Zebras 103, Wolves 101

My experience with the Wolves the last few years did prepare me for one thing: I went in knowing the Wolves would lose. And with two minutes to go I knew  Dwayne Wade was going to come up with a clutch shot to kill us and nobody on the Wolves was going to stop him. So my Timberwolves negativity wasn't entirely unwarranted. But despite that little my reward to my pessimism, the Wolves did also provide evidence that things may have changed.

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.

Can I talk myself into Wolves tickets again?

Once again I’ve reached that part of the year where I try to talk myself into the idea that the Timberwolves might be watchable again, after the muddled, unmotivated mess they’ve been for the past couple years, and I've decided to write it all down this year. The Wolves went into the off-season with five ways to improve: Europe, our draft picks, the David Kahn trade blender, seasoning players, and maybe looking like they have a plan.

Europe
Especially since the end of the McHale era, the Wolves have finally started to clue in to the idea that basketball is played on more than one continent, and that second round scouting doesn’t have to be limited to watching a few Big 10 games. Consequently the Wolves have a couple players under contract in Europe, although I can’t say their first big European import (Pekovic) has been all that impressive. But now they have Ricky Rubio, the young Spanish point guard with a silly haircut, coming over to play. Two years ago he was a future phenom who refused to play in a backwater like Minnesota, but growing up a bit and having a bad World Championships seems to have tempered his attitude. Adding a potential future all-star could certainly help make the Wolves watchable again.
Plus: Ricky Rubio

Timberwolves acquire Eddy Curry's penis

The Timberwolves basically got involved as a middle-man in the long-rumored Carmelo to New York  trade, notably giving up Corey Brewer to acquire Anthony Randolph and possibly include Eddy Curry’s penis as part of the worst half-time promotion ever. The Wolves involvement does have me asking myself a few questions about the team and its strategy so this goes on for a bit, but feel free to skip to the end if you just want to know why I keep bringing up Eddy Curry’s penis.

Question #1: Is David Khan an idiot, or does he have a plan?

I don’t think David Khan has a vision for what this team is going to be, but I do think he has a plan. And that plan is to basically get his owner through the impending lock-out. Immediately before the last lock-out the Wolves handed Kevin Garnett the biggest contract in the history of team sports and when the new collective bargaining agreement introduced a maximum figure for contracts it made the Wolves one of only four teams stuck with a crippling mega-contract. That contract, along with the need to at least try and negotiate contract extensions or trades for both Marbury and Gugliotta before they could turn to any other business, absolutely killed the Wolves, and the ensuing years of paralysis all go back to that contract and the fall-out of decisions made in that shortened post-lockout off- season.

Pacers 128-124 Timberwolves

I felt Target Center's security guard was disconcertingly thorough in searching my pants last night. She didn't find anything, because the only thing I carry that causes pain and sorrow isn't in my pockets. When I got inside I really wondered why she even bothered checking me for weapons, since I would have had to cross over two sections to find anybody to fight with. If all three stages are going, I honestly think the Guthrie could draw bigger crowds this winter.

The Timberwolves players also greeted me with the same disturbing sort of misdirected enthusiasm. Apparently the gameplan for the evening was to beat the Pacers by creating opportunities for 20 foot jump shots and playing defense by fouling. With all these career 30% 3-point shooters eager to prove their (lack of) range I kept wondering why Pekovic wasn't more involved, since he's been billed as the first banger the Wolves have ever had at center... when I checked the box score I understood. Due to a mixture of work, apathy, and friendly waitresses I came a bit late, and I missed out on seeing Pekovic foul out in 10 minutes. Sadly he doesn't play defense either. And incomprehensibly the Pacers couldn't take advantage... this mess went to overtime!

The 2010 NBA Draft, or Why Can't I Stop Crying?

The short version: the Wolves went into this draft with five picks, cap room to make trades, a crown jewel to trade (Jefferson) and a few morsels (Gomes and a couple point guards) and came out of it adding Wesley Johnson and Martell Webster, and losing Ryan Gomes. None of the other picks will make a difference next year.

About the only thing I like about this draft is the Wolves used their second rounders to stash a couple centers away in development. Paulao Prestes sounds interesting if a bit raw, but he's young and can be stashed in Spain for a bit longer. it's got to be good for a team that's been weak in the middle for 20 years to have a center nicknamed King Kong. With a really late pick they grabbed another center, Hamady Ndiaye. He's 7 feet tall, a good defender and has a decent jump hook, all things that would be a delightful surprise to see combined into a Timberwolves player... I think for the first time. He'll hopefully be stashed on the Sioux Falls Skyforce for a year or two and then make the end of the bench someday.

I really shouldn't be this excited about prospective future bench players, but for many years under Kevin McHale the Wolves didn't take the draft seriously, throwing in a draft pick on every trade, and they conspicuously ignored Europe and never got anything in the second round. They still can't figure out what to do with first round picks, but at least we've started to use Europe and the D-league to bring more talent to the franchise. Where it's completely wasted, since the young players on this team all end up being cut or traded for proven stiffs who have the dubious distinction of being a “veteran” presence, or put another way, guys who know how to lose.

Timberwolves 108-99 Kings, or how I learned to love Darko

(Forgot to actually post this two weeks ago, whoops. Fortunately nobody will read it anyways, so no harm done.) When I saw the Wolves beat the Kings, had certainly been a while since I saw them fail to execute a fourth quarter meltdown. I have to admit, I was a bit surprised. With a handful of games left in the season the Wolves have locked up the second biggest batch of ping-pong balls in the lottery. The Nyets won the head-to-head and clinch the worst overall record by virtue of having blown 20+ point leads in both games against the Wolves... basically the worst tank job I've ever seen outside of pro wrestling. I have two concerns over the eventual flop of the ping-pong balls: whatever kind of talent the Wolves might be able to add next year, and a rather low stakes gamble I made on a season ticket.

Sadly in a 2-player draft it's hard to imagine the league allowing the Timberwolves a crack at one of the top two players (there's a reason they hold the draft behind closed doors). They can't make it too obvious they're getting screwed, so I'd guess they're looking at the #3 overall pick which means my crappy "Pay the Pick" season ticket will cost $3 a game and I can only hope the Wolves do their homework and use a top 5 pick to find a player that has some impact. With six draft picks and 3-6 spots opening up on the roster next year, somebody's got to change up the dynamic of this team so by mid-December I'm not already thinking about rebuilding for next season.

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.

Clippers 120-95 Timberwolves

Last night as I was watching the surprisingly listless Wolves get pummeled by the LA Clippers (I know, really?) it was kind of sad to watch the current Wolves be outplayed by a team stocked with former Wolves. I loved watching Sebastian Telfair coming off the bench, undersized but scary quick, but I did remember last night why I loved him, and why we traded him: after faking out a Wolves guard last night so badly he fell down (wow) Telfair couldn't come up with a way to take advantage of that besides an entry pass into the high post (er, wow?). But it got me thinking about this summer's Wolves-Clippers trade, where they traded Sebastian Telfair, Craig Smith, and Mark Madsen to the Clippers for Quentin Richardson, who the Wolves promptly to Miami for Mark Blount.

Trying to see how that trade worked out in the end, I started searching for who the Wolves had moved Blount for or when they'd cut him, and I was shocked to realize he was actually still on the roster. I hadn't noticed him down there through a third of the season, honestly. So they traded Telfair, a quick change of pace point guard; Smith, an undersized yet tough power forward who used quicker feet and crafty moves to create match-up problems; and Madsen, who had really suffered career ending injuries. Blount was theoretically at one time a center with a nice jump shot who could draw out opposing big men and open up room for a dominant low-post player, but really they just traded those guys away for a fresh start and cap room at best.

Cardinals 30-17 Vikings, or the Secret Scandinavian Sense of Doom

Since I got home from work after midnight last night, I got up this morning and watched the end of last night's Timberwolves-Jazz game and to my great shock they rebounded, didn't break down on defense under pressure, weathered their usual third quarter reversal of fortune and hung on for a win. I couldn't help but feel this creeping sense of dread as the Scandinavian blood in my veins insisted that it would be too much to ask to see two Minnesota wins in one day, especially after seeing the suddenly lucky Wolves tied their longest winning streak of the season (that would be one game).

The funny thing is my tivo tried to warn me, crashing during the first half and taking forever to reboot, like it secretly hoped I'd look for another distraction and get lost in Lego Indiana Jones 2. But like Tyr with his hand in the Iron Wolf's mouth, even knowing that the agony to come will rob you of a part of yourself that you'll never get back, you just have to smile and embrace the pain. I hope that crumpling at the first division leader they've met this season isn't a sign of things to come, and I hope the Vikings are better prepared for a potential rematch in the Metrodome (at this point I'd expect the Cowboys or Cardinals to come calling, followed by a trip to New Orleans). So what was so painful?

Of Bears and Grizzlies, or "Hey look! My magic rock is working."

I was really glad to see the Vikings deliver such a crushing blow that they were able to once again let the Tardis finish the game. I don't know why there was such a requirement for the Vikings to only have quarterbacks with silly names... Tavaris, Sage, Rosemary, and Favre... perhaps the Superbowl is at Scarborough Fair? Tenuous attempts at humor aside, Vikings-Bears games are always head-scratchers, and after dealing with the crowd at the theater I scrambled over to the Dome just in time to watch the Vikings and Bears exchange turnovers, and the frustration and exaltation and general confusion of the crowd was like a warm, familiar blanket. Plus the company was delightful, but that's another story.

My favorite play of the game has to be the highlight sack in the red zone, although Allen grabbing the interception and forgetting which way to run is a close second. But watching the Williams Wall calmly pushing forward to efficiently collapse the pocket, forcing an alert Cutler to attempt to roll out to the right, only to bump into his own tackle who was giving up ground to Ray Edwards faster than Neville Chamberlain. Cutler scrambled left just as Jared Allen, who recently gave up drinking and immediately developed an addiction to quarterback flesh, broke free and came looking to kill him, and desperately seeking a port in a storm drowned in a sea of purple. While it was Kevin Williams who got his arms around Cutler, it was a sack that belonged to all of them, as they mercilessly closed in from all sides.

Of Sheep and Wolves (and possibly even Big Foot)

I think someday Wolves head coach Κυριάκος Ραμπίδης will figure out a starting line-up and a regular rotation, and I won't go to Wolves games wondering which players will be inexplicably buried at the end of the bench tonight. When the Wolves lose to a Rockets team without Yao Ming or Tracy McGrady on a Wednesday night in front of a few thousand people (and that one guy who totally looks like Szczerbiak has to actually apologize to the sparse crowd for the poor quality of the opposition) it's hard for me to watch a couple journeyman players get heavy minutes while rookies sit. After coming from behind to win their opener, the Wolves have lost 13 straight, with a high degree of correlation between the score and whether or not they remember to rebound. They really desperately need K-Love back, unless this is some really elaborate ploy to get the a #4 overall pick (not a big enough market for a lottery pick) and keep racking up the rights to European players with no apparent ambition to play in the best league in the world.

Annoying Timberwolves Update: Uh, who plays for them again?

Since the Wolves hit the Big Reset Button two years ago and traded Kevin Garnett to Boston, fans have been not so patiently waiting for young talent to mature, and for the team to dig its way back out of salary cap hell, and assemble something resembling an actual NBA team rather than Big Al and the seven dwarfs. Two years and a lot of trades later the Wolves haven't really improved, and are still buried under a mound of McHale-era contracts, but with every trade they did accumulate more and more draft picks this year and next. In order to sort it all out I felt like I had to write it all down, and at that point why not share it with my loyal readership-*?

Part I: What's changed since the end of the season?

The draft brought about another flurry of activity that had a few players join the Wolves and be traded away before they had a chance to be issued a number, or start to brush up on the local dialect and try some hot dish. And the Wolves had so many draft picks and potentially so many rookies coming in that they had to trade some of them straight up for picks in next year's draft. So now I'm trying to sort out for myself what they ended up with, and what this means for next year.

2008 Timberwolves Draft

I know this is the time when I’m supposed to explain the Timberwolves draft strategy and their future prospects, but it’s been hard for me or anybody else to sort it all out. The Wolves essentially traded down again for money, although not as blatantly as they did two years ago when they swapped picks with the Trailblazers for $1m (less than 2% of the average NBA payroll). But the Wolves had three picks this year (#3, #31, and #34) and this is what they did with them, in my most optimistic analysis.

#3 pick – OJ Mayo (traded to Memphis)

After once again getting the third pick in a two-player draft, the Wolves drafted OJ Mayo, a point guard from USC who probably was the best player available. Issues were immediately raised about how to fit him into a line-up with so many guards, but really it wasn’t hard to see that Mayo had a bit more potential at that position than the passable Randy Foye, tiny Sebastian Telfair, and mercurial Marko Jaric. And I was looking forward to ten years or more of making jokes about eating French fries with OJ Mayo to Amstelbooij (btw, good luck in Brussels!).

Then around midnight, the Wolves traded Mayo for Kevin Love, the #5 overall pick. Love is a power forward whose strength is his versatility and whose weakness is he’s a bit light. The thing is, the one thing the Wolves have locked down is they have a great power forward signed long-term, and about the only other young players anybody’s excited about are the other power forwards who back him up. If Love is able to play off of Al Jefferson the way Kevin Garnett at one time played off of Tom Gugliotta and makes it difficult to quadruple team Big Al, then he could be worthwhile. And while the Wolves really needed a center so Jefferson could move back to power forward, I suppose it’s still an improvement over starting Ryan Gomes out of position.

That being said, they traded down to get Love, so you’d think there must have been something in it for the Wolves… and at least this time it wasn’t straight cash. The trade really breaks down into three parts, the hot prospects, the warm bodies/jackasses, and the role players. I’ve already explained the difference between the hot prospects, meaning the Wolves probably lost on that part, so one has to assume the rest of the trade made up for it. In the warm bodies component of the trade, a couple of big, long contracts got dumped for shorter, smaller ones, meaning the Wolves can look to sign big free agents in the summer of 2010. Basically this brings the whole process of clearing out deadweight forward a year.

For their warm bodies, Wolves threw into the trade the gigantic unhappy contract of Antoine Walker, as well as Greg Buckner, two guys who were unlikely to do anything this year but take up cap room. The Wolves also threw in another unhappy and overpaid guy in Marko Jaric, whose versatility in the back court got him a lot of playing time, but his inconsistency really made him impossible to build around or give him a role on a young team. The Wolves also got back Brian Cardinal as a warm body who ties up money but not as much as the players the Wolves dumped. If Kevin McHale can be believed, he also dumped some seriously bad attitudes when he got rid of Walker and Jaric, so the warm body / jackass part of the trade is a small but significant net positive.

The real positive is the Wolves also got back role players who actually appeared last year as something other than a garbage time novelty. The Wolves got something they needed in Mike Miller, a small forward with a three point shot who theoretically can stretch the floor out and punish teams for piling bodies onto Al Jefferson. They also get a true center in Jason Collins, who is legitimately seven feet tall and while he doesn’t score or rebound, can do some of the work inside. (Arguably Jaric fits in both categories as an overpaid, disruptive role player, but with the number of guards the Wolves have available he’s not that big a loss.)

#31 Nikola Pekovic (under contract with Panathinaikos)

With the first pick of the second round, the Wolves took this big Serbian center who everyone would be drooling over… if he wasn’t under contract for the next three years in Greece. Having the rights to Pekovic is a good thing assuming if they can ever get him to come over to the US when his contract is up, and nobody else would have passed on a chance to draft him in the second round. But he obviously won’t be doing much for the team any time soon.

#34 Mario Chalmers (traded to Miami)

When the Wolves picked Chalmers I thought it had to be a case of bringing in the best available player, because the last thing they needed was another combo guard, but then they traded him to Miami for a couple of 2nd round picks in next year’s draft, plus a pile of cash. I don’t know why they didn’t just keep him and send him to the Developmental League, because the picks they’ll get from Miami next year probably won’t be all that great and there’s only so many 2nd round picks you can get onto the roster.

Summer of 2009

It’s interesting to note that the Wolves may have a ridiculous number of picks in next year’s draft, if several reasonably likely conditions occur. If the Wolves pick is in the top 10 (and it will be, they’re going to stink) they’ll keep that top 10 pick, and if Miami challenges for a playoff spot, they’ll send their pick to the Wolves, and so will the Celtics. The Wolves give up a second round pick to Detroit as part of another trade but gain two from Miami, meaning in the summer of 2009 they’ll have five draft picks and a bunch of fat contracts in their last year, all of which are useful in trades.

But for the time being, there’s a draft pick with a lot to prove, five guys from last year to re-sign or replace and a lot of issues to sort out. Which I'm sure will require a lot of ranting and raving on my part.

Cool things I saw this week

Miss Evers' Boys

Last week I went with the Guthrie to Hennepin County Medical Center for a dramatic reading of Miss Evers' Boys, a play about the Tuskegee Experiments written by former Guthrie actor David Feldshuh, who earned a PhD in Theater and an MD from the University of Minnesota. For anyone not familiar with the Tuskegee Experiments, black men from a rural area in Alabama who were infected with syphilis were enrolled in a study and told they were getting treatment for their disease, while the unchecked disease ate away at their brains for an astonishing forty year period.

The Guthrie has run a program for about nine years in which they read this play at the UofM medical school, and the day before they go to a different medical facility to perform for working doctors at places ranging from HCMC to the Mayo Clinic, and its just, well, really cool. The effect that play had on the doctors was remarkable, and it sparked a broad discussion between the actors and the doctors and nurses about issues of race in medical care, the legacy of Tuskegee, and generally how doctors interact with patients, and the generational differences so visible in patients and doctors. This play is apparently the highlight of training on medical ethics given to doctors and nurses at the UofM, and it was interesting to hear the discussion it sparked amongst nursing students talk about how different their relationship with doctors is today. All I did was a bit of unskilled labor and scraping the Guthrie van through the HCMC parking lot, but man was that a cool thing.

Third

Wendy Wasserstein's final play is fantastic, and I now know why everybody says Sally Wingert can do no wrong. I caught the dress rehearsal on Friday and the whole production was so intriguingly different from what I pictured when I read the script, it was an absolute delight to see what Casey Stangl did with it. The set and music were unique in their own right, a series of covers of songs from the 60's and 70's, including Cake's immortal cover of "I Will Survive" and a box onto which a series of projections of still images and video created the numerous scenes of Third, with furniture sliding out from the wings, Sally Wingert seductively draped across it, as necessary. Just a superb production, sharp and bright, and Third packs into two hours a story that can be explored from so many different angles it's one of the most stimulating plays I've seen in ages... much like The Home Place, the last play I saw on the McGuire stage. And it's nice to see Sally in a speaking role, since the last time I saw her was as the chain-smoking, scene stealing Parisian maid in Private Lives stomping across the stage and snarling in French at anyone who tried speak to her.

Peer Gynt

This is one of the hardest plays in the world to stage, and Henrik Ibsen himself suggested ditching act four altogether. The Guthrie's Minnesota-styled production stages the play as the fevered vision of a man having a heart-attack, full of dazzling dances and quirky humor (Help me, Omar Sharif!) and I figured when I walked in to the Pirandellian framing device of a birthday party with a band playing the Beer Barrel Polka, it was going to be a strange trip and it certainly was, complete with subterranean trolls singing the Vikings fight song. Mark Rylance is one of the world's most prestigious stage actors (when they rebuilt the Globe, as in Shakespeare's theater, Rylance was the first creative director) so I figure there aren't going to be too many opportunities in life to see him don a thick Minnesota accent in the all-singing, all-dancing, sometimes-rhyming, troll and belly-dancing infested bizarre voyage of Peer Gynt, and I'm glad I was there to see it. (And not just for the belly-dancing). It's hard to know what to think of Peer Gynt, it's so overwhelming, but Mark Rylance is a god.

Gerald Green's dunk

Gerald Green's signature dunk in the all-star weekend dunk competition was really cool, as he had teammate Rashad McCants place a birthday cupcake behind the rim, and then Green got enough air on his dunk to blow out the candle before dunking. He should have won and defended his title, because that was way cooler than Dwight Howard's Superman dunk. Gerald Green, #15 in your programs, #1 in your hearts... and about #12 off the bench for the Wolves right now.

Timberwolves 109 - 108 Warriors

Who put a quarter in Ryan Gomes? The Timberwolves starters dropped 102
points on the Warriors, including 35 from Gomes. In recent weeks he's
been quietly productive, until he went crazy in the first half tonight,
propping the Wolves up until Jefferson got going late.

When the Wolves kept being stymied by the Warriors draw and kick moves
in transition, and kept building leads only to give them away, I never
thought they'd break their ridiculous road losing streak, but it clearly
makes a huge difference when somebody in the front court steps up
besides Big Al.

6-34, and upwardly mobile! (Okay, not really.)

Nuggets 111 - 108 Timberwolves

I know the Timberwolves need to keep losing games since they only have a
3-game lead for a top 4 draft pick (the Wolves will never win the
lottery with Miami, Seattle, New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia all in
it), but this is getting ridiculous. Some improvement or consistency
would be nice... right now I know three things going into a Wolves game:
Al Jefferson will get 20 and 10, Rashad McCants will foul out, and the
Wolves will lose. So here's my wish list for the Wolves in the new year.

1. McCants playing better defense

Hopefully Rashad McCants might learn to play smarter defense and quit
committing stupid fouls. He and Al Jefferson are the only consistent
scoring threats (in the NBA you really need three), and when McCants
gets in foul trouble the Wolves are completely screwed.

2. Better shooting from Telfair

Maybe Sebastian Telfair will discover the backboard, or maybe just sneak
up and loosen the rims at Target Center. Telfair is the team's only
healthy point guard, he's light and quick, but he can't get anything
into the hoop, missing lay-ups and not making anyone respect his jump
shot. Even on a full strength team, I really think Telfair could be a
dangerous change of pace off the bench if his shooting was just a bit
better. (Telfair shot better last night and the Wolves were in it until
the final whistle.)

3. 3-point shooting

I wish somebody could hit an outside shot on a regular basis. Every
once in a while somebody in our small forward logjam goes nuts showing
off their three point range, but then they don't play for a week. For a
team that has one threat: Al Jefferson in the post, it's frustrating
when teams feel free to pack the paint. (Again, 45.5% from 3-point
range last night and the Wolves lost in the last minute.)

4. Consistent play at forward

If some roles could be assigned to one of the various forwards the
Timberwolves have accumulated, that would certainly be nice. Currently
they seem to have a lot of role players who've decided they aren't an
important part of the team so whatever they do is gravy. McCants has
decided he's a scoring leader, Telfair and Jaric that they're
play-makers, but I can't figure out what half this team is doing.

5. A center, my kingdom for a center

There should be at least one shot-blocker on this team with the height
and weight to keep people out of the paint, but usually Doleac shows up
to the game in a suit, and Theo Ratliff is still coming back from surgery.

6. No more lazy veterans

Antoine Walker occasionally has some big games but it seems the
Timberwolves are like a AAA rehab assignment for him, and he still can't
play two games in a row. Greg Buckner shows little interest in Wolves
games when he plays, and I really can't blame him, but he does have
another year on his contract. Next summer that makes them both trade
bait to a team looking to clear cap room, but I really hoped they'd play
well enough to get them out of here before the trade deadline. I'd
rather watch Gerald Green and Corey Brewer flail around, because at
least they have upside.

7. Clear the hospital wing

Between Madsen, Foye, Ratliff, and whatever the hell is wrong with
Walker and Doleac, and whatever rookie wall Brewer and Richard hit,
that's a lot of options gone. Some of them weren't so great anyways,
but Foye and Ratliff might help this team immensely in terms of
consistency and post presence. I hope nothing bad happens to Al
Jefferson, because he's the only consistently solid player on the team,
and without him they have almost no presence in the paint.

8. A front office that knows what it's doing

Next summer is going to be huge, as cap room is cleared and decisions
are made about which players to re-sign. Free agents have to be brought
in to fill gaping holes, and there should be a huge decision to make on
draft day. Considering our current GM gave up the rookie of the year
for cash and drafted Ndudi Ebi out of high school so he could wear a
suit to games for three years while collecting three times as much money
as the Wolves got for trading away Brandon Roy, I'd like to hope there
would be some fresh blood in the war room.

9. Lucky ping pong balls

The Wolves are unlikely to get the #1 pick, but I hope they at least get
a lottery pick instead of dropping back to #4, because that would annoy
the hell out of me.

Nuggets 118 - 107 Timberwolves

Apparently if you don't really bother with transition defense or keeping an eye out for back door cuts (the Nuggets made copious use of the alley-oop), winning an NBA game becomes harder than dubbing Nicholas Cage into Cantonese. Marcus Camby reminded Wolves fans that our front court is a little light by smacking every one of Craig Smith's early shots right back into his face (7 blocks for the game), and it took Big Al quite a while to get going as well. Since the Nuggets started two point guards I would have thought Marko Jaric would do something with his significant size advantage over Allen Iverson on the offensive end to compensate, but apparently not.

You'd think on a night when Big Al and Rashad McCants scored big, and somebody put a quarter in Ryan Gomes and he offers that rare (for the Wolves) third scoring option with a perimeter shot, you'd be able to stay in a game. The refs for once gave the Wolves the benefit of the doubt and called a fair game, but the first few minutes watching lay-up after lay-up and clanging shots gave the Nuggets a lead they never relinquished.

I still can't figure out the Wolves line-up, where players appear and disappear on a whim. I expect point guard and center to be a little screwed up because of injuries, but whatever happened to Gerald Green? Given a lack of depth at point guard, the Wolves started both healthy point guards, brought their best shooting guard off the bench (McCants), barely played Buckner, and completely benched Green. Maybe it was match-ups, benching Corey Brewer and playing bigger forwards, but it was a weird line-up, and it's a different one every night.

Randy Foye, Mark Madsen, and Theo Ratliff all show up to the game in suits, Antoine Walker, Greg Buckner, and Michael Doleac don't seem to be able to contribute many minutes. Ryan Gomes, Corey Brewer, and Gerald Green all seem to have decided to be swing-men and role players who can just throw in a little here and there, and Craig Smith and Chris Richard really are role players at power forward. That leaves the inconsistent point guard duo of Telfair and Jaric, the slashing scoring of McCants (sometimes), and Big Al trying to go one against four in the post with no perimeter threats. Half the team can't or won't play, and the ones that can don't complement each other: a catch and shoot guy, or a spot-up three point shooter would go nuts playing off of Bash and Big Al (good thing we traded our last one to appease Garnett). Wait 'til next year I guess, when Buckner, Walker, and possibly Green and Gomes will all hit the bricks, Foye might be back, and the Wolves will have the 4th and 31st draft picks and a shit-load of cap room to build around Foye and Big Al.

This year, they're going to stay in contention for the worst record in the history of professional basketball in America... they need to lose 74 games to clinch the record, and tonight was #28. They won't make it (I hope) but if they continue winning one game out of 8, it's going to be awfully close.

Sonics 98 - 88 Timberwolves

I don't know how you blow a lead to the Sonics, but the Wolves found a
way. On the other hand, whenever Violet Palmer refs a game, things get
ugly for the Wolves, even though she seemed fairly subdued for a trip to
Minneapolis. (I don't know if she had a codependent relationship with a
werewolf that ended badly, but she typically calls more fouls on the
Wolves from the far side of the court than the rest of her crew combined.)

The young Wolves still struggle with transition defense and taking care
of the ball, and gave up a lot of points to the Sonics off of turnovers.
I really didn't want to lose to the Sonics especially with ex-Wolf
Wally Szczerbiak on the floor. Unfortunately nobody really stepped up
to help out Al Jefferson in this game, until late in the game Rashad
McCants got out of his shooting funk and started scoring some points...
still, the Wolves need a third scorer. On the plus side, Corey Brewer
continues to improve offensively, and in addition to three blocks scored
in double digits for the first time last night, while our other Florida
rookie Chris Richard (the guy with cornrows who looks like he bench
presses cars in the garage for exercise) had his best game ever in a
Wolves uniform, scoring in double figures as well. And tonight they
have a chance to bounce back against Yi Al John and the Bucks, and make
him run his vans all the way back across the St. Croix to his beach shop.

Timberwolves 108 - 103 Kings

Six games into the season, the new look Timberwolves finally have their first win.  What made this possible is despite early offensive struggles and a long series of turnovers that had me wondering if the ball was slippery for every pass to be sliding off of the intended recipient's hands (the Kings oddly didn't experience this phenomenon), and despite some terrible lapses in perimeter defense and in the low post, the Kings still couldn't pull away from the Wolves.  They played enough solid team defense to slow the Kings down, and Al Jefferson and Rashad McCants scored enough to keep the Wolves nipping at the Kings' heels, both shooting over 50% for the game and scoring more than half of the Wolves 108 points.  To break the deadlock, the Wolves needed a third scorer, and with Craig Smith (aka The Rhino) nursing an ankle injury and an ill Greg Buckner playing limited minutes off the bench, Antoine Walker got an extended amount of playing time for the first time this season.  In the second half Walker came up big as a third scorer on a night when few Wolves were able to score from the field.  The Wolves didn't start strong as they have in previous games, but they also didn't experience the same drop-off and when they got a burst in the fourth quarter to take a commanding lead, they held it, making free throws, slowing the Kings down, and keeping their heads above water.  Sebastian Telfair came up limping as well, meaning Marko Jaric saw even more time at point guard but came through with some of the critical free throws needed to ice the game, which is good since he's the only healthy guard who can play the point.  I love Jaric, because he's like a box of chocolates:  delightful in morsels, but messy in the hot sun.

I was surprised to see former Timberwolf Beno Udrih on the court tonight, scoring 17 and giving fits to Marko Jaric.  For anybody who doesn't remember Udrihs's tenure with the Wolves, a week or two ago the Timberwolves traded a protected 2nd round pick to the San Antonio Spurs for Udrih and a pile of cash, then cut him before he ever arrived in Minnesota.  I'm surprised given the Wolves' lack of depth at point guard that there wasn't somebody who could go in Udrih's place, like stiff center Michael Doleac, easily disoriented slam dunk champion Gerald Green, or rookie Chris Richard, none of whom have contributed significantly and may be destined for retirement or Europe.  The trade was in actuality a way to make a little money off San Antonio, who gave the Wolves enough to buy out Udrih's contract and keep a little for themselves, while the pick the Wolves offered in return was a symbolic gesture:  it's protected if the Wolves finish outside the top four. a statistically predictable event for a team that started 0-5.  Once Randy Foye returns nobody's going to be reminiscing about Beno Udrih and what could have been, and the last thing they need to do is cut big men, but it's still annoying when somebody has a "Remember cutting me, dumbasses?" kind of night.

Anyways, the first of what are sure to be many wins... like maybe 19 more in the next 5 months.

Lakers 107 - 93 Timberwolves

This game was much closer than the final score, despite being the Wolves first double-digit loss of the season. (The Wolves also dropped to 0-4 by the way.) Here's what I see so far, with almost 5% of the season gone (it's ridiculous to analyze 4 games in, but I don't care):

1. We need more centers

I thought the weaknesses of the roster would be depth at center and point guard, and seeing Dwight Howard, Chris Mihm, and Andrew Bynum tear through the Wolves like tissue paper when Ratliff wasn't on the court, they really need some help there. This situation only gets worse since down the line, Ratliff is going to slip down the depth chart as he ages, and what's the deal with Michael Doleac? Maybe the eventual return of Mark Madsen can help slow these guys down.

2. The second unit needs work

This may be impossible to tell since Foye and McCants are out prompting a reshuffle of the starting line-up, and the Wolves still seem to be sorting out how to sort out Telfair, Jaric, Gomes, and Buckner in light of that. I also think it's funny that the only Wolf with a positive +/- last night was Antoine Walker.

3. The coaches have their work cut out for them

The Wolves start strong (so they have talent), but then the other team starts to exploit their weaknesses and the disorganized bench comes in, and their early lead slips away. At the end of every game they make a late surge (so they have heart), but have fallen short every time so far. Hopefully Wittman can organize his second unit a bit and get these guys to learn how to shore up some of their weaknesses.

4. Defense of point guards

32 for Iverson/Wilks against Denver, 27 for Marbury/Robinson, 18 for Arroyo, and 10 for Derek Fisher... that really just means the Wolves have played teams with decent point guards and it's a reach to make anything out of it. But nevertheless, Jaric's big failing as a point guard was he couldn't handle small, quick guards (and his periodic bouts of confusion where he throws passes to nobody and wears his clothes the wrong way) and I'm not wild about Telfair's defense. So I'd say depth at point guard is a concern.

Eventually they have to play somebody less crafty than Phil Jackson, without a good center, who won't be able to build up enough of a lead in the middle of the game and they'll win a couple. Also it would help not to give the other team 27 more free throws... it's kind of surprising that Jefferson didn't take any, but big men who can't get to the line are a familiar story in Minnesota.

Still this is fun though, having a watchable team that has the potential to improve, so it's actually worth analyzing their losses beyond the usual "They stink, the end."