The Rake Magazine

Author: Britt Robson

  • Extra Extra–Wolves Trade Mayo To Memphis for Love in 8-player Deal

    *****Check bottom of text for live blogging updates

    Last update of McHale-Stack-Hoiberg press conference at 1:45 a.m.****

    It’s less than four hours before the start of the NBA Draft and as most regular readers know, I claim no expertise in these matters–life’s too short, and college hoops loses out to my family, music, politics, etc., in terms of filling my noggin with temporarily useful trivia. But I know that many of you folks are both knowledgeable and passionate about this draft thing, and frankly, more than my own take, I want to do my part to expand the conversation among you. For example, those of who with more than a passing interest in the Wolves’ prospects tonight who don’t know about Stop and Pop’s Canis Hoopus site www.canishoopus.com, well, it is probably a must-read–and more informative than what you’ll get out of me this evening. Fortunately, S+P can’t help himself and doesn’t hoard his wisdom, so he’ll probably come by at some point to offer an abridged version of his reaction here.

    Ironically, because I’m not as consumed by the event as I am for the actual basketball games, it will be easier for me to bring along my laptop to the Target Center and do that newfangled "live blogging" thing that’s so rad with the kids. I have no idea how that will unfold, and whether you’ll get many frequent updates or the intermittant chapter and verse. We’ll see how it plays out.

    Before that happens–and before I let you folks get in your pre-draft thoughts, if you have any and care to share them–I’ll just say that I feel more confident about the Wolves’ braintrust this time around. They’ve clearly put more person-hours into breaking down the prime prospects, both during the college and international season and since the lottery. And I’ve been impressed with the way they have kept their options open, to the point where they seem like they are in the mix to get Beasley in a deal, or otherwise not only land a player they really like but some other assets besides. Now just because they have put themselves in a position to participate in the multitude of scenarios that are doubtlessly flying back and forth today doesn’t mean they will exercise the right timing, boldness, and restraint and ultimately make the best decision. But the commitment and thoroughness thus far is already an improvement over the organization’s behavior in most of the previous drafts.

    My own gut feeling–and that’s what people call it when their brains can’t be definitive on a subject–is that neither Mayo nor Love is a perfect fit but would still substantially improve the ballclub, and that Beasley, if the scouting reports on his talent are accurate, would be a great boon and perhaps mark a turning point for the franchise. FWIW, I have no problems with the "character" of either Mayo or Beasley in anything I’ve read (Love is apparently so above reproach there are no "character" comments necessary). In fact I thoroughly enjoyed Beasley’s comments about being a teenager and not being sure he wants to try and act 25, 30, or 40 years old right now. Refreshing honest, common sense, and, yes, more maturity than I would have had at that age.

    Okay, see you down at the Target Center…

     

    6:34--Everyone knows the Bulls are taking Derek Rose. Jay Bilas just said "he’s better than anybody they’ve got" thus erupting out of the gate with the first hyperbole of the evening. Rose may or may not turn out to be better than Luol Deng (I wouldn’t bet the house on it), but the casual way Bilas tossed this out makes me realize that I’m going to have to hold my tongue or spend my time kibbutzing all the yo-yos and the dubious things they say.

    6:43: Heat take Beasley. But that’s not surprising, nor should it be if the Wolves take Mayo third. Once you have the commodity, then you can wheel and deal if you have to. And there are a lot of teams that want Beasley, and Mayo. If Beasley and Mayo are still with the Heat and Wolves, respectively, on opening day, I’ll be a little surprised. Then again, the Wolves may step out and take Love at the #3 anyway.

    6:48: Wolves wait until the very end of their time before making their move. And, no surprise, they go with Mayo. Here in the media room, we were told as we came in that McHale would not come down and talk to us until after the second round, giving more credence to the notion that a trade may still be in the works. But thus, it is nothing but rumors.

    Talking to Stephen Smith, Mayo reiterates that he can play point guard. Also he wearing glasses. Don’t know if that’s relevant–obviously there are plenty of pros who wear contacts on the court.

    Now Pat Riley is on, giving every indication that Miami is going to hang on to Beasley. That would be the smart play.

    Seattle takes Russell Westbrook, the first big surprise of the night.

    7:02: Memphis takes Kevin Love, as Kevin McHale bites his knuckle. Almost all the scuttlebutt that has seeped out about the Wolves behind the scenes has McHale favoring Love above anybody. Certainly Love is a great fit for the Grizz, who can play inside and also spread the floor. But the same questions he would have faced in Minnesota will be asked–and, one way or the other, answered–in Memphis. Can he play D and bang enough to maximize his value in the paint?

    7:07: Gallinari to the Knicks. Over at Canis Hoopus, Stop + Pop was saying he thought whoever the Knicks picked would wind up in Minnesota. Well, if so, Gallinari was in the Wolves top four, and IMO was right with Mayo and Love in the second tier on their board.

    Just got word that Fred Hoiberg will be addressing the Wolves draft party downstairs. Be back in awhile…

    7:21: Hoiberg didn’t sat anything surprising.Tim Floyd, his coach at USC (and Hoiberg’s coach at Iowa St.) said Mayo is the most competitive player he has seen in his entire life. Hoiberg loved the interview the team did with OJ–one on zero he called it, meaning, I think, that Mayo didn’t have any handlers. He also said that there was "a realistic chance Miami would take him at #2." He also said he thinks Mayo "will be able to come in and help us right away."

    Asked by Jim Petersen what the Wolves’ biggest need is now, Hoiberg sensibly said "it would be nice to get some size." He pointedly mentioned that there are some free agent centers coming out that they will look at. And on the subject of whether the Wolves will leverage the two second rounders into something else, he said that they might go after some big men from Europe as opposed to getting some more 19-year olders on an already young team.

    7:58: What do you do if you’re the less talented of the two twins and play the same sport at the same school–you rock an Oscar Gamble style Afro. Robin Lopez gets picked by Phoenix, announcing to the world that they are indeed going in a totally different direction.

    And leave it to Golden State to pick the biggest gamble in the draft, the guy people have called a future superstar and a clueless no-hope, LSU center/power forward Anthony Randolph. Asked by Stephen Smith whether he needs to hit the weight room, Randolph scoffs and says nah, not really, he’s always played the biggest and toughest guy on the other team. Mebbee so, but at 6-10 and a robust 197 pounds, NBA opponents only hope he matches up with their 4’s and 5’s in the pros.

    8:03: Clusterfuck time in the media room as it was just announced that OJ Mayo will be available for a conference call in 3 minutes. Everyone is piling in with their audio equipment. These "immediate reactions" never produce squat. Then again, it is not for me but for the sound byte culture who just need verification that he lives and breathes.

    My favorite, "introduction to the media" quote remains Stephon Marbury
    the day he was physically introduced to the Twin Cities media, when he said "point guards are created from God."

    Okay Mayo is on, says he is totally excited happy to be part of organization ready to get started.

    Q; Similar to Foye, how do differentiate?

    A: Fit in however, bring winning attitude.

    You get the gist. Asked if worried about being in smallish market says just happy name called.

    Preference point or two guard?

    Whatever team needs.

    Waht mean to be here tonight after saying at age 9 told Mom wanted to be in NBA?

    happy name called.

    How much better can make team?

    Don’t know just come in play with winning attitude make as well as possible.

    Did he ever play with any Wolves?

    Yes, Brewer.

     Excited to play with Jefferson?

    Most definitely. big guy determined to work hard, so happy to be a part of team plaing alongside Jefferent, Brewer, Randy Foye…

    Never been to Minnesota.

    Larry Fitzgerald asks the first loaded question: What have you heard about Randy Wittman as a coach?

    Mayo adroitly sidesteps, says he hasn’t heard much and then drowns the rest of the sentences in platititudes.

    Okay end of interview. "Thanks, see you guys tomorrow."

    8:18: Portland swings a draft night deal and from my vantage point it looks like Kevin Pritchard strikes again. Jarrett Jack was a subprime point guard and as much as the esteemed S+P likes Brandon Rush, getting a highly-regarded backcourt pick like Bayliss and an intriguing big man like Ike Diogu seems like a good deal for Portland. After getting fleeced by Golden State in the Murphy-Dunleavey deal, they have now unloaded Jermaine O’Neal and pinned their hopes on a point guard combo of AJ Ford and Jarrett Jack. Meanwhile, Portalnd land is swimming in quality big men. Diogu is probably fourth or fifth on the depth chart at the 4/5 slot. Does anyone else think a Hornets-Blazers Western Conference Finals is going to happen for two or three years in a row in the next five years?

    8:37: Just heard from a stray conversation involving a knowledgeable NBA source (don’t try because you’d never guess who it is) that "Seattle isn’t hanging on to Westbrook." I have no idea if this is accurate, but I know this source (who is not connected to the Wolves) has pretty good connections around the league.

    9:17: Two picks to go before the Wolves’ first second-rounder and a couple of guys S+P likes from championship clubs–Douglas-Roberts and Chalmers–are still on the board. So are the remnants of a slew of bigs, including a guy Andy G has talked about for months, Deandra Jordan from Texas A&M. The Pistons and Celts are up first, but it looks like the Wolves are going to get a shot at players that some of my more knowledgeable readers think can be solid contributors.

    9:32: Okay, both the Pistons and Celts have taken seniors, leaving CDR and Chalmers and Jordan on the board–Minnesota has a shot at two of the three, or maybe folks like the big kid from Turkey. This is where knowledge is nonexistant, but I’ll be happy to hear how McHale and company gush about them in about twenty minutes.

    9:40: Nikola Pekovic of Montenegro is the #31. Good news: A big man. All you draft nuts, didn’t I read somewhere that he’s tied up in a long-term contract? This would confirm what Hoiberg was telling the draft party; that the team wanted to stow a couple of Euros and let them develop rather than having more teens over here on the roster. On the other hand, two or three years ago, the Craig Smith draft I think it was, they took another second rounder from Europe and said all kinds of nice things about him–brought him in the next day even–and I’ve never heard a word about him since.

    According to the NBA draft guide spiral notebook they hand out here, Pekovic is 6-11, 265, was 22 in January, played for a team in Serbia last year and under strengths it is said: "Possesses great strength and is skilled and efficient in the low block. Passes well out of double teams." Hits better than 3/4 of his free throws. Who knows?

    9:49: Chalmers at #34. So, a big man and a point guard in the second round. And for the second year in a row, the Wolves get the MVP of the Final Four. I’m sure that S+P and the rest of you guys who watch college hoops can give us more on Chalmers than I can. From his bio material it looks like he gets a lot of steals. For a 6-1 guy it looks like he rebounds well too. And he hit the big shot that forced overtime in the championship game against Memphis.

    As I said many times, I’ll speak with a little more authority when I can actually watch these guys play. But, whether you draft for need or not, getting a legit big and a legit point guard makes me happier than otherwise.

    10:16: For those who don’t usually read the comments, scroll down and catch S+P’s link to John Hollinger, who says if Pekovic wasn’t tied up to a big European contract he would have taken him third overall. yes, he said third overall. And Stan Van Gundy says it was a no brainer to take Pekovic as the first pick of the second round because second-rounders aren’t on the books and this kid will play for big bucks in Europe for a couple of years.

    Anyway, it is now 10:18 and the media is openly grumbling that McHale hasn’t come down yet. Maybe he’s working the phones trading the players we were just raving about?

    10:32: McHale still isn’t down and there is rustling now that something big may be in the works. Maybe something with Miami and bigger than two second-rounders for Chalmers. The daily guys are going crazy because their deadlines are looming for tomorrow and nobody is down here. This may all be too many people needing to file and too much time on their hands. In fact another guy is now in the room saying he talked to somebody from Miami and they are still solid on Beasley. But there was a brief flurry here that Beasley may still be in play. Now there is speculation that maybe something else is going on. In any case, the daily media guys are getting screwed and they’re not happy. Not that it matters to anyone who isn’t in the room with them–or reads the morning paper instead of blogs.

    10:46: Chalmers to Miami for two second rounders and cash. Sounds horrible. If Chalmers was indeed first round material, and this team really does need a quality point guard, WTF? And don’t overlook the "cash" in the deal either. Okay, with this blockbuster out of the way, maybe McHale will be down before midnight.

    10:50: Fellow blogger Stephen Litel just told me that, after tonight’s Lynx game, Shaddy McCants is out on the floor as I write this, shooting hoops.

    10:57: Wolves PR guy Mike Cristaldi just came down and said McHale is working on something besides the Chalmers deal. So, take that for what it’s worth–could be big or it could be more second rounders and cash.

    11:23: Mike Cristaldi just came back down and said it will be another hour before McHale comes down. The media guys went crazy and then asked if it was big. Maybe, I don’t know, Cristaldi said. Well, one thing for sure, they wouldn’t dick around like this if it was totally minor. Nothing may come of it but the VP of Personnel never talked to the media the entire night after they had taken the third overall pick in the entire draft. You’ve gotta think something large is at least being seriously discussed.

    But the more I think about it, the less it seems as if Beasley will be involved. Right now it is 12:30 in the morning in Miami, where the team won a ring just two years ago and where the fan base is still putting out big money in sizable numbers. If they go to bed hearing one thing and wake up hearing something else, that a blockbuster trade has been made, Willie Randolph firing style, in the dead of night, they could go apeshit. Will Miami really do som
    ething like that? I doubt it.

    More likely–and I have no inside info folks, I’m just talking out loud–they might be trying to figure out a way to get Pekovic out of his Euro deal and over here in a reasonable amount of time. Because as of now they haven’t done a thing about their huge hole at center. Nada. They got a combo guard and a Euro contractually bound to a team in Greece, and a couple of future second rounders and some cash.

    In any case, I’ve decided to stick around and see what the big news is. A lot of the media are going home. Ah, but the live blogger gets the scoop. Such as it is…

    11:43: Okay, Mayo is being traded to Memphis for Kevin Love! In addition the Grizz are almost totally clearing the useless contracts on the Wolves, taking Marko Jaric, Antoine Walker and Greg Buckner. In addition to Love, the Wolves are getting Mike Miller, Brian Cardinal and Jason Collins. ESPN is reporting it, we don’t have confirmation yet, but that’s got to be the reason we haven’t seen McHale.

    11:52: I’ll post again after McHale comes down. My first take: At least this is a consistent philosophy. McHale is continuing what he was trying to do since losing KG. There are players–Love, Collins and Jefferson down low, Foye and McCants in the backcourt and Miller to stick the J and space the floor and play swingman with Gomes. At first blush, I think I like the deal, provided Jason Collins has something left as a defensive center.

    12:04: Longtime commenter Andy G hates the deal, which gives me pause. but again, my first reaction is positive. First of all, there was speculation that the Wolves were going to trade down from #3 and leverage Mayo for something. Okay, let’s take them away for a minute. Mike Miller is head and shoulders the best of the six players with NBA experience in this deal. The most valuable player the Wolves gave up was Marko Jaric, someone who has been regarded as an expensive bust for the past 2 and a half years. Antoine Walker would be long gone, bought out, if he’d taken less money last year. And Greg Buckner was in street clothes as often as his uniform last season.

    Yeah, the Wolves got at least of those stiffs in Brian Cardinal who has an atrocioius contract. And who knows if Jason Collins has got enough left to give the Wolves a viable defensive center for the times they aren’t playing with Love and Jefferson together on the floor? But bottom line, the deal works out for Minnesota as long as Mayo isn’t a star and Love pans out to be a solid, smart big man who can pry double teams off of Jefferson with Miller. Randy Foye also has to step up and make even a productive, star-like Mayo less damaging.

    Bottom line, the Wolves got bigger, created more space on the floor for Jefferson and got rid of a lot of deadwood on the roster. If Mayo becomes a legit star, and Love is merely solid, it will not be seen as a good trade (unless Foye blossoms and makes Mayo seem redundant here). But in terms of proven commodities, Mike Miller is proven. Jason Collins is a proven defender who can complement Jefferson. The distractions of Marko and Toine are gone.

    1:47: Okay, McHale, Stack and Hoiberg all came down and rather than get too fancy about it I’ll just give you the bullet points.

    –The Memphis deal came together late, near the end of the first round. The teams had talked earlier about Minnesota trading the 3 for the 5 and getting Mike Miller, but nobody was sure where Beasley would land and that made it difficult to pull the trigger. Later when the Grizz took Love the Wolves called back and were told no dice. But then, later in the first round, the Grizz suddenly called back and the deal was back on. "No one was more surprised than we were when they came back," McHale said. He intimated that one of the reasons the deal might have been facilitated was the Grizz wanted to add a couple of things that caused "Glen a little bit of a financial hit this year, which he was willing to do."

    –Not surprisingly, the brass was really happy with the deal. McHale loves Love, called him "the best big man in the draft, in my opinion, and we were also able to get a knock-down shooter." He called Jason Collins a good post defender and Cardinal "a great locker room guy." But Love came in for the strongest praise: "Kevin Love is going to be a tremendous player for years and years." He noted that Love was not only freshman of the year but player of the year in the PAC-10 and referred to him as a "phenomenal rebounder." He acknowledged that neither Love nor Jefferson is a classic 7-footer but–and you fans of grumpy old man K-Mac are going to love this–mentioned how Wes Unseld and Elvin Hayes won a ring as undersized bigs because they "knew how to play."

    –But then Jim Stack jumped in and was more forthright and passionate, and voluble, than I’ve ever heard him. "People have said Kevin Love is not an athlete. I beg to differ," he said, saying that they ran him through a wide battery of tests at the combine and that "across the board, he measured almost identical to Al Horford, who some people think should have been the Rookie of the Year last year instead of Kevin Durant." He cited Love being able to jump 35" and have a wingspan of 9′. Then he said they got a big guy who allows Al Jefferson to play power forward and I didn’t know if he was referring to Love or Jason Collins. He also said the Wolves had three needs heading into the draft, a perimeter shooter, a big guy and another veteran character guy in the locker room, which is how all three of the Wolves front office guys labelled Cardinal. Stack then also said that the deal "sets us up for free agency with our contracts in a couple of years" and that "we are going to be a big free agent player." Whether it was the odd hour of the day–past one in the morning–or the thrill of a last-minute, major, complicated deal, Jim Stack was a different human being than the mum, button down guy I’ve watched the past few years.

    –When it was Hoiberg’s turn, he noted that the Wolves had Mayo and Love very close, "side by side" in their evaluations, but praised Mayo and also called him a "sexy pick" who can ‘spread the floor." But he stated that when you can add a Mike Miller and have the two guys who are so close together be swapped, you do the deal. Somebody asked Hoiberg about his comments to the Wolves draft party, and to reporters, about keeping Mayo, and Hoiberg was happy to be able to clarify that at the time he made those comments it was indeed the status quo–the Wolves didn’t know Memphis would want back intot he picture. Then McHale came back and piled on to Stack’s athleticism argument for Love, saying that he, McHale, was actually "really surprised" with Love’s athleticism and then went into a soliloquy about the "small area quickness" and how important it was to rebounding that apparently some of you have already heard him deliver on KFAN.

    –I asked about the second rounders; specifically how long Pekovic’s contract is and why they decided to dump Chalmers for just a couple of future second rounders and some cash. McHale says Pekovic has a two year deal in Europe but then really wants to come to the States and play here, likening him to former San Antonio pick Tiago Splitter in terms of contract status. He said he saw Pekovic play a couple of times "And he’s just a brute: 6-11, 260, and he just puts the wood on you." He said they got a tremendous amount of calls from other teams wanting to get the 31st pick because second rounders don’t have to fit into a salary slot and Pekovic’s situation makes him an incredibly attractive second rounder when he Euro contract expires. "Anyone in the 31st position would have taken him" he said, but the Wolves were lucky enough to own that pick. He noted that Pekovic plays in the top flight Euro league which he said is "by far better than
    NCAA basketball" in part because there "are a lot of grown men playing." As for Chalmers, he said that after the Pekovic pick and the Memphis deal was being worked, they made the deal with Miami for the two future second rounders and cash. Thus, he said, Miami actually made the pick for the player they wanted–the Wolves had nothing to do with drafting Chalmers.

    –As the wrap up, McHale asked if anything surprised him about the draft. He said he thought Westbrook went a little high, that surprised him but he saw how Westbrook "is just a freakish athlete." He was surprised by how long Chris Douglas-Roberts lasted, "because he can really put the ball in the hole." And he was surprised "at the amount of calls we got on the 31st pick;" how it started early and continued until they actually made the pick, with some clubs even offering a protected first round pick in return.

    Okay, that’s it from here. I am probably going to open up another post and analyze the big Memphis trade, which I think is a net-plus for the Wolves, which apparently is not conventional wisdom among the fan base or many readers, so I want to get it up and get the conversation going. I’ll be back here at Target Center for the 1:30 press conference, which is in about 11 hours.

    Turned out to be a fascinating evening. Not a bad one to live-blog, certainly. Thanks for all those who participated.

  • NBA Draft Q&A with Hoiberg

    Wolves News, NBA photo from 2005

    No great secrets were divulged in the 15-minute phone conversation I had with Fred Hoiberg this morning, nor did I expect him to spill the beans about what will happen on Thursday. But he was kind enough to give me the time during his busy schedule and what follows is as close to verbatim as my flying typing fingers would allow. If I were to handicap what he said, I’d say it is a tossup between Mayo and Love if the team stays pat, and that a trade of the #3 down to anywhere between #12-13 isn’t out of the question.

    Rake: Rather than give away any strategy or involve ourselves in the sort of guessing games and myriad scenarios that have filled your days lately, why don’t we start with you telling me who you like from this class that you’ve seen, regardless of whether the Wolves will take him at #3 or #31 or whatever. Who will you feel a little proud about if they go on and have a really good NBA career?

    Fred Hoiberg: Well after the first two guys-it is pretty clear Rose and Beasley are one-two. But in that next group there are a lot of guys we like-Mayo, Love, Lopez, Gallinari. We just saw Bayliss and Gordon, two guys who get to the free throw line better than anybody in the country, which is something we need to get better at, so those two guys make some sense. There are strengths and weaknesses in all their games, so what you do is try and find who fits best with your team and what you are trying to do. We feel it is a very deep draft and all will be solid NBA players. You can go all the way to 12 or 13 and get a very good player who can possibly start.

    R: Which brings up the possibility of a trade, if you can leverage one of those 12 or 13 guys you like and still add another piece.

    FH: Yeah as Kevin [McHale] has been saying all week, teams won’t really come out with their best offer until the last minute. Right now nobody has offered anything that is jumping out at us and we have the pick of the litter after the top two so we’re happy with where we are.

    R: What areas of the game are you looking to bolster beyond the improvement of the guys on your roster, and how likely can those areas be addressed in this draft?

    FH: I think shooting is a priority. Just so the defender is not always sitting in Al Jefferson’s lap. O.J. Mayo will be as good a shooter as anyone in this draft. We saw him in Chicago and he was filling it up. Kevin Love is a legitimate three point shooter as a big and is a great passer. Bayliss is a good shooter. Gordon has a great shot. Gallinari made 23 out of 25 college threes in the workout we saw. It was against a chair, but he missed the first one and then hit 23 of his next 24 and he’s a legitimate 6-10, just a quarter inch shorter than McHale.

    Otherwise you just get somebody who is going to fit into your group. Lopez fits our needs because of his size and his wide shoulders. Love does because of his savvy and smarts–he fills gaps defensively and immediately helps our fast break because of his outlet passing and just does so many little things. Mayo averaged 21 points in the toughest league in country last year and has had the spotlight on him since he was growing up in Kentucky.

    R: You’ve already done this to some extrent, but let me throw four names out at you and have you respond as if the Wolves just drafted this guy. Describe why you picked him and why he fits in with your ballclub. The first one is Mayo.

    FH: I think OJ Mayo when we look back in 5 years we’ll say he was the best shooter in this draft. He has very good range, he is very consistent and he is a guy I don’t think the moment will ever be too big for him because the spotlight has been on him for so long. He defends well and you can play him at both [guard] spots-he’s not a pure point but he can get you into your basic sets.

    R: What about Love?

    FH: Looking at this draft class I think he is the smartest player. He is a skilled big which is something we need and there are not many in the league right now. His passing ability is just unbelievable–he sees things before they happen and already knows where the ball is going to go before it hits his hands. He is a great rebounder and shoots the ball well, with legit three-point range, so we’d be able to space him around Al.

    R: Lopez?

    FH: Lopez probably fills one of our biggest needs which is a legitimate center. He averages almost 20 points per game and did that although he got double-teamed almost every night. We saw him have a big game against Texas. He runs pretty well for his size and is a legitimate 7-1.

    R: Finally, Gallinari.

    FH: Gallinari grew up as a point guard–two years ago he was a 6-5 point guard and then he shot up 5 inches, so now he’s a small forward with point guard skills. He can go right or left and has great shooting skills. He has the potential to be a star in our league.

    R: If you were to make a trade, would it likely involve a more established player and/or a better draft pick?

    FH: I think both those scenarios will be there. I don’t think we’ll see the best offers on the table until Thursday. But [then] we’ll probably see different scenarios with draft picks or getting rid of a contract or a [established] player who makes sense for us or all of the above. But if it doesn’t make sense for us we don’t need to do it, we’ll just go out and get the player we want.

    R: Because you’re already a young team is it important for the players you pick to be NBA-ready? Is it possible you guys would take a project?

    FH: I think the guys we are looking at are all NBA-ready guys, considering that all could step in and play next year.

    R: Do all the workouts you guys schedule change your mind ever or just reinforce opinions you had?

    FH: More reinforce opinions. You try and put guys in spots where they are uncomfortable to see how they handle it. And if they don’t handle it well, you don’t cross them off but you go back and look at the film and see how they handled those situations [then]. And you do your thorough background checks and you have your sit down interview, which is a very important part of process.

    R: Without naming any names, did anyone dramatically screw themselves or improve as a result of this process?

    FH: I don’t think so. You’ve got to remember that these guys are flying across the country and doing five or six workouts in six days, and that this is only one performance that you are seeing. But you do get a look and you want to get a look. It is part of the process but not the most important part.

    R: I’m figuring that if you don’t land a big man with your first pick, that, given the depth of bigs later in the draft, you will probably get a big with one of your two later picks. Is that a fair assumption?

    FH: I would think so unless somebody drops who we feel can’t pass on at 31 or 34. But you’re right [about the depth], there should be somebody there for us.

  • A Day at the Dome

    (AP Photo/Tom Olmscheid)

    Completely in the clutches of pro basketball withdrawal, I made my way down to the Dome on Sunday to watch what has become a confoundingly enjoyable 2008 edition of the Minnesota Twins. Actually the prime motivation was catching the galaxy of rising stars on the Arizona Diamondbacks, and receiving what is likely to be my only in-person experience watching 2006 Cy Young Award winner Brandon Webb on the mound. But I walked out of the ballpark remembering why I retain such fondness for the Twins organization, especially their front office (formerly Terry Ryan and now Billy Smith and Mike Radcliffe) and manager Ron Gardenhire and the coaching staff.

    The Twins won’t be playing ball deep into October. If they are still contending in August, it will substantially expand upon what has already been the pleasant surprise of their play thus far. Forty wins in 76 games from this crew? How is that possible?

    Beats me. The name of the game has always been pitching and defense, yet you might as well draw lots trying to determine the ace of their starting rotation: The vet Livan Hernandez has an ERA over 5, and Scott Baker and Nick Blackburn are generally regarded (by the Twins scouts themselves, if they could be honest with you) as, at best, middle-of-the-rotation pitchers. Slowey? Perkins? Bonser? You see why the Twins rank 10th in the 14-team American League (and 19th out of 30 in all the majors) in earned run average.

    And the defense hasn’t helped. Only Arizona, Houston and Texas have yielded as many unearned runs as Minnesota thus far this year. In terms of both errors and fielding percentage, they are among the bottom seven teams in all of baseball.

    Ah, so it’s the hitting, eh? Nope, not really. Minnesota ranks 21st among the 30 teams in OPS, due to being 21st in slugging percentage and 18th in on-base percentage. (While we’re at it, here’s a head-scratcher: Even with the pitcher hitting instead of the DH, National League teams are generally the same as their AL counterparts in OPS. The Washington Nats have the worst offense in the majors, but the Blue Jays, Mariners and A’s are right behind them. Ditto, the Rangers and Red Sox are the game’s best mashers, but the Marlins, Cubs and Phillies hit better than the other dozen AL ballclubs.)

    So why is this team 40-36?

    I’m sorely tempted to wax rhapsodically about how the Twins always "play the game the right way" and thus steal more could-go-either-way contests than they forfeit. And I believe this to be true. The organizational philosophy of this franchise is cautious and conservative. They don’t eat their seed corn by trading cheap young talent for proven commodities and, to get whatever edge their lack of gambles sacrifice, they maximize their available talent and seasoning enough that they rarely unexpectedly beat themselves.

    Sunday’s game isn’t a perfect example, but it will do as a fresh and a handy reference. Opposing Webb was Livan Hernandez, who is at least 33 (Cuban defectors frequently shave a few years off their age), has thrown 200 innings every year since 2000, and has watched his WHIP (number of walks and hits yielded per inning pitched) rise each year since 2001, including this season, where he sports an ugly 1.61 WHIP to go with his 5.23 ERA. Put simply, he’s a crafty, durable hurler in the twilight of his career. And it was a hell of a lot of fun watching him go up against the bevy of very talented but mostly callow hitters in the D-backs batting order.

    Over and over again, Hernandez would perfectly spot the location of his cutter, rarely varying from its 83-87 miles per hour speed, but almost always appearing as if it was going to land outside the plate to right handed hitters, only to suddenly veer in and catch the outside corner for a back-door strike, a pitch the home plate ump was generous about calling for both hurlers. Two D-backs who were especially vexed by this were Chris Young and Justin Upton, a pair of prodigiously talented outfielders who still have a long way to go to seize their potential. The 25-year old Young, who blasted 27 homers last season yet struck out 141 times and hit just .237 (and batted leadoff for most of the year!), stared at three straight strikes without lifting the bat off his shoulder with two on and one out in the 2nd inning, with strike three being of the back-door vintage just described. Leading off the third inning, the 20-year old Upton (who started his rookie season with a bang but has just 5 hits and 21 strikeouts in his last 18 games) likewise stared at three straight called strikes, the final two via the back door. And in the 4th, again with two on base and only one out, Young again stared at three straight strikes, the final two on the back door. Got that? In their first three plate appearances, Young and Upton had nine straight called strikes. That is a veteran pitcher schoolin’ the young’uns.

    By the way, the Twins are paying Hernandez $5 million this season. With his 8 wins, it is already a pretty good deal, and removes some of the stain of the Twins horrible signings of broken-down vets Ramon Ortiz and Sidney Ponson last year (although like a bad penny Ponson keeps showing up and making trouble for himself and whatever ballclub he is with–currently the Yankees, a match made is Hades). By contrast, last year’s younger, and then-better, version of Hernandez, Carlos Silva, parlayed a slightly-above-mediocre season of innings-eating ground balls and pinpoint control into a whopping 4-year, $48 million signing with the Seattle Mariners. This is the sort of colossal mistake the cautious, conservative Twins never make (well, except for Joe Mays). As Hernandez was scattering nine hits and allowing Arizona only one earned run (and three overall) in 7 innings, Silva was getting shellacked versus Atlanta, yielding three homers among nine hits in only four innings work and suffering his 9th loss in 12 decisions (Hernandez is 8-4).

    Meanwhile, Webb didn’t have his best stuff–after winning his first nine decisions, yesterday’s 5-to-3 loss put him at 11-4–but it seemed sufficient as he faced just two hitters over the minimum in four shutout innings. Webb is very much the type of pitcher the Twins organization prefers; someone with great command of location who puts the ball in play but, like Greg Maddux, rarely allows hitters to get comfortable or put the fat part of the bat on the ball. He’s never struck out 200 in a season despite eclipsing 200 innings each of the last four seasons, and yielded just 12 homers in 236 innings last year. What makes him particularly effective is that his hardest stuff breaks as sharply as the rest of his arsenal–when he’s on his game, his sinker seems to weigh a ton, creating a surfeit of routine ground balls.

    Yesterday he was undone by one inning, when the Twins pounced and scored 5 in the 5th. After a sharp single to left by Jason Kubel, Delmon Young lofted a routine fly ball into left…except that nothing is ever routine in the blasphemy that is Metrodome baseball, especially fly balls up in that off-white roof during a day game. D-backs manager Bob Melvin pulled the sort of dumb manuver that I (perhaps too charitably) don’t imagine Gardenhire ever doing, which is putting first baseman Conor Jackson–who had played the outfield just five times this season, or one-tenth what he’s logged at first–out in the vast expanse of the Dome’s left field acreage in conditions that were optimal for even seasoned outfielders to lose a ball in the roof. If Melvin wanted Jackson’s bat in the lineup (and the steady youngster, who is light years more mature at the plate than Young or Upton, went 3-for-4), he had the rare luxury (for an NL manager) of the DH in this interleague contest in an AL ballpark. In any event, Jackson raced back to the left field fence and had no idea the ball would land harmlessly 25 ya
    rds in front of him, giving Young a gift double and putting runners on second and third with no out. That brought up Brian Buscher, a 27-year old scrub described by the 2008 Baseball Prospectus this way: "He’s not a prospect, and even a bench role is unlikely after the Twins’ winter additions." But with one of those additions, Mike Lamb from Houston, being a early-season bust, Buscher was getting his licks, and stroked a single to center to knock in two. Another winter addition, Brendan Harris from Tampa Bay, singled to left to put runners on first and second with still nobody out. Another winter addition, Carlos Gomez from the Mets as the key piece in the Johan Santana deal, then laid down a beautiful bunt even as the D-backs were expecting it and defending it well, sacrificing the runners over to second and third with one down. And that’s when Alexi Casilla, who inexplicably found himself in Gardy’s doghouse last year but has been a marvelous spark in the lineup as part of a go-go tandem with the fleet Gomez at the top of the order, stroked the inning’s second two-run single. And that was the ballgame. A little luck off Melvin’s dumb strategizing, and then a pair of unheralded Twins practicing what the organization preaches; not trying to do too much at the plate (which is what currently bedevils both Young and Upton), just getting good wood on Webb’s veering pitches, providing great at-bats sandwiched around Gomez’s superb bunt, which was highlighted in Gardy’s postgame comments.

    That kind of steady approach to hitting is why the Twins are 6th in runs despite being 21st in OPS. But even more enjoyable for me has been the team’s fielding prowess over the years. Yes, the last couple have been an aberration in that regard, and have pissed Gardenhire off more than once, but yesterday, except for Delmon Young in left field, they were a team of beauty, never moreso than two back-to-back plays in the top of the 5th, when Arizona was already up 3-0 and threatening to expand their lead. The inning began with another of Arizona’s solid prospects, shortstop Stephen Drew, singling to right, a result echoed by 2b-utility man Augie Ojeda, putting two runners on with nobody out. Two pitches later, the inning was over. The first was a missed bunt by Orlando Hudson, followed by catcher Joe Mauer alertly firing what Gardenhire described as a "pellet" down to second base to pick off Drew, who strayed too far assuming the bunt would happen. The next pitch was a grounder to Justin Morneau at first and the big slugger and vastly underrated fielder turned in what remains one of the prettiest plays in all of baseball, the 3-6-3 double play.

    I mentioned Delmon Young, the prize in the atypically gutsy trade Smith made shortly after taking over for Ryan in the off-season, shipping hot pitching prospect Matt Garza to Tampa to secure the services of the 22-year old Young, an equally hot, and in fact slightly more proven, prospect. But Young has gotten off to a shaky start. For one thing he has one measly home run, disappointing those who, based on his track record in pro ball, felt he would increase, perhaps even double, the 13 homers he hit in his first full season in the majors last year. As Young has struggled, Gardy has occasionally sat him down, probably to get a breather, but for someone who played literally every day for Tampa last year, the time off may have psychologically done more harm than good. Whatever the case, Young had a miserable day in the field on Sunday. In the second inning he got a lousy jump on a ball Jackson hit, turning a flyout into a single. Two batters later, he again moved like his feet were in cement, this time on a foul fly that fell harmlessly on the turf instead of his glove, presaging a second single. Instead of being out of the inning, Hernandez had only one out and two on, thanks to what looked like Young’s lack of hustle. Certainly the normally affable Twins fans have not embraced him–after he allowed a single to go under his glove in the fourth, a two-base error that essentially cost the team two runs, Young received a smattering of boos. In the clubhouse after the game, Gardy minimized the gaping error and defended the two indolent flies in the second, properly noting that the ball came off the end of the bat on a full swing on the first.

    In today’s Strib, columnist Jim Souhan–who, like his colleague Pat Reusse, loves baseball foremost, is very knowledeable about the intricacies of the game and is well sourced in the Twins organization–wrote a provocative piece claiming that in lieu of Minnesota’s surprising performance thus far (which finds them just a game and a half out of first place less than two weeks before the 4th of July), they need to rely more on the homegrown talent and deemphasize the players they acquired via trade during the off-season. Unquestionably the two most controversial suggestions Souhan made were giving Denard Span some of Young’s innings in the outfield, and likewise installing utility guy Nick Punto as the shortstop more often at the expense of Brendan Harris.

    I respectfully think Souhan is off his rocker. Span at his best is just the third coming of Gomez and Casilla–he has no pop and no real prospect for acquiring any. Whatever his current doldrums, Delmon Young is almost universally regarded by a plethora of fine scouts–including the ace crew that culls talent for the Twins–as a potentially potent superstar at the plate. At the age of 22, with less than 80 games under his belt for the Twins, the last thing they want to do is cut his time and further prey on his confidence. Remember, there were whispers about Young’s lack of cordiality in Tampa Bay’s clubhouse last year, something Young did a great job of deflecting as the subject arose during spring training. But now that Tampa Bay has enjoyed a resurgence (surgence? they’ve never surged before) and seem to play as a happy tight-knit unit, and now that Garza has begun to pitch very well after his own dicey start, Young is going to be putting more and more pressure on himself to produce. What is required now is a long long long rope. It is not as if the Twins really are going anywhere important this season–and if you seriously think they outlast not only the White Sox but both the underproducing Tigers and Indians, you’re drinking tainted kool aid. No, regardless of what the standings say, this is a rebuilding year, and the way to rebuild is to make sure your future cornerstones are properly planted. Delmon Young is supposed to be a cornerstone. If he isn’t, then Bill Smith may be in over his head trying to replace Ryan. But the only way we’ll find out is if we let Young settle in and not poison his confidence with the specter of Denard Span, of all people. And as for the Nick Punto infatuation, we’ve all been there and done that, haven’t we? Remember the piranhas? Nick Punto is a great late-inning defensive replacement and good to get the guys at second, short and third a needed day off on occasion. But he is not a major league hitter–or, better put, not a hitter for a legit major league ballclub. Brendan Harris made a nice over the shoulder grab on a pop up in short left on Sunday and seems more comfortable at short, where he played for Tampa Bay last year, than at second, where he started the season and where Casilla has now put down a formidable marker.

    Besides, anyone stupid enough to dive into first base–as Punto is wont to do to "impress" us with his little-ball hustle (ask Matt Tolbert and his damaged thumb how that works out)–deserves to stay out of the batter’s box as much as possible. Punto’s dreadful career OPS of .629 is just icing on the cake.

     

  • Champions with a Vengeance

    (AFP/File/Gabriel Bouys)

    NBA Finals Game #6: Los Angeles 92, Boston 131

    Series: Boston wins 4-2

    A 39-point margin in a championship-clinching game means that one team was relentlessly magnificent and the other quit early and never bothered to revive. Quite frankly, I’m shocked at how thoroughly the Celtics cut the heart out of this Lakers team, but a new champion has been crowned, so let’s stroll on the sunny side to start.

    Any coach or player will tell you that defense is a team concept and that the most important component of it is trusting all four of your teammates to make the right rotation or adjustment or decision within the prevailing scheme. The Celtics were blessed to have three perennial all-stars wholeheartedly buy into making defense the priority – how often do one, or even two, actually make that commitment? – and then piecing together rock-solid character guys like Posey and PJ Brown who know their roles off the bench. Add in a pair of young starters who both are far superior on defense than offense, and you have a team identity based around the most energy-intensive – and yet, if you achieve that critical mass of trust and effort, energy-effective – style of play. One of the hoariest cliches in all team sports is that defense wins championships. The Celtics epitomized that for the NBA this year. Of all the amazing stats in this series, the two that jump out are from last night’s first half, when the Celts so thoroughly throttled and out-hustled LA that Boston had more steals than the Lakers had field goals, and that LA missed 19 shots, going 8-27, and yet didn’t garner a single offensive rebound.

    Kevin Garnett deserves all sorts of credit for this defensive identity – he was the linchpin and the physical and emotional tone-setter. But stellar defensive play from KG is not surprising, nor is it surprising from Posey, or PJ, or, except for their youthful errors, Perkins and Rondo. But Paul Pierce and Ray Allen? Has either player put together a six-game stretch of defense even remotely as effective as these Finals? (The only answer I’ll accept is Pierce on LeBron two series earlier, and that still doesn’t come *that* close to topping his D vs. LA.) The Celts built their defensive identity on trust and grit, and then dug down for another notch of intensity and telepathy in the postseason. How many people, even among those who picked Boston to win, believed that Pierce and Allen with a big dollop of Posey would be able to shut down Kobe Bryant as a passer *and* a distributor for much of this series? I will never again regard either one as mediocre, never mind soft, on defense until age inevitably takes its toll.

    As much as this was a team-wide triumph, Pierce became a superstar in this series. By that I mean that he became whatever was required, like Tim Duncan hitting that trey to beat Phoenix about 8 weeks ago to begin these playoffs. Pierce was a point guard in the best sense of the description: He recognized and reacted to the opposing defense with acute versatility, decision-making and execution. Be it distribution, penetration, long-range shooting, pick-and-roll variation, tempo shifting (calming to catalytic and back to calming), even decoy – much more often than not, Pierce chose the right strategic option and then followed through brilliantly. I’d love to be inside his brain for just 24 hours, going over what I’d just done.

    Before this postseason, I always considered Allen primarily a catch-and-shoot player; against Detroit and LA, two long, quick teams, he expertly set up his jumper with dribble-drives and vice-versa. And what happened to his bad ankles 48 minutes in pivotal Game Four? Of all the Celtics, he was the most consistent.

    Posey has trailblazed one habit and reinforced another in today’s NBA. The innovation is realizing that when your opponent is striving for a continuation basket after being fouled, you can get a free lick in – how does that not get adopted by practically every defensive-oriented role player? The reinforcement is being money on the trey from the baseline, Bruce Bowen style. Every contender should have a guy with ice water in his veins for that spot-up corner trey, and yet the muscle and the moxie to drive baseline into the tall timber to foster some crucial hesitation on the close-outs. If I remember, Posey was more of a elbow-beyond-the-arc three point shooter in the past; these baseline treys are perfectly suited for his temperament and skill set. FWIW, I think Ryan Gomes has great potential to be a corner-trey shooter on the Wolves, continuing the franchise’s modest but noble tradition of Sam Mitchell, Malik Sealy, and back to Mitchell (and no, Tod Murphy doesn’t count).

    Of all the Big 3, Kevin Garnett elevated his game the least in the Finals. But then KG had the smallest distance to his ceiling, having finished third in the MVP voting and having already achieved MVP status four years ago. I made my feelings known about KG – my favorite current NBA player – in a three-pointer after Game Four. His shout-out to ‘Sota was meant for many readers of this blog, and you know who you are. As a player with a deserved rep for being amped to the max under pedestrian circumstances, it was a kick watching him trying to channel it all with Michelle Tafoya at the end of the game last night, and funny watching Stuart Scott nervously give him the once over on the awards podium after the game, then decide he didn’t want to risk a live interview. As much as I enjoyed the ‘Sota mention, the words that brought goosebumps were, "I’m certified! I’m certified! What you gonna say now?! We made it Mom!" He took that monkey off his back and tossed it in Kevin McHale’s direction.

    I won’t waste much time talking about the Lakers because it isn’t worth much time. I will concede that I overrated them *twice* – at the beginning of the series and then after Game Five, when Gasol and Odom showed a pulse in the paint and I thought they were gathering some momentum of the their own that might create some space for Kobe to operate on the perimeter for games six and (if necessary) seven. Speaking of burdens to bear, before this series there were whispers that Odom was flighty and Gasol was soft. After their shocking display of mutual enervation, people aren’t bothering to lower their voices when questioning their desire and grit now. These guys aren’t inexperienced like Perkins or Rondo; Odom is 28 and has been in the league 8 years; Gasol will turn 28 in three weeks and has 6 years in the NBA plus time in Europe. They’re not finished products, necessarily, but both fell into an ideal situation with the other plus Kobe sharing the court. They not only should be flourishing, they should be imposing their remarkable athletic skills on their opponents.

    Instead, in an elimination game last night, Odom had *zero field goals* after three quarters. Gasol had four turnovers in the *first quarter,* and, in the signature presaging moment of the night, was flattened by Garnett, who turned around and gently tossed it in the hoop with no whistle while Pau was prone. When KG is the more brutish player down low, it is time to go to your bench.

    Will Gasol and Odom recover f
    rom this stain? Too soon to tell. But their Finals will be defined by ugly memories of lackluster performances until and unless they ever get a chance to rewrite the crunchtime script.

    Let’s not sugarcoat it: The Lakers were a very unlikeable team in this series. I understand the venom emanating from Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy and Jon Barry, because, as one who picked LA to win this series, I felt it myself. They played stupid, selfish, uncaring basketball. Vlad Rad, Vujacic and Farmar were absolutely dreadful – they didn’t guard anybody worth a damn, they eschewed the extra pass (Vujacic and Farmar actually bickered over backcourt touches – in the NBA Finals!) exercised terrible shot selection, and pretended passion in a manner so blatantly superficial you wanted to get right in their faces and shout WTF?!

    On that score, Phil Jackson needed to caffeinate the zen with a little fire and brimstone. Normally I’d be a little shy about dispensing advice to a guy with nine rings, but I can’t imagine anything I’d suggest working less well than whatever it was Jackson was trying to instill in his crew the past six games.

    And Kobe Bryant? Let’s brand him the Dirk Nowitzki of 2008 and call it a season.

  • Quick Thoughts and Queries for An Open Thread on Game Five

    (Photo by Brian Babineau/NBAE/Getty Images)

    NBA Finals, Game #5: Boston 98, Los Angeles 103

    Series to date: Boston up 3-2

    Other assignments prevented me to compiling a good three pointer for last night’s game, and it is already late in the day to slap together some of my impressions and questions about the contest. But given the exquisite recent feedback this site has received from a great mix of both Celtic and Laker partisans, KG fans, and everything quasi-neutral in between, I thought I’d briefly weigh in and open the floor for discussion. In any case, I’ll have something more thorough after Game Six.

    * I woke up this morning somewhat surprised that the "Kobe fouled Pierce" line seems to have generated some legs. Personally, I thought the worst call of the game was the third whistle on KG, when he obviously had a clean block on Gasol and yet was forced to go to the bench. The Kobe "foul" on the steal from Pierce was minimal contact, and given the stage of the game and the very slight infraction, I thought I was an appropriate no-call. But both the second and third fouls on KG were huge in deciding the game, and both were very questionable calls. Without Kendrick Perkins, the Celts were already hamstrung down in the low block. Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom finally seem to have gotten the message that they have to attack the paint with some urgency. Garnett discovered that guarding an energized Gasol is a tougher task than handling Odom; and James Posey on Odom should almost always be, and usually was, a mismatch in Odom’s favor. On a night when the Celts again did a good job on Kobe (post first quarter) and Paul Pierce was unstoppable, I think Boston wins if KG stays on the floor more than 11 minutes in the first half. Yes, LA got a majority of the "could go either way" calls, including the crucial ones like KG #2 and 3 and the Kobe steal. That’s a natural tendency when a team is at home and trying to stave off elimination.

    * I am rooting for the Celtics (but not so hard that I don’t want to see, close, well-played games) and have been a big critic of the Laker defense during the series, but did anyone else think that Van Gundy, Jackson, and Barry in particular were way too harsh on the Lakers’ indifferent D? JVG at least tried to be very specific, as when Jordan Farmar didn’t want to take the charge on Pierce, and I’m all for roasting Vlad Rad, but I can’t ever recall such vitriol being directed against the *winning team* in such widespread fashion. Barry essentially predicted the Lakers will get blown out on the return trip to Boston. Uh, I’m not so sure. The fact remains, the Lakers have a very good team, and that they don’t play team D nearly as well or tenaciously as the Celts shouldn’t obscure the fact that they have a superior offense and the game’s most talented player, and that the Celts are starting to physically break down. What sort of perverted logic will these pundits deploy if the Lakers snatch Game Six, which is not totally outside the realm of possibility, even if they play defense as porously as they performed last night? Do you folks agree or disagree with this? In any case, I was amazed at the negativity directed toward LA; maybe because many of them had picked the Lakers and are overcompensating for currently looking wrong.

    * KG lovers, including yours truly, have to own up to the fact that those two misses at the line in crunchtime were killers, the sort of misses that can invade the psyche if he’s put in a similar situation in the next game or two. Another ray of hope for LA’s chances of keeping this thing alive.

    * Yes, Pau Gasol is a lousy defender. But he is underrated for his grit on the offensive boards and I think his contesting for rebounds wore KG down some last night. Garnett is usually a master at snatching rebounds that are up for grabs and Gasol and Odom were able to keep many of them in play last night. Given how little ground Gasol covers on defense, especially compared to KG, he expends much less energy during a typical game. Thus, here is what I’d say to KG, who usually is very receptive to messages that emphasize defense as opposed to offense: "KG, unless you want to be worn out down the stretch, you need to take it at Gasol and get *him* in foul trouble so *he*’s the one who has to sit. Because Gasol is a key to their offense right now, both in the low block and the high post, where he can feed the perimeter shooters or dish down to Odom. The best defense you can execute right now is drawing fouls on him, which is what will inevitably happen if you go strong and hard in the paint when you guys have the ball."

    * How many points did Odom score with the right hand last night? Why hasn’t he been switching hands on the penetration off the dribble this entire series?

    * I don’t understand why Rondo and the other Celtics haven’t been able to make LA pay for sloughing off Rondo when he is running the half court sets, but after three games of this pattern, isn’t it time to start thinking about starting House, essentially matching him up with Fisher, and bringing Rondo in when the Lakers go to Farmar and Vujacic?

    * Will there be a fight before this thing is over? If so, my money is on either Posey or Vujacic as the instigator.

  • Irma Thomas/James Hunter

    The official Soul Queen of
    New Orleans, Irma Thomas has gracefully matured from the belter who
    literally 50 years ago (1958) told her romantic rivals, "You Can Have
    My Husband (But Please Don’t Mess With My Man)    ," to a caresser who
    engages the violins and doesn’t shed a shred of dignity on the bittersweet
    "Another Lonely Heart." A survivor of not one but two hurricanes
    (Camille and Katrina, the first one arguably tougher, as it temporarily
    short-circuited her career), Thomas is equally comfortable with soaring
    blues and gospel gravitas, wry, sexy mama send-ups, and, her stock-in-trade,
    testimony about the day-to-day triumphs earned and tears dropped. At
    the Dakota last time through she was engaging and self-assured, took
    requests, and played a generous set that left everyone wanting more.
    According to the various label and ticket sites, this Zoo gig is the
    only spot on her concert calendar this summer—don’t be surprised
    if she pulls something out from her upcoming Simply Grand CD,
    due in August. The stellar and simpatico opener is James Hunter, who
    plays retro blue-eyed soul with a passion and panache that seems steeped
    in the mid-60s but conveys its immediacy the moment it hits your ears.

     

  • Orchestra Baobab

    While the elegant Dakota isn’t
    quite as sublime as the outdoor quad in front of Northrop Auditorium—where
    Baobab played under sunny skies and swirling dancers in a beautiful
    evening on their last tour—this amazing 11-piece band does have another
    superb record’s worth of tunes in their arsenal: Made In Dakar,
    released in May, and equal or better than their comeback triumph,
    Specialist In All Styles    . Barthelemy Attisso’s multifaceted guitar
    lines are the main attraction, but it is hard to discount the vibrant,
    beseeching griot vocals, the Afro-Latin polyrhythms (especially the
    verbose vocabulary of the talking drums) and the snazzy saxophone phrases.
    And like all great bands, the synergy is abundant.

  • The Three Pointer: As Good As Over

    (AFP/File/Gabriel Bouys)
     

    NBA Finals, Game #4: Boston 97, Los Angeles 91

    Series to date: Boston 3-1

    1. Changing Reputations

    It is just a matter of when now. Because surely you don’t think Lamar Odom finds his composure, Pau Gasol unearths some grit, and Kobe Bryant recaptures his magical mojo in sufficient quantities to take these unrelenting and surprisingly deep Celtics to the woodshed three times in a row. Not after last night. Not when all the pundits such as yours truly have proven to be dunderheaded false prophets. The "best player" has not been, and won’t become, the best player. The "best coach" has not been, and won’t become, the best coach. And the "better bench" has not been, and won’t become, the better bench. Lakers in 5 or 6, I said. Wrong.

    But more high profile reputations than mine are being altered by this star-studded, commercially attractive matchup. Here are the ones most shocking to me.

    * Phil Jackson–It has been a bad, bad series for the Zen Master. Throwing gasoline on the fire by using a very stale Trevor Ariza on Paul Pierce as first off the bench in Game Two was bad enough, but leaving Derek Fisher on the bench in favor of the callow and selfish Bobbsey Twins, Vujacic and Farmar, while his lead disappeared last night was even worse. When Fish left the game with 2:58 to go in the third, the Lakers were up 11, 72-61. Incredibly, the man with three rings and more than 100 starts and 4,000 minutes in the postseason, the man who kept stepping up to staunch the momentum shift in the Celts’ comebacks in the second period and early in the third, sat for more than 12 minutes, entering with 2:10 left to play and the Lakers down 5, 88-83. Ostensibly, Farmar and Vujacic were in the game to provide some ball pressure on Eddie House, a better shooter but less adept on the handle than Rajon Rondo. Didn’t work. The only Celtic turnovers in that 12:48 Fisher sat were offensive fouls on Pierce and KG. Meanwhile, House had 5 points and his backcourt mate Ray Allen had 4. So perhaps Vujacic and Farmar provided some offensive counterpoint and helped spread the floor so Kobe could go to work and have a capable safety valve on the perimeter? If that was the idea, it failed miserably. Vujacic and Farmar combined to shoot 0-5 FG during that stretch, and nothing from the line–zero points–while the Lakers’ team as a unit managed just 11, in 12:48. By the way, Derek Fisher finished the game 5-6 FG and led the Lakers in plus/minus with a plus +7.

    * Kobe Bryant–The Black Mamba. The crunchtime assassin, best closer in the NBA, able to make the big shot when it matters most. With Kobe in the lineup, LA can always stop the bleeding. An all NBA Defensive First Teamer, able to lock down any perimeter player. A more mature teammate whose generosity of spirit and willingness to shoulder most of the responsibility relieves the pressure on his teammates and enables them to play freely and easily, knowing that Kobe always has their back. You can ball that assessment up and throw it in the trashcan.

    * Ray Allen–Aging fast and with bad ankles his already mediocre defense has become subpar. That was the rap on Mr. Shuttlesworth, who merely played all 48 minutes last night, and, unlike Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett and even Paul Pierce, didn’t seem the slightest bit winded or gimpy at the end. His up-and-under wraparound layup through Gasol and two other Lakers to bump the lead from one to three was simply cool to savor for the next decade or so; his seizing on Vujacic’s lean in to blow past him for another layup that sealed the win will perhaps leave a permanent stain on Sasha’s psyche. But that’s not why I’m so surprised by Ray Allen. No, it has been his remarkable defensive effort on Kobe (although Pierce deserves more credit for last night), the nine rebounds he corralled while nobody really noticed, and the two perfect dishes to James Posey for treys that broke the Lakers in the 4th quarter. Ray Allen has the entire package.

    * Paul Pierce–Again, it is the defense that is most surprising. Pierce’s block of Vujacic at the close of Game Two, and his block on Kobe–when was the last time you saw Kobe’s fadeaway get swatted? Never? Me too.–was just part of it. His positioning and ability to use his length and strength to maximum defensive advantage was something I simply didn’t know he possessed until the Cavs series, and in retrospect, playing two long dudes like LeBron and Tayshaun probably really helped Pierce prep for Kobe. So did the fact that many people guarded Kobe. But in the second half last night, Pierce was mostly the guy. In the corners of our TV screens the last few games, we saw Kobe and Pierce constantly trash talking each other. Guess what? The best player on the floor in these playoffs has been Paul Pierce (in a close shave over KG).

    2. Garnett and McHale In Their Rightful Places

    During Kevin Garnett’s last two or three years here, there was clearly some mutual frustration going on that began to morph into disrespect. Both men were pretty careful not to say so in public too often, but Garnett thought McHale’s lack of prowess in evaluating personnel was the reason he was getting further from a ring instead of closer as he entered his 30s. For McHale’s part, he thought KG didn’t do the things that turn a star into a champion: Go down and bang for shots and box-outs in the low block, get to the foul line, set nasty picks, and simply do what it takes when the game is on the line to secure the victory.

    McHale has gotten the prototype player he wanted in Al Jefferson, and Big Al, who should never be judged as the KG compensation because it just isn’t fair to him, played well enough that all the homers around the Wolves in the local media crowed that Minnesota actually got the better of the KG trade. One columnist for one of the local dailies even said he wouldn’t trade Jefferson for two KGs. Well it is pretty close to final accounting time and what we see is that the Celtics won a league best 66 games, had the greatest single season improvement in NBA history, and are one victory in three chances away from being crowned NBA champion over the MVP on the favored squad from the better conference.

    As should be obvious to all of us by now, the Celtics win with defense, stifling defense. As should be equally obvious, the Celtics would be at-best a mediocre defensive team without Kevin Garnett. It is KG’s unparalleled combination of length, quickness, instinct and intelligence that enables the Celts to extend their schemes so far out on the perimeter and so wide toward the sidelines. By all accounts from the folks in Boston, it was KG’s selfless passion and relentless work ethic–we saw that work ethic for a dozen years and that passion for about ten a half here in Minnesota–that catalyzed the culture of the revamped roster and created the attitudinal synergy, the pride and trust that are as important as athleticism to creating great team defense. KG is the foundation of the Celtic D: more than any other player in the game today, he is "everywhere" when his squad is defending the ball and he doesn’t take plays off. (That’s why Bill Russell has such a blatant man-crush on the guy.) When the Celts were hopelessly behind last night, he made two plays–denying putbacks to Odom and Gasol about four minutes apart–that are the sort of crucial, unsung bits of grit that help get you out of a hole. It is no coincidence that Gasol always shot from in close with a hurried lack of confidence, and why, except for last night’s first quarter, Odom suffered from lead in the paint.

    Having spent a dozen years up close and personal watching KG, I too was unsure about his crunchtime capability at the offensive end, his desire to seize the game via brutish willpower of the sort he constantly demonstrates at the other end of the court. Af
    ter years and years of rebutting KG haters, and, less convincingly, KG skeptics, I wavered as I watched the Hawks extend the Celts to 7 games, knowing that their best player was not most comfortable being atop the crunchtime pecking order. And I bought into the alpha theory of hoops I so frequently disdained, picking first the Cavs and LeBron and then the Lakers and Kobe to overcome KG and his other Big 2. But last night, with everyone screaming for Garnett to get down in the damn low block and go to work, he did was he always does: played his game his way, with a share of low post moves and a share of midrange jumpers and a share of high picks and deft passes. He took more shots than anybody on the team and made half of them, led them in rebounding, and, of course, defense. He finished fourth on his own team in points and second to Eddie House in overall plus/minus with plus +17 in 37:09, which means the Celts were minus -11 in the 10:51 he was off the court. And the team that has adopted his personality is one win away from the NBA Championship.

    Put me in the long line of people who need to apologize for doubting Kevin Garnett, who in his first year away from the dysfunctional gulag of Minnesota, is on the verge of accomplishing all anyone could ask of him. And remember that the man who belongs at the head of that line is Kevin McHale.

    3. Kudos and Brickbats

    As Bob Horry packs up his trunk load of rings and heads into the sunset it is time to come up with a cool, catchy nickname for James Posey, the new man with the golden touch from outside when championships are being decided.

    Doc Rivers has outcoached Phil Jackson in this series but one thing that mars his great performance is the number of people, me included, who kept hollaring for more minutes for Eddie House at the expense of Sam Cassell. Give Rivers at least half a kudo for seeing how effective House was in keeping Kobe honest on defense, and riding him over Rondo down the stretch. And give Mr. House a full kudo for doing what the Vujacic/Farmar combo couldn’t–make big shots from outside in the second half.

    Gasol and Odom will have a very hard time recovering from this no-show. Even playing a small lineup for much of the second half, the Celts managed to essentially break even with the Lakers on the boards and in points in the paint. What’s more, all the Lakers except for Fisher were frontrunners, Odom worst of all. When LA was rollin’ easy, he was driving like a banshee, pulling up and sticking the 17-footer, and even twirling the ball around his back by the sideline on one play. When crunchtime beckoned, he not only disappeared, he hid. Neither he nor Gasol wanted anything to do with the final outcome of this game–you could see it in their body language. Kobe had yet another bad game. But Kobe also had ten assists and it should have been 15 or 18. Kobe was on an island. It will be a very very hard thing for him to forget this summer.

  • Orchestra Baobab: Made in Dakar

    Here’s another seamless,
    masterful mix of Latin and African pop music from Orchestra Baobab,
    proving that their phenomenal comeback album, 2002’s Specialist
    In All Styles    , was no fluke. Baobab was the house band for Senegalese
    government officials during the 1970s, and was renowned throughout Africa
    before splitting up in 1985, beset by dissension and the onslaught of
    more modern, uptempo mbalax musical style. If their reunion 16 years
    later didn’t pack the commercial wallop of the similarly reconstituted
    Buena Vista Social Club, neither did they box themselves in a time capsule
    and milk nostalgia for their appeal.

    The eleven songs on Made
    in Dakar         were chosen by World Circuits producer Nick Gold (the man
    behind both the Buena Vista and Baobab reunions), who opted for a blend
    of new tunes and re-recordings of classics from the band’s 20-album
    discography. The result is an utterly distinctive olio of Afro-Cuban,
    Afro-Latin, and vintage-modern workouts from this supple 11-piece
    ensemble. Thus, the lead track, "Papa Ndiay," was a traditional
    Senegalese griot number honoring an old king, updated by a precursor
    of Baobab in 1968, recorded by Baobab in the early 70s, and now given
    another facelift, with vocalist Assane Mboup (a protégé of Youssou
    Ndour) wailing away in true West African griot fashion (reminiscent
    here of Mali’s Salif Keita).

    You simply aren’t going to
    hear these type of fusions anywhere else. "Ami kita bay" has the
    burnished, flamenco-like guitar and rubbery talking drum of mbalax and
    the shoulder-rolling swing of salsa: the band calls it "mbalsa"
    music. "Nijaay" is a dual-pronged guitar revelry, moving from the
    down and dirty "Secret Agent Man" riff to filigreed Nigerian highlife
    style picking to call-and-response between guitar and horn to some fatback
    wah-wah in tandem to the high-steppin’ of the rhythm guitar. "Sibam"
    is all horns and incredibly expressive talking drums, based on a dance
    usually performed at circumcision ceremonies, with scintillating guitar
    from the nonpareil Barthelemy Attiso toward the end. "Aline" is
    perhaps the only blatant stylistic throwback, a mid-20th
    Century Congolese rumba with weepy vocals sung in Colonial French (Wolof,
    Malinke, and Portuguese Creole are the other languages sung on the record).
    "Bikowa" is a dreamy calypso, smooth as a sailboat ride. "Ndeleng
    Ndeleng" is more powerhouse griot vocals and nasty hollow-body guitar.

    Eleven songs in all. Nary a
    clunker in the bunch.

    Orchestra Baobab
    Made In Dakar
    World Circuit/Nonesuch

    Four and a half stars. ****1/2


    See them play at the Dakota on June 30, 2008.

  • The Three Pointer: Great Coverage, A Ref Scandal, and, Oh Yeah, A Basketball Game

    NBA Finals, Game #3: Boston 81, Los Angeles 87

    Series to date: Boston 2-1

    1. Superb Coverage

    In all my years of watching NBA basketball, I can’t remember more incisive and illuminating commentary about the game than we got last night from Jeff Van Gundy and his cohorts on ABC and ESPN. The general purpose of these Three Pointers has always been to leave the obvious stuff alone and analyze the matchups and strategic flow of the game in a little more depth. But almost everything I was noticing as the game unfolded–and more–was being identified on the fly by JVG and, to a lesser extent, Mark Jackson and Michael Breen. And what stray pieces remained after that were cleaned up by the postgame interviews with the coaches and the studio analysis of Michael Wilbon and Jon Barry.

    Right out of the gate, the crew highlighted that Phil Jackson had decided to match Kobe up to guard Rajon Rondo, and then correctly surmised that the cross-matchup at the other end–either Rondo having to guard Kobe or Ray Allen having to locate him in transition–was a significant motivation for Jackson’s decision. Similarly, when Rondo went down with a slight ankle sprain and Celtic coach Doc Rivers (finally!) went with Eddie House instead of Sam Cassell, the crew poinhted out that the subsequent Celtic run was due to the better spacing House provided as a lethal long-range shooter, opening up the paint for Kevin Garnett to operate.

    Van Gundy was in a zone. On the Celtics out-of-bounds play under the basket in the final 1.3 seconds of the first period, he said "Usually [in this instance] you want a cutter to the basket and a shooter going to the strong side." Bingo. The Celtics had a man cut hard toward the hoop to draw down the defense, then had a strong side pick to free up three-point shooter James Posey for a trey. Then there was Van Gundy’s explanation of why the pull-up jumper is such a difficult shot, citing Kobe and Ray Allen as on-the-spot examples. Then, as the Lakers began to gather momentum in the 4th period, Van Gundy flatly announced that he would "trap Kobe on every possession." This dramatized Rivers’ failure to do that, not only making JVG look smart and prescient, but alerting even casual viewers about the silliness of leaving Allen hanging out to dry guarding Kobe in single coverage. Finally, Van Gundy understands that he’s a basketball nerd who looks like the guy who always got picked on by the bullies and ignored by the beauties growing up, and plays on that for comic relief. His halftime comment that of all the celebrities at the game, the one he’d most want to meet is Alyssa Milano ("If I was Nick Lachey I’d never let her out of my sight!") was hilarious.

    Mark Jackson necessarily suffers by comparison. Too often he either states the obvious or says something of questionable merit to back up a point he wants to make in the immediate circumstance. Claiming that Kevin Garnett isn’t a very good jump shooter and is far more effective in the low block, for example. Yeah, KG needed to operate down low far more often last night, but not because he can’t stick the midrange jumper–his recent shooting struggles are a significant aberration. Jackson also unleashes groaners like "Jordan Farmar is a starting point guard in this league," which damns Farmar with hyperbolic praise. But Jackson has his moments, like last night when he was the only one to point out that the "effective screens" JVG was praising KG for setting were illegal–a contention borne out by Garnett being called for a moving screen that was almost exactly the same as the one he’d set when Jackson mentioned it.

    Looking at the notes I’d jotted to myself after the game, one of the few things left was that nobody’d mentioned how putting Kobe on Paul Pierce had helped shut Pierce down–and then Phil Jackson mentioned it in the postgame. (The great D by Vujacic on Ray Allen which enabled the Kobe-on-Pierce coverage was about all the slim pickins I had left.) But when studio host Stuart Scott asked Wilbon why Pierce shot so horribly, Wilbon didn’t simply parrot Jackson; he also echoed his colleague Jon Barry’s smart, succinct comments about the difficulty of east to west travel (Jackson also brought up this point but Barry, as a recent player, put more meat on the bone about it) and also added his own analysis that the early foul trouble Pierce found himself in contributed to his woes. It was a great blend of cherrypicking the wisdom of others and adding your own insight makes the slam-dunk case for why Wilbon is way better than the guy he replaced, screamin’ Steve Smith.

    2. The Donaghy Stink Isn’t Going Away 

    As if Van Gundy wasn’t already having a fabulous night, disgraced and crooked referee Tim Donaghy verified his conspiracy theory from 2005. Back then, Van Gundy was fined a whopping $100,000 for claiming that the refs unfairly targeted his center, Yao Ming, for various infractions in response to pressure from Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. Through his attornies, Donaghy–incensed that the NBA calimed it spent $1 million investigating his unsavory associations, gambling debts, and potential fixing of games, a claim that could lengthen his jail sentence and perhaps compel restitution–essentially backed up JVG’s claims in detail. Interviewed at halftime about the matter, Van Gundy expertly walked the line between covering the NBA’s ass and yelling "I told ya so." He castigated Donaghy for his transgressions and pointed out that they give the ref little credibility, especially as he angles for a lighter sentence. But he also reiterated that the league needs total transparency when it comes to these backroom complaints and, more significantly, how the league decides to respond to them.

    The Van Gundy/Cuban dust-up from 2005 was actually small potatoes compared to Donaghy’s other contention: That two of the three refs (Dick Bavetta, Bob Delaney and Ted Bernhardt) working Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals were NBA "company men," who, at the direction of the league, went out of their way to officiate the game in a manner that would boost the Lakers over the Sacramento Kings. The officiating in that game was notoriously atrocious, to the point where then-Kings’ coach Rick Adelman bitterly complained about it after the game and many people only half-heartedly wondered if the fix was in.

    I know that Donaghy is not to be trusted, and that if he was going to inaccurately allege that refs beside himself were crooked, that Lakers-Kings game would be a strategically wise one to cite. But Commissioner David Stern cannot wish this one away, or cite previous FBI investigations into the matter. First of all, an entire, separate tribunal similar to the Mitchell Commission regarding steroids in baseball needs to be established, complete with subpeona power, and all doubts and controversies on this subject need to be exposed and examined. The stain and the stink are already out there, and the NBA needs to regain their credibility and good name with scrutiny that should err on the side of overkill. Remember, even as Stern castigates Donaghy for being a criminal trying to save his own skin, the league is also now proven guilty for creating an environment that allowed a compromised Donaghy to operate, and influence, many games, including playoff games. In light of Donaghy’s detailed, shocking charges, how is the NBA any different in trying to save its own skin by simply denigrating him?

    Even as the investigation takes place, Stern (or the person who replaces him) should take Phil Jackson’s advice and divorce itself from any influence over or connection to its officiating crews. That the league office has authority over the refs severely compromises its ability to investigate and judge any allegations made by Donaghy that the league influence referee conduct in the first place.

    3. Leftovers

    A
    fter making a bad coaching mistake subbing Trevor Ariza first off the bench in Game Two, Jackson redeemed himself with the Kobe-Rondo matchup and also by calling plays for troubled Lamar Odom twice in key second-half situations coming out of time-outs last night. Odom hit the first one and had enough penetration to enable Pau Gasol to get the putback on the second one. Jackson knows he’s not going to win this series if both Odom and Gasol remain in a funk. Right now Odom is the more significant problem. He’s resorting to attempted slam dunks on missed shots long after the refs have blown the play dead, cheapskate macho that’s even worse than KG’s, is a pickpocket’s delight every time he puts the ball on the floor, and has become a foul machine because he’s not thinking clearly–"confused," as Jackson put it. Those two plays out of the timeouts were designed to buck him up, and the Gasol putback made it a two-fer on the confidence-rebuilding front.

    I am thoroughly aware of the reasons why the Kobe-Rondo and then the House counter were both relatively effective. But did it really have to happen that way? Mark Jackson seemed to think it would be a terrible thing having Rondo be aggressive with his own shot as Kobe sloughs off him to play center field or double Pierce, claiming Boston doesn’t want to rely on its "fourth or fifth option." But an unguarded Rondo is a decent first or second option. He shot 49.2% during the regular season, and even his playoff accuracy of 41.4% is better than what the team’s other two point guards, Cassell and House, are shooting, and that’s with people guarding them. Which brings up the second point: Why not keep sloughing off the point guard and doubling KG in the low block even with House in the game? He shot 2-8 FG (admittedly, he was 2-3 from beyond the arc), so why not see if you can keep frustrating the Big 3 and make Eddie House beat you? Because guarding House out on the perimeter obviously helped get KG off. It reminds of all the times one coach will go big or small, and rather than seeing which way the deliberate mismatch turns, the opposing coach subs in the corresponding bigs and smalls to match up. If the situation(s) repeats itself in Game Four, hopefully the Celts will allow Rondo to go off, and the Lakers will dare House to beat them.

    Count me among those who think this was a moral victory for the Celts. Their Big 3 was 1-12 FG in the first period and the score was tied. Pierce and Garnett were terrible from start to finish and they still nearly pulled it out. If you’re a Laker fan, you can argue that Gasol and Odom likewise stank up the joint and the Lakers prevailed regardless, but on the basis of the first three games, who is more likely to bounce back to vintage form, Pierce/KG or Gasol/Odom?

    Just moments after Mark Jackson commented that Farmar and Vujacic were in a bit of a tiff over who should be controlling the basketball in the half court, Farmar clanked a long trey off the front iron. It’s the latest in a long line of reasons why I’m not a Farmar fan. But he and Sasha have more guts than brains, and both need to defer to Kobe more often, but when one of them has the hot hand, Laker fans should hope the other has the good sense to nourish it rather than horn in.

    Those who said the refs would call a "makeup" game in favor of the Lakers after the free throw disparity in favor of the Celts had ammunition for their argument after LA traipsed to the line 14 times in the first quarter alone. And yeah, overall I noticed a *slight* bias in the calls in favor of the Lakers, especially early. And as Wilbon pointed out, that may have compounded Pierce’s lack of rhythm, just as quick whistles on Kobe deterred his momentum in Game Two. But my take is that the calls were more even-handed last night than they were in Game Two, and that the refs didn’t decide the outcome of Game Two, let alone Game Three. And I do think Doc Rivers got in a clever dig at Jackson during the postgame last night when he claimed he was happy Jackson didn’t come in whining about the foul disparity this time.