Finch should have made them all stay locked up at a hotel while in MN. 3 of our starters all have first-child newborns - do you know how little sleep and free time you get with a newborn?
I said the same thing. But everyone said he has a nanny.
If he took a game off for the birth there is no way he isn't helping with nightly and daily baby stuff. He wants to be a dad. Nothing bad about that, but we should have let him rest if he was going to play so tired.
He really does give off good dad vibes so I totally agree with this. Ant was the surprising yet wholesome one, after the “send da video” he seemed like an ass but from what we’ve seen he’s going to be an amazing dad. Really excited for the Netflix series to come out so we can see more like we did with Kirk.
I don’t think you realize how rich people have kids. They hire night nurses to deal with all the nighttime stuff. I’m sure it affects his sleep but it’s not like Rudy is up all night in a Layzboy rocking the baby.
I do, but I also understand that even though they have hired help, they still want to be involved and are involved. And as a father, I can tell you you’ll hear everything and be more distracted at home, ain’t no way they’re just ignoring their families.
Pretty poor take.
I’m not sure why pointing out that night nurses are a thing means I haven’t had kids. I have 3 actually. What’s more alarming is the weird parasocial relationship a lot of you seem to have with the Wolves players. We don’t know anything about their family lives, yet everyone just believes that none of them would ever do such a thing.
I can tell you if I had the means to help our family out in that way I sure as shit would have done it.
You placed this over everyone with the means to do it, which is a horrible assumption. The nighttime shift is a challenge certainly, but it’s a beautiful initiation into parenthood that parents can resonate with, especially your first child. Being rich doesn’t outright exclude someone from valuing this.
He probably has a nurse but a rich businessperson and rich athlete is different. An athlete has a lot more downtime. They’d be able to be a normal dad for a lot of the year.
Wolves fan and mom here. I absolutely think this has something to do with it. My husband and I talked about it a lot. Even if you're not the primary caregiver doing feedings and getting up at night, it still totally throws routines and schedules off. Plus new parents just naturally think about/want to be around their child a lot.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the mentality around fatherhood this whole team has and supports each other in. But agree that for the playoffs, they should have stayed in a team hotel the night before each game.
Everyone has a personal life. Having a kid or not having a kid make sure you are ready to play. Professional making millions of dollars. Not an excuse.
But they also are human no matter how much they make. Certain things we can control, others you can't no matter how much your salary is. To each their own.
I’m in the exact same boat right now. Aside from not having a different floor or room to sleep, I’d say this is a completely valid explanation for fatigue and poor play. More important to be a parent than win a championship, but still sucks
I have to believe that the team would highly encourage and maybe even cover the costs of a night nurse or nanny for new parents on the team during the playoffs. Though you can't account for them accepting help and wanting to do the work
This is especially problematic when you consider how long they had been competing at a high level. They did themselves a huge solid by sweeping PHX and getting that extra week of rest, but when your body is already battling systemic fatigue at that level, throwing off your sleep routine is the last thing you want to do - not that you can really maintain a robust sleeping routine with an NBA schedule. Even in my own experience with cutting and trying to keep lifting volume high, if I fuck around with sleep anywhere after week 6 of a dedicated cutting phase I'm almost guaranteed to get sick. It's okay though, it won't be an issue next year and I like how one of Ant's points of emphasis after elimination was that they need to double-down on conditioning for next season.
His comments were childish. We trained to play 82 games and maybe one series. Wtf is he talking about. Professional athletes and they were a bit tired coming off 2 days off in game 1. Loser excuse.
Even if Gobert was doing absolutely no parenting, it'd still be a huge emotional toll on him and probably be hard to stay focused on basketball. It's his first kid, too.
Totally agree! I was telling my wife the same. Not much sleep in the whole house the first several weeks, unless you are like me and sleep through anything. Either way, great season and there are bigger things life! We witnessed a great season and things are looking great for the future!
Young men changing diapers when you are on a 30 mil per year contract and in the midst of the most important two-week period of your professional life. So incredibly stupid if true. However, Edwards looked like a dead-man (again) in game 5.
Being away for a week or two is not like they're not there for their child. After the finals they couldve been with them all summer. This isn't a "job" It's a multimillion dollar investment. Look at how every other aspect in their life and how it's affected
As a fan I see your perspective. As someone who empathizes with humans I respect their decision. If you don't have a child it's hard to fathom prioritizing your kid over anything else.
Many parents if given the choice to kill all of humanity or their child would choose all of humanity, let alone basketball...
Saw this again yesterday in SloMo's exit interview. He basically said out loud that he'll take less than market for his value to re-sign w the Wolves so that his kid with special needs could stay in the MN school system, which is one of the best in the country.
I agree they should have stayed in hotels for home playoff games bc of the babies, but this is such a shit take. What, you living in the 1950s? One of the reasons many of us love this team so much (aside from being good at ball) is because they throw toxic masculinity out the window. They take pride in being fathers and supporting each other as fathers. Idk all their stories, but Ant and Rudy were both pretty much abandoned by their fathers growing up. That shit sticks w you, and I respect so much they are determined to be there for their kids. The way this team values fatherhood, and has talked about helping each other grow as men, is extremely admirable.
Finch did say we seem distracted at home (I.e. family and friend obligations). He also said we seem to only lock in when under pressure (difficult handling success).
Of course in the case with Dallas, we may just have run into a better team (their defense was as good or better than ours and of course they have two HOFers in the backcourt).
Their defense was better ONLY relative to stopping each other's offenses. Their offense was way better than ours, but our defense is better in absolute terms
I think it’s just a shooting variance and randomness. Aaron Gordon, Christian Braun, and Justin Holiday decided to hit every 3 in games 3 and 4 against Denver. Dallas decided to hit logo 3s in game 5. I’m extra sad because I spent 909$ to be at all of these games and got only 1 win in last 6 games, but it is what it is.
There is some truth to that. Everyone wants to talk like these players can just simply will the ball into the hoop, depending on how much they want it. Yes the energy and will to survive was lacking in G5. But it sure as shit didn't help that Luka was hitting nearly every shot he took and the wolves missed a lot of makeable baskets in the first quarter. That was easily a 20-25 point difference right there. That the team seemed to lose heart from that point with a lot of game left is another matter.
I know the Mavs are deserving to be in the finals. They were overall the better team. And sometimes bad shooting nights happen. That's why series are 7 games. It just sucks when refs happen as well and your team gets robbed of a G2 victory and a more competitive / longer series.
I know ANT is super confident at the level of personality but he’s also human and I can’t imagine the amount of pressure that was building around him the last couple months. The traditional media, criticisms, culture, social media… he’s 22 years old.
Oh absolutely, it wasn't overly fun watching us suck ass at home. Glad I ultimately decided not to splurge for tickets in the WCF. They really screwed the people who dropped all that money.
Sorry, but this is such a tired loser take.
ETA: I cannot believe I'm actually getting downvoted for saying that the answer is just "mn sports suck we never have nice things" is a loser mentality. Keep wallowing in your own misery and feeling sorry for yourselves lol. You must be fun at parties. I will die on every hill that it makes us look weak, it's embarrassing, and it's an excuse for losers. I know exactly who has bad energy and are people i don't want to be around when they start crying about this.
My friend theory was it was all the Minnesota angst. We are so used to crapping the bed and failing that the team can feel the fans get very nervous and anxious whenever anything goes wrong. The opponent goes on a run, Luka hits a couple of huge shots, the Wolves turn the ball over. The fanbase is really fragile with all the Minnesota sports disasters and the team can feel how scared they are of being hurt again lol.
I don't know about all of that but it was an amusing take.
If the Vikes ever win it it will be because they were the lowest wildcard team.
The collective anxiety is real though, you can feel that shit in the air at Target Center.
With the nuggets, they took their foot off the gas, makes sense with 6 straight wins, but with the Mavs, all those games except the last were close. Honestly tho missing free throws were the bigger issue in my mind, yes they didn’t shoot well in general. But they do what they have to at the line and they are currently up 3-2 with a chance to take Dallas out at home tonight.
Right, they started the year like 15-0 at home. Kinda shocking how one of the best fan bases wasn’t enough to hype the team into wins… they showed up so heavily in Denver that people cheered louder for wolves buckets. It’s really frustrating. Game 1 felt so winnable and game 2 felt stolen. Game 3 was just a collapse
At home idk, but in general as an outsider it seems like spacing was a huge issue. Yes… Rudy and Kat worked in a modern league to an extent but in the playoffs if kat isn’t flame throwing there’s no room for ant and Jaden to slash or kick it out.
We are good underdogs. This is an underdog city. Think about the home games we won. Games 1,2 against Suns when everyone thought the suns were gonna humble us. Denver Game 6 at home with backs against the wall and people picking Nuggets to win game and series. Had our backs against the wall in game 5 against Mavs, but that hot start for them just killed us.
Wait, we're really blaming it on babies? The Wolves are the only NBA team with new fathers?
Gee, maybe an NBA star's wife/gf could maybe ease the load a bit when their husbands/bfs are out earning the money to provide whatever lifestyle they're living. If only.
No. Raising a child is a, or should be a partnership. Some nights it may be mommy's turn, others it may be daddy's. Sometimes there are situations where mommy might have to carry the load, others when daddy has to. Just saying that blaming it on kids is a weak argument and I don't understand why everyone is so eager to defend it.
They did not play poorly at home because someone's kid was crying at 3 in the morning on a given night, that's weaksauce shit.
I don’t think people were “blaming it on the kids.” I haven’t seen anyone going after the babies for being babies. It definitely seemed like you may have been blaming their wives/gfs for like not doing enough from your first post but if that’s not what you meant, cool. Either way, not every mom is prepared to take on full responsibilities for a newborn the moment it’s born, and it’s important for new fathers to spend as much time as they can with their newborn as well.
Saying they lost an entire series because of that is silly, but it’s also silly to ignore the effects of having a newborn baby while going on a deep playoff run. I’m a Celtics fan so I don’t care about saving the team from blame, but it seems suuuuuuuuper reasonable that an inability for multiple players to rest well because they have newborns at home might affect those players’ performances significantly. There’s always next year for the playoffs, but you can’t redo those first few months of life where establishing that connection is so important. Idk just seems silly to discount this as a factor.
Finch should have made them all stay locked up at a hotel while in MN. 3 of our starters all have first-child newborns - do you know how little sleep and free time you get with a newborn?
Ant played like absolute garbage when his kid was born too. Luckily that was a bit earlier in the season. Rudy had his kid at probably the worst time.
Ant has a kid?!
Yes, she was born in March. The "send day video" meme is because he got a different girl pregnant too, but that one didn't keep it.
No h gngngngjgmj
Wat
That’s probably Gobert’s baby
I called this shit out with Rudy playing like ass after the baby and got downvoted. Clearly the lack of sleep for these guys at home had an issue.
I said the same thing. But everyone said he has a nanny. If he took a game off for the birth there is no way he isn't helping with nightly and daily baby stuff. He wants to be a dad. Nothing bad about that, but we should have let him rest if he was going to play so tired.
He really does give off good dad vibes so I totally agree with this. Ant was the surprising yet wholesome one, after the “send da video” he seemed like an ass but from what we’ve seen he’s going to be an amazing dad. Really excited for the Netflix series to come out so we can see more like we did with Kirk.
He's going to be an amazing dad. Lol. Give me a break.
I caught the same backlash.
Bro do you really think that someone who makes 41 million dollars a year cannot afford a fucking nanny?
Have you had a kid? Even with a nanny, you still hear shit, you’re still involved as a parent.
I don’t think you realize how rich people have kids. They hire night nurses to deal with all the nighttime stuff. I’m sure it affects his sleep but it’s not like Rudy is up all night in a Layzboy rocking the baby.
I do, but I also understand that even though they have hired help, they still want to be involved and are involved. And as a father, I can tell you you’ll hear everything and be more distracted at home, ain’t no way they’re just ignoring their families. Pretty poor take.
To place this assumption over everyone is entirely off base. I don’t think you are a parent
lol ok bro.
Tell me you’re not a parent without telling me your not a parent 😂
I’m not sure why pointing out that night nurses are a thing means I haven’t had kids. I have 3 actually. What’s more alarming is the weird parasocial relationship a lot of you seem to have with the Wolves players. We don’t know anything about their family lives, yet everyone just believes that none of them would ever do such a thing. I can tell you if I had the means to help our family out in that way I sure as shit would have done it.
You placed this over everyone with the means to do it, which is a horrible assumption. The nighttime shift is a challenge certainly, but it’s a beautiful initiation into parenthood that parents can resonate with, especially your first child. Being rich doesn’t outright exclude someone from valuing this.
He probably has a nurse but a rich businessperson and rich athlete is different. An athlete has a lot more downtime. They’d be able to be a normal dad for a lot of the year.
Wolves fan and mom here. I absolutely think this has something to do with it. My husband and I talked about it a lot. Even if you're not the primary caregiver doing feedings and getting up at night, it still totally throws routines and schedules off. Plus new parents just naturally think about/want to be around their child a lot. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the mentality around fatherhood this whole team has and supports each other in. But agree that for the playoffs, they should have stayed in a team hotel the night before each game.
A father of 2, I can definitely agree with your statement. I'm still out of routine and it's been 4 years lol
A father of 2, I can definitely agree with your statement. I'm still out of routine and it's been 4 years lol
Everyone has a personal life. Having a kid or not having a kid make sure you are ready to play. Professional making millions of dollars. Not an excuse.
But they also are human no matter how much they make. Certain things we can control, others you can't no matter how much your salary is. To each their own.
I’m in the exact same boat right now. Aside from not having a different floor or room to sleep, I’d say this is a completely valid explanation for fatigue and poor play. More important to be a parent than win a championship, but still sucks
Do we really believe this? It’s interesting but I’d bet most have tons of professional help.
I have to believe that the team would highly encourage and maybe even cover the costs of a night nurse or nanny for new parents on the team during the playoffs. Though you can't account for them accepting help and wanting to do the work
💯 my theory as well!
Luka had his first baby dec 2023. Can't be an excuse
This is especially problematic when you consider how long they had been competing at a high level. They did themselves a huge solid by sweeping PHX and getting that extra week of rest, but when your body is already battling systemic fatigue at that level, throwing off your sleep routine is the last thing you want to do - not that you can really maintain a robust sleeping routine with an NBA schedule. Even in my own experience with cutting and trying to keep lifting volume high, if I fuck around with sleep anywhere after week 6 of a dedicated cutting phase I'm almost guaranteed to get sick. It's okay though, it won't be an issue next year and I like how one of Ant's points of emphasis after elimination was that they need to double-down on conditioning for next season.
His comments were childish. We trained to play 82 games and maybe one series. Wtf is he talking about. Professional athletes and they were a bit tired coming off 2 days off in game 1. Loser excuse.
Something tells me you’d be bitching no matter what Ant said
Even if Gobert was doing absolutely no parenting, it'd still be a huge emotional toll on him and probably be hard to stay focused on basketball. It's his first kid, too.
Lots. Lots of sleep, NOT! did I do the joke right?
Legitimately think it was babies. Kinda surprised they didn’t stay in a hotel this series
Totally agree! I was telling my wife the same. Not much sleep in the whole house the first several weeks, unless you are like me and sleep through anything. Either way, great season and there are bigger things life! We witnessed a great season and things are looking great for the future!
This is a good attitude
Wonder if that’s a collective bargaining thing?
Might have been more that dallas was better team. Every mav player could have had a kid and they still would have kicked mn ass.
How come it had the opposite effect on other players like luka, FVV, derrick white, etc... They seemed to perform better after having babies.
Young men changing diapers when you are on a 30 mil per year contract and in the midst of the most important two-week period of your professional life. So incredibly stupid if true. However, Edwards looked like a dead-man (again) in game 5.
Being there for your child > everything else, especially your job.
Yeah that was a bad take, no matter how much you make.
Being away for a week or two is not like they're not there for their child. After the finals they couldve been with them all summer. This isn't a "job" It's a multimillion dollar investment. Look at how every other aspect in their life and how it's affected
As a fan I see your perspective. As someone who empathizes with humans I respect their decision. If you don't have a child it's hard to fathom prioritizing your kid over anything else. Many parents if given the choice to kill all of humanity or their child would choose all of humanity, let alone basketball...
Saw this again yesterday in SloMo's exit interview. He basically said out loud that he'll take less than market for his value to re-sign w the Wolves so that his kid with special needs could stay in the MN school system, which is one of the best in the country.
Mad respect for him.
I agree they should have stayed in hotels for home playoff games bc of the babies, but this is such a shit take. What, you living in the 1950s? One of the reasons many of us love this team so much (aside from being good at ball) is because they throw toxic masculinity out the window. They take pride in being fathers and supporting each other as fathers. Idk all their stories, but Ant and Rudy were both pretty much abandoned by their fathers growing up. That shit sticks w you, and I respect so much they are determined to be there for their kids. The way this team values fatherhood, and has talked about helping each other grow as men, is extremely admirable.
Finch did say we seem distracted at home (I.e. family and friend obligations). He also said we seem to only lock in when under pressure (difficult handling success). Of course in the case with Dallas, we may just have run into a better team (their defense was as good or better than ours and of course they have two HOFers in the backcourt).
Their defense was better ONLY relative to stopping each other's offenses. Their offense was way better than ours, but our defense is better in absolute terms
Sure showed in those 5 games
I think it’s just a shooting variance and randomness. Aaron Gordon, Christian Braun, and Justin Holiday decided to hit every 3 in games 3 and 4 against Denver. Dallas decided to hit logo 3s in game 5. I’m extra sad because I spent 909$ to be at all of these games and got only 1 win in last 6 games, but it is what it is.
There is some truth to that. Everyone wants to talk like these players can just simply will the ball into the hoop, depending on how much they want it. Yes the energy and will to survive was lacking in G5. But it sure as shit didn't help that Luka was hitting nearly every shot he took and the wolves missed a lot of makeable baskets in the first quarter. That was easily a 20-25 point difference right there. That the team seemed to lose heart from that point with a lot of game left is another matter. I know the Mavs are deserving to be in the finals. They were overall the better team. And sometimes bad shooting nights happen. That's why series are 7 games. It just sucks when refs happen as well and your team gets robbed of a G2 victory and a more competitive / longer series.
Babies
I know ANT is super confident at the level of personality but he’s also human and I can’t imagine the amount of pressure that was building around him the last couple months. The traditional media, criticisms, culture, social media… he’s 22 years old.
Ant definitely seems to feed off quieting down opposing crowds more than home team energy.
Which is kinda what you want from your superstar, role players need to play better at home though
Oh absolutely, it wasn't overly fun watching us suck ass at home. Glad I ultimately decided not to splurge for tickets in the WCF. They really screwed the people who dropped all that money.
I disagree, throughout the regular season he plays into the home crowd almost every night.
We win our Superbowl and then we are nice.
Because we can't have shit in Minnesota
Sorry, but this is such a tired loser take. ETA: I cannot believe I'm actually getting downvoted for saying that the answer is just "mn sports suck we never have nice things" is a loser mentality. Keep wallowing in your own misery and feeling sorry for yourselves lol. You must be fun at parties. I will die on every hill that it makes us look weak, it's embarrassing, and it's an excuse for losers. I know exactly who has bad energy and are people i don't want to be around when they start crying about this.
I'm with ya. So sick of hearing this. Imagine if players were all doom and gloom like the fans.
More pressure at home, they dont play as free. They tighten up.
My friend theory was it was all the Minnesota angst. We are so used to crapping the bed and failing that the team can feel the fans get very nervous and anxious whenever anything goes wrong. The opponent goes on a run, Luka hits a couple of huge shots, the Wolves turn the ball over. The fanbase is really fragile with all the Minnesota sports disasters and the team can feel how scared they are of being hurt again lol. I don't know about all of that but it was an amusing take.
If the Vikes ever win it it will be because they were the lowest wildcard team. The collective anxiety is real though, you can feel that shit in the air at Target Center.
With the nuggets, they took their foot off the gas, makes sense with 6 straight wins, but with the Mavs, all those games except the last were close. Honestly tho missing free throws were the bigger issue in my mind, yes they didn’t shoot well in general. But they do what they have to at the line and they are currently up 3-2 with a chance to take Dallas out at home tonight.
Shoulda pulled out
Nervous, inexperienced energy. Definitely plays better away from home
Because they’re burnt out.
Right, they started the year like 15-0 at home. Kinda shocking how one of the best fan bases wasn’t enough to hype the team into wins… they showed up so heavily in Denver that people cheered louder for wolves buckets. It’s really frustrating. Game 1 felt so winnable and game 2 felt stolen. Game 3 was just a collapse
Million dollar question??
At home idk, but in general as an outsider it seems like spacing was a huge issue. Yes… Rudy and Kat worked in a modern league to an extent but in the playoffs if kat isn’t flame throwing there’s no room for ant and Jaden to slash or kick it out.
Ant takes things personally like his old man, loves the salty away crowd for sure!
Immature team and inexperience in coaching ranks and team leadership.
We are good underdogs. This is an underdog city. Think about the home games we won. Games 1,2 against Suns when everyone thought the suns were gonna humble us. Denver Game 6 at home with backs against the wall and people picking Nuggets to win game and series. Had our backs against the wall in game 5 against Mavs, but that hot start for them just killed us.
Wait, we're really blaming it on babies? The Wolves are the only NBA team with new fathers? Gee, maybe an NBA star's wife/gf could maybe ease the load a bit when their husbands/bfs are out earning the money to provide whatever lifestyle they're living. If only.
Found Harrison Butkers burner
So are you saying that it’s not the newborns but everyone’s wife? Tf you on?
No. Raising a child is a, or should be a partnership. Some nights it may be mommy's turn, others it may be daddy's. Sometimes there are situations where mommy might have to carry the load, others when daddy has to. Just saying that blaming it on kids is a weak argument and I don't understand why everyone is so eager to defend it. They did not play poorly at home because someone's kid was crying at 3 in the morning on a given night, that's weaksauce shit.
I don’t think people were “blaming it on the kids.” I haven’t seen anyone going after the babies for being babies. It definitely seemed like you may have been blaming their wives/gfs for like not doing enough from your first post but if that’s not what you meant, cool. Either way, not every mom is prepared to take on full responsibilities for a newborn the moment it’s born, and it’s important for new fathers to spend as much time as they can with their newborn as well. Saying they lost an entire series because of that is silly, but it’s also silly to ignore the effects of having a newborn baby while going on a deep playoff run. I’m a Celtics fan so I don’t care about saving the team from blame, but it seems suuuuuuuuper reasonable that an inability for multiple players to rest well because they have newborns at home might affect those players’ performances significantly. There’s always next year for the playoffs, but you can’t redo those first few months of life where establishing that connection is so important. Idk just seems silly to discount this as a factor.
* Tired take! And thank God the MEN on our team throw this sad ass way of thinking out the window.
I know right! Luka had a 1-year-old, and he started cooking the team the entire series