Charlotte Hornets vs Minnesota Timberwolves Gamethread

Tonight the Hornets take on a young and fascinating Timberwolves team. The thing about Minnesota is they aren't very good, but they have a few nice pieces that make them an interesting team to watch.

One of those interesting pieces is number 1 overall draft pick Andrew Wiggins. The Canadian out of Kansas is playing like the rookie of the year right now. He's scoring in bunches, looks very comfortable on the court, and putting up stat lines that have been done by a teenager since LeBron James. The guy has sky high potential and should be very fun to watch.

Rounding out the Hornets young squad are players like Zach Lavine and Gorgui Dieng. Lavine can jump out of the gym, and while he's struggled to find consistent minutes in the NBA, give him some an open lane to the rim and he can score. Dieng is a young big man with a lot of skills to get excited about, but nobody is really sure where his potential ends. He can give the Wolves a solid 20 minutes on both sides of the ball, but he's had a lot of struggles this year due to the Wolves spacing issues.

A large part of why those spacing issues exist is the injury to Ricky Rubio. While Rubio wasn't a deadeye shooter, his ability to create for others and pass the ball was good enough to negate a lot of the Wolves spacing problems even if the offense was still not very good.

The skill that Rubio really brought to the Wolves was his defense. As far as point guards go, Rubio is a great defender and ever since his injury the Minnesota defense has fallen off a cliff. This is where the Hornets will have their biggest advantage in today's game.