Pessimism does come easily to me right now after the increasing frustrations of the last few months, so I expected a few things besides a Wolves loss. For one, I thought they'd get massacred by Dwayne Wade and his two friends, and where the '08 Wolves are fondly remembered because they'd put up an entertaining fight until opponents turned up the intensity in the 4th quarter, I figured this game would see the Heat up by 30 and clearing the end of the bench by the half. Imagine my surprise when the Wolves were actually leading the game at halftime, and forced a complete game effort by Miami's superstars. I also thought Lebron James would beat Michael Beasley like a rented mule and then chew his way through the rest of the Wolves collection of tweener forwards like the cast of Alien. I wasn't totally wrong on that one since Beasley doesn't have the quickness to stay in front of Lebron (who finished with 34 points and two rebounds short of a triple double) but it wasn't nearly the sad spectacle I was expecting. And to be fair, stopping Lebron is harder than dubbing a Nicholas Cage movie into Cantonese: if the guy had any heart he'd be the best player in the league.Fortunately there were some more things to grumble about for beleaguered Minnesota sports fans who've long since learned that the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. After a good start Beasley did still look a bit lost and prone to doing stupid things, like he's mentally checked out, and Wes Johnson continues to mystify me as a #4 overall pick. In their own way, both of those guys look like their goal is just to hang out on the court, and would prefer if there wasn't so much pressure to hustle, execute plays or win games. Sometimes I think Beasley's mostly there to fool around for a while and Johnson is just running around hoping the ball doesn't come his way. Despite being our starters, neither appeared in the 4th quarter of a very close game. I know they're both young and Johnson is only starting his second year, but guys like this tying up $10m in salary is why the league had to lock the players out. Also I still think Luke Ridnour looks like an obnoxious punk who hasn't figured out he's not on the verge of a break-out year at 30, but I'm probably just reading too much into his (obnoxious) body language. I feel I should point out that three out of five starters being nigh-unwatchable is why the Wolves were such a painful mess last year.
Now that I've found something to complain about, I should acknowledge there were definitely some pleasant surprises. First off, it was great to see an energized Wolves team come out onto the floor actually thinking they could beat Miami, and obviously executing some sort of game-plan. Amazingly there were substitutions that made sense and put the guys that were performing well on the floor, and most amazingly, against a Heat squad that are tremendous at scoring quick points in transition, an athletic and alert Wolves squad actually tried to contain them. I know I shouldn't be so excited about this, but I couldn't figure out what in the hell Kiriakos Rambidis' gameplan was last year, and it seemed pretty obvious the players couldn't either.
I love it when the role players step up and I still have hope for the much-maligned Darko especially as the only healthy center on a seriously short team, so when he started out the game with a lot of defensive energy, blocking shots and generally looking awake (sometimes he struggles), I had a good feeling about the whole game. The bench was ready to play, as the two Anthonys (Randolph and Tolliver) were solid contributors on offense and defense, and Wayne Ellington had what might be his best game I've seen so far. At the end of a close game, for the Duke to even be on the court at all much less take the last shot (even if he missed) is a huge change from what he accomplished in his first two years... on a team that's really thin at shooting guard having the Duke step up could be huge. But the real excitement this year so far is the rookies.
Ricky Rubio is living up to the Wolves desperate attempts to generate marketing hype and justify drafting a player who may have based career decisions on a childhood phobia of snow (I just made that up). Much as I rolled my eyes at his fan section with the Spanish flags, they were right: it is actually exciting when Rubio comes into a game, heightened by the contrast to the cold beige of Ridnour. He cracked up the entire crowd last night after shaking off a Heat player twice while still taking care of the ball, and then irritably shooing him away with a flick of his hand. Watching Rubio whipping the ball around and using the athleticism of Williams to connect on alley-oops is fantastic, and it's only going to get better once the Wolves trust Reeecky to start games, and figure out what to do with Williams.
One game doesn't make a team or a season (we're still 0-3) but it's been years since I could even imagine a Wolves team putting their foot on the throat of a title contender like they did last night, and if they hadn't frozen up a bit in the last couple of minutes, missing free throws, making dumb fouls and failing to make baskets they could have pulled off a monster upset. Even so the Heat needed a lot of help tonight from the refs who called more offensive fouls in this game than I've ever seen in my life. Without #33 Zach Zebra as the Heat's player of the game, this would not have been close enough for Wade to steal it at the end. I know this is how the Heat win titles (see 2006) but if they need this much help against the Wolves, I don't know what they're going to do in the play-offs against another team with marketable stars.
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