable Charlotte Hornets Lineup
C Al Jefferson
PF Marvin Williams
SF P.J. Hairston
SG Nicolas Batum
PG Kemba Walker
The nice thing about the Timberwolves is that the Hornets enjoy matchup advantages with two of their best players. Towns will never have seen post moves like Jefferson’s before. If they choose to switch Garnett on him, that will send Towns chasing Williams on the perimeter.
Kemba Walker is coming off a solid performance (27 points) against the San Antonio Spurs, and his cover will most likely be Rubio. That should give him an opportunity to get a repeat performance. The only downer would be if they switched either Prince or Wiggins on Walker. That would put more pressure on Hairston or Jeremy Lamb to win the new matchup with Rubio.
The Hornets will return home tomorrow to face the New York Knicks.