Kevin McHale's got a fever... and the only prescription is more shooting guards! It was no surprise this team couldn't hang with the Mavericks, but there was a time it was exciting to see the Timberwolves take on much better teams. These days there generally isn't a single match-up I can look forward to in any game they play, other than whenever the Wolves take a couple guards off the floor and let Craig Smith come out to play. When I watched a 6'13" power forward-* take a 20' jump shot and looked up at the stats board to see the team was shooting 30% from the field... that kind of game-plan meant they weren't even trying. 35.7% from behind the line, 28.4% from in front of it, who are they, Gonzaga? I expected them to get pummeled, but I've never been so bored with the Wolves as I am this year. Garnett won't go near the basket anymore, and the rookies, Craig Smith and Randy Foye, are about the only players who look like they've got some sort of elementary grasp of strategy. It's not even wait 'til next year, since it will be another season before Garnett can opt out of his contract, and I don't now how long before they clear out all the other seven year deals McHale signed or they can use another draft pick before he trades it away, and it's hard to imagine Wittman is going to coach them up and get more out of the underachievers the team is stuck with, or the cornucopia of shooting guards.
Most of all it's just boring because when I started following the wolves I used to be able to divine some sort of order in the chaos of a Wolves game, for instance I could easily tell who was playing what position and see some traces of a plan to their offense and defense, even if both were failing... they lost 26 straight games to the Sonics in the mid-90s, but you could see how they Sonics beat them. Now it's just a muddled mess, my mind wanders, and I don't even have any sense of the game without checking the scoreboard. Their quality opponents seem to sleepwalk through it all too like the Mavs did tonight, and the losing teams in total disarray run around like chickens with their heads cut off and still manage to be competitive. The refs didn't do us any favors either, when after a series of about five questionable calls for the Mavs in less than a minute of play, I looked up at the scoreboard and the Mavs were up by over 20 points and the Wolves were shooting 30%... Dirk Nowitzki really doesn't need that much help to beat the Wolves, it's not like he plays for Duke or something-**. I don't mind watching a loss, but I do demand an actual game, not a bunch of guys screwing around in a gym and pretending to keep score.
*-Kevin Garnett is, according to his former coach, 7'1" in his stocking feet, but insists on being listed as 6'11" because he wants to be seen as versatile, and not just a big man. He is an insanely versatile athlete, but pretending to be shorter really is about trying to keep people from questioning why he won't go to the basket. When he did play like an aggressive 7-footer, he won an MVP trophy (and should have won two). For years before that, he was content to shoot admittedly unstoppable fade-aways, and spent an entire summer working on his three point shot. This was a great complement to Tom Gugliotta about 10 years ago... but now both he and our only center like to shoot from 18+ feet for a losing team. Craig Smith's teardrops
are the only thing dropping in the paint for the Wolves this year... and that is actually a basketball shot, he's not excessively weepy.
**-I haven't watched the NCAA tournament since the flurry of phantom fouls in the second half of the 2001 Duke-Maryland semi-final, and good riddance. If the winner is decided by TV ratings, I'd rather watch the women, because competitive game + sweaty women >>> 2-hour commercial for Starter apparel with a pass to the next round for the best seller. Seriously, even Wimbledon finally admitted athletes in skirts playing competitive tennis is more fun than watching some Swiss cattle rustler rocket balls into a green wall past some bewildered asshole in white shorts and coughed up some prize money.
No comments:
Post a Comment