Goodness gracious, as my mother would say.
Goodness fucking gracious.
What the hell can you say about a ballgame like that?
Well…
It only counts as one.
It’s still early.
Tomorrow’s another day.
It’s a long season.
It’s a marathon not a sprint.
The sun ain’t gonna shine on the same dog’s ass every day.
Still, the last week has raised some potentially alarming questions (Nick Punto, Denys Reyes, Jason Bartlett, the entire bottom of the order, etc.), has it not?
THEATER AND PERFORMANCE
High Art Meets Low Art
Who would have thought that The Simpsons and Shakespeare would ever come together? You really have to see it to believe it. MacHomer, written and performed by Rick Miller, is a one-man show featuring over 50 voices from TV’s favorite dysfunctional family, the Simpsons, in a comedic multi-media performance of Shakespeare’s bloodiest tragedy, Macbeth. Yes, it sounds ridiculously odd, but the show has toured the world to rave reviews and awards in Scotland, England, Australia, and New Zealand — and has finally arrived to the Twin Cities. You have to give it an “A” for ingenuity if nothing else. And it’s guaranteed to make Simpsons fans laugh. Of course, if you don’t know the Simpsons (And who doesn’t know the Simpsons?) you might be utterly lost and confused.
7:30 p.m., The O’Shaughessy, College of St. Catherine, 2004 Randolph Ave., St. Paul, 651-690-6700; $25.
A Gothic Fairytale Goes from Screen to Stage
It’s hard to imagine Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands without Johnny Depp (forget Winona Ryder), but… well… now you don’t have to imagine it. You can see for yourself. Tonight, Matthew Bourne and his New Adventures are presenting a new adaptation of the Burton movie, Edward Scissorhands, at the Ordway. This musical adaptation tells the story of a boy created by an eccentric inventor — after his son dies playing with scissors. With only scissors for hands, Edward must find his place in a candy-colored suburban community. Don’t miss it. Edward Scissorhands broke all Box Office records when it premiered at Sadler’s Wells in November 2005.
8 p.m., Ordway Center for Performing Arts, 345 Washington Street, Saint Paul, Box office: 651-224-4222, Main: 651-282-3000; $20-$50.
Watch a video of Matthew Bourne’s Edward Scissorhands.
MUSIC
Swamp Rock Funk
Apparently, there’s more to Florida than a retirement town and a Spring break destination. Hailing from the swamplands, JJ Grey & Mofro serve up some gritty country ghetto music tonight at the Varsity Theatre. Not so appealing? How about Southern funk and soul music? Bringing a fresh take to an old American sound, JJ Grey draws from rock, blues, gospel, and soul to deliver a great show. The lyrics are raw and folksy, telling tales of the Southern life over guitars, organ, drums, and occasionally horns, harmonica, and tambourine. Grey’s vocal range is impressive, as he shifts from a high-range lulling sound to a lower grittiness that seems to fill the space with that wretched Florida heat. Don’t dismiss it ’til you hear it. You won’t be disappointed. Playing with them is Dubconscious, a progressive reggae band from Athens, Georgia.
9 p.m. (8 p.m. doors), Varsity Theatre & Cafe des Artistes, 1308 4th Street SE, Minneapolis, 612-604-0222; $15.
Listen to JJ Grey & Mofro.
Watch and listen to JJ Grey.
Listen to Dubconscious.
Transcendental Virtuosity
Looking for something slightly more conservative — with unleashed passion? Tonight, American pianist Jeffrey Siegel brings his Keyboard Conversations series to St. Paul with Liszt: The Devil Made Me Do It! The program, designed to make classical music more accessible to newcomers and enhance the concert experience for connoisseurs, begins and ends with discussion. Before the performance, Siegel will speak to the audience about the composer and the historical context of the music. Following the performance will be a question-and-answer session. Come learn about one of history’s most sublime musicians, Franz Liszt, inventor of the symphonic poem; and learn from one of the current world piano masters. Jeffrey Siegel has been soloist with the world’s great orchestras, as well as conductor from Minnesota to Pittsburgh to France to South America. In addition to solo piano works of Rachmaninoff (one of the most difficult composers to play), Hindemith, and Dutilleux, Jeffrey Siegel has recorded Gershwin’s complete works for piano and orchestra with Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony.
7:30 p.m., Sundin Hall, Hamline University, 1536 Hewitt Avenue, Saint Paul, 651-523-2459; $17 ($12 seniors and students).
Art-Inspired Compositions
Tonight, award-winning students from the School of Music will be performing compositions inspired by art from the Weisman Art Museum’s permanent collection. Join the Art Sounds concert and reception in the museum galleries, where you can listen to the music as you absorb the art that inspired it.
7 – 8:30 p.m., Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota, 333 East River Road, Minneapolis, 612-625-9494; free.
LECTURES
Which Way South Africa?
Join South African political analyst and commentator Xolela Mangcu as he discusses the future of South African politics when South African President Thabo Mbeki’s term comes to an end. Often described as the heir to Steve Biko, leader and martyr of the Black Consciousness Movement in 1970s South Africa, Dr. Mangcu calls for a revitalization of the democracy movement as a whole. Founder and past executive director of the Steve Biko Foundation and former director of the Division of Social Cohesion, Identity, and Leadership at the Human Sciences Research Council (the main research body in South Africa), Mangcu is now director of the Centre for Public Engagement at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, syndicated weekly columnist for Business Day, and assistant editor of the Sunday Independent. He is a regular political commentator and has been featured on both local and international broadcasting networks.
8-9:30 p.m., Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Cowles Auditorium, 301 19th Ave. S., Minneapolis, 612-626-5054; free.
BOOKS
Hang with the Minnesota Book Award Nominees
Don’t settle for being a passive reader. Join April’s Raking Through Books tonight to celebrate the Minnesota Book Award nominees. Come to our Kieran’s happy hour, hang out and chat with the authors, and get your books signed. Rake readers receive 20 percent off the Raking Through Books selections at the University of Minnesota Bookstore at Coffman Union.
5:30-7 p.m., Kieran’s Irish Pub, 330 2nd Av. S., Minneapolis, 612-339-4499; free.
Regular Season Game #77, Home Game #38: Toronto 111, Minnesota 100
1. The Kids Are Alright, Part 729
For a variety of reasons I wasn’t able to make it to the Target Center until 4 minutes were left in the third period tonight and the Wolves were up four. Since there was no television coverage, this will be an abbreviated trey. Comments are welcome, and for a change of pace I’ll use point three to address some of the questions from respondants in the previous post.
Shortly after I’d arrived and was straining to catch up with the ongoing flow and nuances, all the things that accrete when you see the whole game (which is why it’s so important to catch it from tap to buzzer), there was a moment that made me feel good about the future. Craig Smith and Rashad McCants were fighting each other for a defensive rebound and contested the ball out of bounds. An exasperated Smith sternly told McCants something to the effect that, “I was telling you I had it!” and was about to launch into a second sentence when McCants just casually put out his hand in apology. Smith just as casually grabbed it for a second, stopped talking and let it–the hand and the subject–go. The very next possession, Davis was on the low left block (the KG spot, except he was on the bench) and Smith cut baseline and got the feed. At the time, Smith was 8-9 FG and having a marvelous game, so the Raptors bum-rushed his baseline penetration from all angles. Smith teased it right until he was under the hoop–and then zipped a pass to a wide open McCants in the corner, who promptly buried the three-pointer.
Neither Smith nor McCants are perfect players. Tonight, and increasingly throughout the season, Smith has become a drama queen when he believes he isn’t getting calls from the officials (as if an undersized rookie who is fond of drawing charges and using his big butt for textbook box-outs is going to have it easy with the refs). For McCants’s part, he was scoreless until 1:24 remained in the 3rd, and then erupted with a series of impressive drives and jumpers (for their strength, agility, and savvy) to rack up 11 points over the next four minutes. But during and shortly after that marvelous spurt, he played some of his worst defense of the year, frequently forgetting to close out his man in the corner (ditto Ricky Davis–Trenton Hassell was the only one who did, although I didn’t see any of Marko’s minutes). I’m hoping that as McCants retrieves his sublime athleticism, he doesn’t forget the superb D that has made him so valuable despite not being 100 percent physically. But seeing the way Smith and McCants handled their little misunderstanding, that was a comfortable sign of mutual maturity.
2. Sam Mitchell Would Make a Nice Timberwolves Coach, eh?
When the final horn had sounded and the Raps had rung up 38 points in the final quarter to beat the Wolves for the sixth straight time under Sam Mitchell (he has never lost to his former team), Wolves owner Glen Taylor scurried over and gave Mitchell a warm handshake and spoke with him for a minute or so.
It would be nice to start a rumor that Taylor wants Mitchell to come run the Timberwolves. After all, Mitchell is a free agent after this season, and had to endure lots of speculation about how he would be gone by Christmas this season, if not before, pushed out by new Toronto GM Colangelo, who would obviously want his own man. People remembered Mitchell’s run-in with Rafer Alston and his hard, abrasive ways with last year’s team. They figured he was on his way out. Now Mitchell will get some consideration for coach of the year, having guided the injury-wracked Raptors to 45 wins and counting, with a favorable matchup with the depleted Wizards a distincts possibility in the playoffs. It is Mitchell’s time to call the tune in Toronto and it might be delicious to take a lucrative deal somewhere else… like in his old stomping grounds of Minnesota, guiding his most renowned protege, Kevin Garnett, who frequently cites Mitchell as an invaluable mentor when the two were teammates.
It almost certainly won’t happen, of course. This franchise seems committed to Randy Wittman, Mitchell knows and likes his current team after a tumultuous first couple of years, and Mitchell and former Raptors GM (and current Wolves assistant GM) Rob Babcock weren’t the best of buddies during their stint together up north. But one can dream…
Anyway, I hadn’t talked to Mitchell since he came to town in his rookie year as coach two seasons ago, and then only briefly, so I figured I’d skip the Wolves post-game and shake his hand and offer my congrats on his stellar season. I do my best not to feign friendships with millionaire athletes because I loathe jock-sniffers and also worry about it compromising my coverage. But I’d covered Sam Mitchell’s long tenure with the Wolves for all but the first year he was in town, and, like everybody else, had a pleasantly contentious back-and-forth with the guy over the way I’d ask questions or apprach the game. And he had a habit of confirming suspicions or theories I had about the internal workings of an often dysfunctional franchise without actually coming out and saying so–he was a smart and good source. Besides, there was another sportswriter who wound up being very good friends with Mitchell, to the point where Mitchell was the best man at his wedding. And on two occasions, including a Roy Hargove gig at the Dakota, we all went out and socialized.
Anyway, Sam came out and gave a gracious postgame media chat, praising his team for sucking it up in the fourth quarter of a back to back, and indicting the Wolves perimeter D by lavishly lauding his own players, TJ Ford and Jose Calderon: “TJ and Jose: 29 points, 17 assists and 3 turnovers from the point guard spot. What can I say?”
Then the Q&A was over and Sam offered hearty greetings to Tom Hanneman and sports columnist Larry Fitzgerald, and Terrell, the former PR liaison for the Wolves who had stopped by, and former Raptors assistant coach cum Fox Sports commentator Mike McCollow. A couple of times his eyes flitted my way, almost enough for me to extend my hand and congratulate him, ask him how the kids were doing, the usual. But it soon became obvious to me that Sam couldn’t place me; that he might be having this nagging feeling he knew who I was, but had forgotten at least my name if not the entire context by which he might know me, and just thought it better to ignore me. And I was trying to figure out how to still congratulate him without embarrassing the hell out of the both of us. I got my chance shortly after Mike James (who played for Mitchell last year) and his wife came by and had warm, playful words. I just stuck out my hand, said, “Britt Robson, Sam, and I just want to congratulate you on your season,” and split.
Every now and then it is good to get your ego deflated a little bit, so you’ll remember who exactly you are, as compared to the famous athletes and coaches you rip or praise, and glean a smidgen of notoriety by association from along the way. I’m serious. It helps you concentrate on the things that matter, the passion and quality of what you have to say. So, it was awkward, but I don’t have to be buds with, or even recognizable to, Sam Mitchell to admire what he did as a player and what he has done as a coach. Congratulations, Sam. Wish you were here.
3. Comments and Queries
Shawn in Rochester asks if I think KG and/or Wittman agree with me that “KG + the kids” is the team’s best lineup. I think Garnett does. I suspect Wittman does. I know that Dwane Casey used to go crazy behind the scenes about Ricky Davis and yet still play him copious minutes. Davis has been even more inconsistent under Witt than he was under Casey. For instance, tonight he was fabulous, not only leading the team in scoring and assists, but warning KG that he had to go cover the baseline shooter in rotation–and sure enough, a Raptor squeezed off a trey a split second before KG arrived there after heeding Davis’s words and flying over. The part I don’t know is whether anyone within the franchise can see the forest for the trees after 77 games.
Right on cue, Nate asks why the organization show more “tough love” on Davis. You’re preaching to the choir with that question, Nate, and it baffles me too. But maybe the answer is that RD is what he is, and you have to accept it. After all, he’s been dealt three times already. I know there is a large segment of fandom in Boston who really like Ricky’s game, and I daresay a similar, though perhaps smaller, throng of folks feel that way here. Maybe Davis isn’t teasing with his inconsistency–he’s just one of those guys who explode in a good way every now and then, and if you think there can be anything more, you’re deluding yourself.
Born To Be Hated….(a name obviously connoting a McCants lover, since it is Shaddy’s tattoo saying) wants to know what kind of off-season moves this squad will make, and helpfully chimes in with the notion of getting rid of Mark Blount and getting something for Trenton Hassell. Quick answer is, I don’t have a clue what the franchise can do. First off, find out whether or not you have a draft pick. Second, find out, right after the final game, whether KG is still committed to the franchise, and, if not, how uncommitted he is–in other words, is making moves to placate him a doomed strategy? The draft pick and KG are two variables that determine every other move.
Bottom line, Blount is untradeable but this squad cannot go another season without securing a reasonably good banger, whether or not KG stays. Hassell could fetch a decent player in return, and probably should go, unless Jaric is more highly valued. Finally, a decision has to be made on whether Randy Foye is this franchise’s point guard of the future or not. If so, maintain a crash course and stop supplementing him with shoot-oriented points like James and Huddy; get a quality mentor either on your roster or your coaching staff. If the conclusion is that Foye can’t be enough of a quality point guard to hold down that position, then either he or McCants need to be dealt and a point needs to be acquired. Time is a-wastin’ and KG isn’t getting any younger.
Patrick thinks we’re playing the vets to showcase them. I think scouts are smarter than that. I firmly believe that Davis, James and Blount are all worth much less right now than they were on opening day. And I don’t think all the minutes in the world will appreciably boost their stock, and may very well hurt it.
The horror.
It’s always a dozen different kinds of bad omen when Big Sid takes the hill. We all knew going in there was no way in hell the ball club was going to get through this day without incurring casualties. Thing was, though, was that there was really no way any of us could have imagined things would go quite so wrong, or so wrong in such a hurry.
Dude sweating like that gets everyone around him all jittery. You could tell right away the fellas were just hoping like hell he’d be showered and dressed by the time they got to the clubhouse.
No worries there, of course, but that don’t stop folks from worrying all the same.
Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
Willard: I don’t see any method at all, sir.
I’d like to hope there is something precedent-setting in CBS Radio and MSNBC suspending veteran talk jock Don Imus for two weeks … (with or without pay, I’m not sure.)
What with the current administration’s 3-to-2 advantage on the FCC we’ve sat through three fairly ridiculous years since Janet Jackson’s “boobgate” at the 2004 Super Bowl. There has been endless huffing and puffing about “indecency” and threats of fat fines for any and all TV and radio stations who air offensive content, even though what is offensive may be pumped through their transmitters by some network or syndicator.
Other than Howard Stern flipping off CBS and terrestrial radio and taking another massive pay-day via his mentor, Mel Karmazin, (himself a world class corporate vulgarian), the FCC’s puritan fervor toward sexual displays and profanity hasn’t had much effect on pop media’s biggest names. Its kind of like Abu Ghraib. No officers need suffer. Punishment is strictly for the hillbilly grunts.
You see, what Imus said about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, calling them “nappy-headed hos”, doesn’t qualify as “indecency” according to the current FCC. Imus did not show a nipple. Nor did he call the women, “[effin’] nappy-headed hos”? No way.
But Imus’ display of racial vulgarity is such a staple of morning drive radio everywhere in the country — the Twin Cities are almost a prime example — I’m telling you kids, it’d be crickets from sea to shining sea if the FCC ever re-wrote its rules. Characters of the Imus genre make millions, sometimes individually, playing the race card for their cloddish audiences.
Without even getting into the futile discussion of whether Don Imus is racist, lets just say there is a healthy minority of folks out there that don’t particularly appreciate some chronically sullen, grandly remunerated white guy tossing off “comedy” like that. I’m willing to bet some of them even find it indecent. Moreover, I’m guessing that if you ran down a greatest hits of FCC infamy, including Janet Jackson’s — which, remember, was “seen” by America’s huddled families only as a indiscernible long-shot as it played live, but forever after, after magnification, as a kind of cultural lap dance — there might be as many people offended by Imus as the sight of Jackson’s nipple, or Bono dropping a cheery “F-bomb” at an awards show.
Point being, the FCC standard is both silly and gutless. Silly because of who is punished. Offended by a nipple? Really? Well, go fine the nipple-ee. And gutless, because if they were truly serious about enforcing decency on the country’s air waves — which giant media corporations pay exactly zero to use and exploit to their maximum financial advantage — they’d have fat fines for vulgar racial “humor” like Imus today and about dozen other examples here in the Twin Cities that spring immediately to mind.
Technically anyone can file a protest with the FCC over anything. But under current conditions, you’re chances of prevailing, through the FCC “investigation”, is only if there was a wayward ta-ta involved or one of the seven dirty words.
And “Nappy-headed hos” ain’t none of those.
Saturday afternoon I was approached outside my house by a down-on-his-luck character who told me he was trying to buy a used car over on Pillsbury Avenue and had found himself fifty bucks short. He’d taken the bus from St. Paul to look at this car, he explained. He’d just gotten a job in Maplewood and was starting on Monday. He was clearly desperate, and seemed almost frantic. If he didn’t get this car, he said, he would have no way to “drive backwards and forewords to work.”
Backwards and forewords. That, I thought, felt like the way I usually come and go from work every day.
I’ll admit, though, that I was a bit skeptical, so I offered to walk over with him to check out the car, figuring this character would balk and that would be the end of that. He didn’t balk, however; if anything he responded with almost alarming enthusiasm to this offer, and we walked the several blocks to Pillsbury without much in the way of conversation passing between us.
And sure enough, there it was, some kind of white, four-door family car in the garage of a townhouse.
I found myself trying to negotiate with the car’s owner. Couldn’t he, I asked, do any better than $800? The man was emphatic. He had already agreed to shave the price down from $1000 to $800. He’d just listed the car on Wednesday, he said, and he was confident he would eventually find someone willing to pay his original asking price.
The potential buyer and I walked down to the end of the driveway and talked things over. Did I think it was a good deal? he asked.
I told him that he was unfortunately asking the wrong guy. It looked like a decent car, I said. He pulled a wad of rumpled cash from his pocket and counted it out. He was, in fact, $48 short.
I gave the guy his fifty dollars so that he would have a car to drive backwards and forewords to work. “Long may she run,” I told him as I handed over the cash.
I left the two guys to complete the transaction, but as I walked away down the sidewalk the buyer scurried after me and asked for my name and address. I wrote this information for him on an index card and handed it over.
Easter afternoon I came home to find an envelope in my mailbox. The envelope contained two twenties, and twelve ones.
Now, with its own editorial page essentially echoing points made by one of its own columnists, more and more of us are wondering how long it will be before whoever is calling shots in the Star Tribune newsroom decides there is sufficient “linkage” in the US Attorneys “controversy”, (to use the Strib’s quaint description), for the paper to dare make a dent in the basic “hows” and “whys” of the Tom Heffelfinger-for-Rachel Paulose swap out here in Minnesota. The paper’s Saturday piece, hooked to a DC emissary trying to do damage control in the wake of three of Pauloses’s top deputies simultaneously demoting themselves, seemed to go out of its way to avoid making any of the connections being pointed out by blogger -gnats and the New York Times alike.
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, it doesn’t look good when the Times jumps on “connections”,(more Strib-ese), to a major drama unfolding barely six blocks from the Strib’s front door. Compounding the embarrassment is when TPT’s “Almanac”, on a budget of about $1.99, brings in credible local legal talent for both a historical perspective on the coordinated self-demotion/mutiny of three deputies AND linkage to the bigger story out of DC.
If the Strib needs any more flogging it can look to the Boston Globe, where the always-solid Charlie Savage has his go at the role of Pat Robertson’s previously unheard of low-pedigree Regent University and Monica Goodling, (according to KSTP’s Bob McNaney a close friend of Paulose), now resigned after previously taking the Fifth to avoid disclosing her role in the, uh, “controversy”. There is also Dalia Lithwick via Slate/Washington Post, and Max Blumenthal.
At a moment in its history when friends and foes alike are looking for early indications of the new Avista Capita Partners-owned Star Tribune’s commitment to the kind of journalism that builds crediblity and influence, this episode is not encouraging.
READINGS
Masters of Young Adult Literature
This evening brings together three national award-winning authors of young adult literature. M.T. Anderson, Pete Hautman, and Alison McGhee will all be participating on a panel to share their passion for literature and discuss why they love writing for teens. Anderson is winner of this year’s National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and Printz Honor selection The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party. Hautman, received the 2004 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for Godless. And McGhee is a Minnesota Book Award winner and author of Falling Boy.
7 p.m., Founders Hall Auditorium, Metropolitan State University, 700 East Seventh Street, Saint Paul, 651-793-1633; free.
Master of Suspense Fiction
Looking for something a little more provocative? Go hear New York Times best-selling author Randy Wayne White read from his new novel Hunter’s Moon. I can’t talk too much about the plot without giving it away, but if you’re a fan of suspense novels, then this one’s for you. With this book, White’s critical acclaim continues to grow. The American Independent Mystery Booksellers Association chose his novel, Sanibel Flats, as one of the Hundred Favorite Mysteries of the 20th Century.
7 p.m., Once Upon a Crime, 604 W. 26th Street, Minneapolis, 612-870-3785; free.
Read the first two chapters of Hunter’s Moon.
BOOKS
Do a Little Reading on Your Own
Forget about being read to, and go pick up a good novel to read on your own. Laura Restrepo’s Delirium hit the bookstores last week. “You’d suppose a writer has to be pretty damn good, not to mention lucky, to warrant dust-jacket blurbs from not one but two Nobel laureates. The U.S. publication of Laura Restrepo’s Delirium carries ringing endorsements from Jose Saramago and Latin American luminary Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and also comes on the heels of a slew of international awards and acclaim. The story of an unemployed professor of literature who has been reduced to selling dog food for a living — how’s that for metaphor? — and is trying to pinpoint the origins of his wife’s sudden and mysterious descent into madness, Delirium is a literary mystery steeped in the crime and corruption of modern-day Colombia.”
Read an interview with Laura Restrepo.
Read another interview with Laura Restrepo.
Also new on the bookshelves is Angelica, a novel about Victorian England written in four different viewpoints, by Arthur Phillips, author of Prague and The Egyptologist.
MUSIC AND POETRY
Bring Your Own Poetry to the Mix
Share your own creative exploits tonight at the Artists’ Quarter in downtown St. Paul. Every Monday night, this historic jazz venue has an open poetry night beginning at 9 p.m. Bring your own poems to share, or simply come and listen to others. It’ll be well worth your while. The poetry is usually quite enjoyable, and well-known musicians have been known to take the stage with their own brands of poetry and jazz jamming. Plus, start off the evening a couple hours early and enjoy the music of Green, a burning post-bop quartet featuring Zack Lozier on trumpet, Rob Dewey on piano, Rich Casey on bass, and Scotty Schultz on drums.
9 p.m. (Green 7 p.m.), The Artists’ Quarter, 408 St Peter Street, St.Paul, 651-292-1359; free.
Note: Tickets go on sale today for Cake, through Ticketmaster for $20. The concert is scheduled for April 20th at the WSU McCown Fieldhouse in Winona, MN.
SPORTS
Damn those Predictions
While Santana is certainly making it difficult to get a hit off the Twins, and Matsui’s injury last week leaves a hole in the Yankees lineup, predictions still lean heavily toward the Yankees for tonight’s game. Apparently, these two advantages may not be enough to see the Twins past the Yankee’s lineup. What can I say. Go cheer the Twins on, and prove the forecasters wrong.
6:05 p.m., Metrodome, 34 Kirby Puckett Pl., Minneapolis, 612-375-1366, $10-$108.
ON THE NET
Wile away the Long Hours at Work
Lucy Liu and Carla Gugino in Lesbian Vampire flick
Pete Doherty and Kate Moss make music together.
Mystery Science Theater: Spring Break
Cooking Somali food with local Safari Express chef Jamal Hashi
The Hold Steady video for “Chips Ahoy”
Thanks again to Rich Goldsmith for his contributions.
Regular Season Game #75, Road Game #39, Minnesota 99, New York 94
Regular Season Game #76, Home Game #37, New Orleans 96, Minnesota 94
1. Hitting The Semi-sweet Spot
Timberwolves fans and management couldn’t have choreographed a better game than Saturday night’s entertaining loss to the Hornets. At this point in an already collapsed, disheartening season, where if the club falls out of the top ten picks in the draft it forfeits it to the Clippers via the terms of the Jaric trade, the unspoken goals in the remaining games are not to degrade yourself and the game by tanking, not to ruin your short-term chance at a quality collegian by winning, and to feel good about the way you are building for the future. That’s a convoluted, occasionally contradictory trifecta, especially for this team, whose better pieces to place around the superstar are kids. Improving the Foye-McCants-Smith axis with copious minutes, especially alongside KG, might also bag some inconvenient wins, and lose an another important building block that could otherwise entice Garnett not to opt out.
This situation puts Wolves partisans in the awkward position of rooting for a bevy of good and great individual plays that reveal promise, improvement, and hope for the future, all the while inwardly urging that they don’t add up to a victory. And Saturday, the game unfolded exactly along those terms.
The Wolves bomb home 14 treys in 23 attempts, deliver 27 assists on 35 baskets, put six players in double figures, with McCants and Foye 1-2 as scoring leaders, and wow the crowd with a fabulous second quarter in which the team goes 15-18 FG…and they still lose in the end. But not without a spirited attempt to snatch a victory. McCants and KG hit treys in the final 10 seconds, and Craig Smith’s prayer from 3/4 court clangs off the iron as the buzzer sounds. Perfect.
And necessary, because the previous night the Wolves beat the Knicks, pulling ahead of them record-wise, and thus behind them in the draft pick sweepstakes. With the Knicks losing to Milwaukee in the second half and the Wolves up by six at the half, things looked grim for those who count ping pong balls as they go to sleep and dream about Oden, Durant and the rest in white, green, and blue. When it was over, the Knicks had triumphed in overtime to the more obviously tanking Bucks, and the Wolves had eased back into a tie with NY by dint of their very elegant second half fade.
And how was that accomplished? Coach Randy Wittman did what many commentators-cum-tank-enablers in this space had urged him to do, and were perplexed that he wasn’t doing earlier: Playing Garnett fewer minutes. KG sat down with the squad down a point with 1:22 to play in the third. Even when Mark Madsen picked up his 4th and 5th fouls in the first 5 minutes of the 4th, KG stayed put–this after getting only 15:16 of burn in the first half. There were other subplots: Fox Sports had the bad timing to put an iso-camera on KG for the entire game, and his multi-year streak of consecutive games scoring in double figures was in jeopardy. When he finally checked in with but 5:42 to play, the Wolves were down 6, 80-86. It was barely enough.
2. Mike James, Human Sieve
No one can accuse Minnesota’s starting point guard of sabotaging the squad’s chance at bagging that draft pick. Mike James had a wonderfully energetic first quarter Saturday night, blowing up for 13 of the team’s 21 points via 5-9 FG (3-5 from trey land), and twirling up three dimes besides. In other words, James had a hand in all but two of Minnesota’s points in the game’s opening 12 minutes. This came on the heels of a 7-point first quarter versus the Knicks on Friday, when James helped propel the squad to a 14 point lead before sitting with a minute and a half to go in the first.
Yes, let’s keep starting Mike James. And then sit him down for the other three quarters. The guy’s defense is Troy Hudson terrible, and that, folks, is very bad. James doesn’t usually play in the second quarter, nor the fourth, properly ceding it to Randy Foye. But that third quarter….Friday night against the Knicks, Nate Robinson came out and just torched James for 15 points on 5-5 FG in 8:57 of play, the main reason why a 18-point halftime lead shrunk to 6 before Wittman mercifully subbed in Foye. For the remaining 15:03, Robinson scored 6 on 2-6 shooting.
Coincidence? On Saturday, Chris Paul was 5-5 FG in the 23:12 James played him, and 1-7 the rest of the time with Foye the primary opponent on D. In the past two third quarters, point guards have scored 25 points and shot 9-9 FGs in the 20:09 James was supposed to be guarding them, and the Wolves were -19 during that stretch. One way to look at it is that James’s nonexistent defense is costing his team a point for every third quarter minute he plays. It wasn’t too hard to figure out the main source of KG’s ire when he said after the Knicks game, “I don’t know how many first-teamers want to play defense out there, but I know I’m one of them.”
3. Silver Linings
A couple months back I openly wondered if Foye and McCants could juggle their egos well enough to coexist synergistically in the same backcourt. The answer in the past two weeks has been a resounding yes. Latest evidence: Saturday’s 36-point second quarter blitz that saw Shaddy and Foye each go off for a dozen on 9-11 FG (4-5 from 3), a combined 6 assists and 2 turnovers.
Nice to see Trenton Hassell at least somewhat escape the doghouse over the weekend with a pair of strong efforts. Hassell was the third leg in the triangle with Foye and McCants in the third period on Saturday, getting 10 points on 5-6 FG. He and McCants were tied with a team-high +16 for those two games. I wonder if Randy Wittman defenders will spin Hassell’s resurgence as a response to the coach’s discipline, specifically his sitting him for all of the Orlando game, 3/4 of the Miami game, and putting McCants ahead of him in the second-line rotation when the starters rest. If so, may I suggest Witt try it with Ricky Davis, who after blowing up for 36 points in a stirring victory in Orlando has gone -35 over the last three games, a span in which the Wolves as a whole are -10. That’s -35 in the 85:02 Davis played the past three, versus +25 the 58:58 Davis sat. But by all means, bench Trenton Hassell.
Finally, kudos to Garnett for stepping up big time and guarding centers when Wittman wisely goes to the younger, smaller roster at crunch time. His defense on Eddy Curry cinched the game and led to a bevy of Curry fouls and turnovers. His play on Marc Jackson and just his low-post shot-blocking presence in general on Saturday compensated for his scattershot offense.
I’m suddenly all in favor of giving Johan Santana all the extra time he needs between starts.
Do you ever just pause for a moment and, out of sheer gratitude that this guy is pitching for the Minnesota Twins, show your teeth to whatever sort of god you might (or might not) believe in?
You should.
Both of Justin Morneau’s home runs this season, including today’s three-run shot off Sox rookie John Danks, have come against lefties. That’s not an aberration; last year Morneau hit .315 and launched 13 of his 34 home runs against left handers (.325 w/21 HRs vs right handers).
Compare his righty-lefty splits with Cleveland’s Grady Sizemore (who hit just .214 with ten homers vs lefties in 2006 –compared with .329 and eighteen HRs vs right handers) or Chicago’s Jim Thome (.236 with six HRs vs southpaws, .321 w/36 HRs vs righties).
Hell, Tom Kelly would platoon both those guys.