Fare thee well, your Eminence

His Eminence Brian Cardinal and his expiring $6.75m contract is expected to officially be traded to the New York Knicks tomorrow morning, bringing the Cardinal era of Minnesota basketball to a close. It's hard to believe I'll never again see his Eminence come in for three minutes to give somebody else a breather, something he did every fifth game or so. Honestly, Cardinal was a nice player for the end of the bench who had a great attitude, came in and worked hard, and had very nice three point range especially for a forward. On the other hand he made $6.75m, and that's just insane. The funny thing is New York is just clearing roster space and shaving a little off their payroll in preparation for another trade, so the Wolves could theoretically take Cardinal right back when the Knicks cut him. This would clearly be worth it, just so they could still keep Cardinal's main contributions to games: the self-consciously creepy "This is ladies night!" promo he used to do on the big screen.

In exchange for Cardinal's expiring contract, the only thing the Wolves get for sure is Darko Milicic's slightly more expensive expiring contract. Darko was insanely drafted #2 overall just behind King James but ahead of Carmelo Anthony, Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh, and many other people who've had more memorable careers. (That was the year the Wolves drafted Ndudi Ebi and Rick Rickert so I feel your pain, Detroit.) The fact that he was a consensus top three guy with Carmelo Anthony and Carmelo Anthony does speak to his heretofore unrealized potential and 7-foot true centers don't grow on trees, so I'm glad to see the Wolves take a chance on him even if he does plan to go back to Europe at the end of the year. The Wolves desperately need a presence in the paint, and currently their options at center are stick-thin Ryan Hollins and Oleksiy Pecherov who's been buried on the bench for months. If Darko sulks until April and never gives the Wolves a chance we haven't lost anything besides a bit of Glen Taylor's money, but given the lack of progress three years after McHale blew up the team and started over, I would have liked to see a more substantial shake-up before the trade deadline.