Category: Sports

This will not be a comprehensive or otherwise definitive take on the current state of the Timberwolves. I’d like to think that anyone who read the 60 or so Three-Pointers I put out this year has a pretty good glimpse into what I think are the strengths and weaknesses of the team. And what should be done about it is out of my hands.

Trades? I can dream stuff up all day: So what?

Fire McHale? I assumed it would happen more than a year ago, and today’s announcement indicates that he’s still on board. Why wasn’t McHale fired was one of the first questions I asked owner Glen Taylor when we spoke *last October*. Since then, the franchise has canned its coach for a 20-20 record, seen his replacement go 12-30 and express a desire to bring him back, and *deliberately lost* basketball games for the better part of two weeks, if not longer. Maybe sometime after the May 22 draft lottery or after the summer draft pick I can begin to tolerate serious thought about this franchise again. But right now, quite frankly, there are better things to do in life and I suggest we all start doing them. If you want to add your comments to this thread, I may respond, but I must tell you that right now I am more interested in looking at the NBA playoffs, or starting to talk about the Twins and baseball, or even get into a little hockey if the Wild win again tonight.

In other words, that is not a good day for sober analysis. On the other hand, it seems like the right time to get a few things off my chest.

* Mark Blount should be ashamed of himself. His “effort” over the final three months of the season was provocatively half-assed, making Michael Olowokandi look like a poster boy of professionalism by comparison. At least two or three times a game, and sometimes up to half a dozen, a smaller player would drive the lane where Blount was situated and score the layup with impunity, without worrying about a hard foul, block, or any consequence to him or his team. These things get around the league–you don’t need scouts on the sideline to have the word spread that someone is chickenshit beneath the hoop–and had a lot to do with the Wolves collapse on the defensive end during the second half of the season.

* Ricky Davis and Blount care far more about making snide, snarky comments and feeling put-upon in a dual pity party than they do about improving themselves or this basketball team. Davis is a talented player who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the greater good of team, and he’s so pathological about it that I really don’t think he can change. Justin Reed occasionally joined this cancerous little clique, making the Boston trade an outright disaster even if Wally Szczerbiak never plays another minute. Davis needs to go. Blount is probably untradeable, but if I were the Wolves, I’d bring a very nasty banger into training camp next year and force-feed Blount to him. It would do wonders for team chemistry.

* Today, about the only thing Kevin McHale could say in support of Randy Wittman was that he was a taskmaster who runs a tight locker room and would demand discipline and responsiveness from his team. McHale has spread a lot of bullshit in his time at the Target Center, but this may top the list. The idea of Wittman commanding respect from his troops is evidenced by….what? Who got called out most blatantly during Wittman’s 4 months on the job? Not Davis, who got more minutes under Witt than he did under Dwane Casey. Not Blount, who played far far more minutes than he deserved from the All-Star break on, when rookie Craig Smith and energy guy Mark Madsen were blatantly better options. McHale also said today that in the current NBA, a guy like Smith can play the 4, that the game is gravitating to smaller and quicker front lines. He also stated that this team will get bigger and bang more, but more likely at the forwards than at the center position because of a lack of options. Well then, why didn’t Wittman sit Blount down and start grooming Smith for that role? Yeah, he eventually did it, about three weeks after the most casual fan could see it had to be done. Bottom line, Wittman continued giving Blount and Davis heavy minutes, even as complained about selfish play and a lack of chemistry, and affirmed that he would make players pay for lack of effort. Then McHale comes along and says Wittman will be back because he is a taskmaster who will get the players’ attention. How stupid do these people think we are? Meanwhile, the two players Witt really slighted were Trenton Hassell, who got benched for a perceived lack of hustle longer than anyone on the team–nearly two straight games–and then only grudgingly was allowed back in the lineup; and Kevin Garnett, who heard his coach say there wasn’t enough locker room policing going on–a direct rip on KG, the de facto leader of the team. Maybe McHale and Wittman see a different game than I do, but Trenton Hassell and Kevin Garnett are not among my top 6 things wrong with this wretched franchise. In fact the VP of Personnel and the Coach rate much higher on my “could be upgraded” list than the team’s two best on-ball defenders.

* Big Disappointment # 3, behind the listless, soft, quit-on-his team Blount and the narcissistic, unreliable, doesn’t-understand-what-it- takes-to-win Davis, is Mike James, who proved rather decisively that he can’t handle the pressure of being a key component of a quality team. Once the onus of meaningful games was lifted, James became similar to the player he was in Toronto–capable of scoring in bunches, and bringing energy to the offensive end (he defense remained awful). Last year it was Marko Jaric who demonstrated that he is not to be trusted when the game is on the line, but at least Jaric restricted his chokes to crunchtime. James cannot be trusted as long as his team means to contend and he is more than a bit role player in the proceedings.

* There is not a single player on this team that had a really good year. Not one. Garnett is showing signs of slippage, especially on defense, where he can’t scramble and recover or casually outjump and snatch rebounds or deter penetration the way he did in his prime. Davis is the team’s most fraudulant stat-stuffer since Micheal Williams. Randy Foye was inconsistent to a fault, even for a rookie looking an important, unfamiliar position. (McHale said today that he envisions Foye playing “off the ball” more in the backcourt next year.) Hassell and Jaric provided offense the way November or March occasionally provide a warm sunny day. Mark Blount provided a first 45 games of hustle and quality shooting that made his last 35 or so games all that much more abominable by comparison. James is a flunky, a sidekick, pure and simple. And so on, down the list.

There. End of rant. Time to start remembering why I enjoy basketball so much–I’ll do some thumbnail playoff series impressions and picks in the next post.

A Small Appreciation of Bracey Wright
First off, thanks to those who gave me feedback on how to handle this disheartening point of the season, when the only intelligent thing for the Wolves to do is lose. Which is a bittersweet bit of good fortune, because about the only thing this squad is capable of doing is losing.

But game analysis is a broken record, especially with the departure of Garnett for the season. There are only so many times I can bash Davis-Blount-James before it feels less like insight and more like a grudge. I’ve tried to go out of my way to praise this troika when they’ve done well, but since I think they are all still overvalued in the eye of the casual fan (but probably only the most masochistic of the ones who are my readers), and since I don’t want to simply echo conventional wisdom, I still wind up hammering them more than is necessary.

Let’s get positive for just a second then, and talk about Bracey Wright. Word is the Wolves drafted Wright largely on the enthusiasm on then-assistant GM Rex Chapman, and I confess to being bewildered at the choice at the time, before remembering Kevin McHale’s history of throwaway second-round picks–since remedied by Craig Smith. And, belatedly, Bracey Wright. No one denied the kid could shoot, and certainly not after he finished 4th in scoring in the D-League at better than 21 ppg last year. It’s just that he’s relatively frail, not very quick, not very athletic, really; an undersized ‘tweener guard of the sort who’s upside is making close to six figures in a European league.

The sad part of this tale is that I still don’t see him being anything more than someone at the end of an NBA bench. But all that said, if you paid attention on his quick cameoes, including last night’s loss to the Nuggets in Denver, you can’t help but be impressed with Wright’s poise. Once he finally joined the Wolves in Minnesota last season, he jacked up jumpers whenever he was open, then endured a brief experiment when the braintrust tried to turn him into a point guard–which could well have been camouflage for tanking.

This season he’s played a grand total of 175 minutes and is shooting less than 40% from the field. Even his most impressive stat, a team-best +49 (KG is second at +10 and Rashad McCants’ +6 is the only other positive), has been accomplished almost exclusively in garbage time or the substitute-rich middle periods of the game. But what catches your eye is that Wright has been feverishly polishing the important “little” things about the game, like fostering ball movement (a totally lost art on this dysfunctional squad), making sound judgments on defensive rotations, not trying to extend himself beyond his skill set with foolish passes or showboating, and generally displaying a consistent effort with a generous attitude despite the circumstances. Last night he played a season-high 26:29 and canned 13 points (5-11 FG, 1-5 3P, 2-4 FT) with 5 rebounds, 2 assists and a pair of steals versus one turnover. Playing on the floor with the NBA’s ultimate jitterbug in AI, with absolutely no interior defense behind him, he once again didn’t embarrass himself. Most likely two or three years from now he’ll be a vague footnote in our collective memory banks, but last night and during a disastrous three-month stretch where the Wolves have compiled the second-worst record in the entire NBA (only the Milwaukee Bucks, at 11-33, undercut Minnesota’s 12-33 mark) Bracey Wright has instead been a minor but not unappreciated grace note. Good for him.

2. The Great Brittons
You know the blog ethos has gone to my head when I start naming award picks after myself (full name: Paul Britton Robson Jr.) in a desperate bid to break the monotony. Anyway, the virtual statuettes go to:

Coach of the Year
1. Jeff Van Gundy
2. Sam Mitchell
3. Jerry Sloan
Van Gundy weathered injuries to Yao and McGrady and has his team primed to be the foe nobody wants to face in the playoffs. Mitchell likewise has contended with injuries, early-season rumors about his own firing, and a slew of rookies, to post more than 45 wins, albeit in an inferior conference. Sloan has mixed and matched his talent with an unconventional front line and produced perhaps his most creative season. Honorable mention to Don Nelson, Flip Saunders, Avery Johnson, and, as Steve Aschburner astutely pointed out on Sunday, Dwane Casey.

6th Man
1. Leandro Barbosa
2. Manu Ginobili
This really is a two-person contest. The Suns’ high-powered offense actually kicks up a notch in speed and productivity when Barbosa enters the game. Ginobili is an erstwhile stud-starter who has sacrificed a bit of ego for the good of his team. Former contenders Ben Gordon and Mike Miller are starters this year. Honorable mention, way back, goes to Jerry Stackhouse, Antonio McDyess, and Earl Watson.

Rookie of the Year
1. Brandon Roy
2. Jorge Garbajosa
3. LeMarcus Aldridge
Roy is so far ahead of everyone else here that he should be a unanimous choice. Garbajosa is the already mature foreign export crucial to the Raptors’ early rise, who blew out his leg in brutal fashion. Aldridge is going to be really good and make Joel Pryz expendable in the process. For the record, I’d put Randy Foye and Craig Smith 4th and 6th, respectively, surrounding Rudy Gay.

Defensive Player of the Year
1. Shane Battier
2. Tayshaun Prince
3. Bruce Bowen
My rules: Blocks and steals are overrated; rotational help coupled with stolid on-ball defense is paramount, with versatility also important. Battier and Van Gundy is a match made in hell for opposing swing men. Prince helped restore Flip Saunders’ defensive reputation by leading the Big Ben-less Pistons to top five finishes in fewest points and lowest FG% by opponents. Bowen needs (or at least gets) six or seven more minutes of rest than the other two, which about the only reason he’s third. Honorable mention: Ben Wallace, Marcus Camby, Tim Duncan.

Most Improved
1. Deron Williams
2. Al Jefferson
3. Kevin Martin
Another no-brainer. In Year Two, Williams has become the MVP of a typically tough Sloan-coached team, leap-frogging Chris Paul and stamping himself as most likely successor to Nash as the NBA’s premiere point guard. Jefferson’s second half has been phenomenal beneath the radar due to the Celts’ miserable season–pairing him with Oden or Durant would put them in the second round, minimum, next season. Martin is an overachiever who has probably now reached his ceiling, but you’ve got to admire the doubled-scoring average, especially on a team with shoot-first cohorts like Bibby and Artest.

MVP
1. Steve Nash
2. Dirk Nowitzki
Another two-person race. For two straight seasons I really grimaced at Nash getting this award, firmly believing it belonged to Shaq and then LeBron, respectively. Now, in what has so clearly been Nash’s greatest season, one of the most stunning point guard displays in the history of the NBA, Nash will be denied the award because voters don’t regard him as luminous enough to be placed alongside Bird, Wilt, and Bill Russell as three-time winners. And he isn’t. But he is the MVP of 2006-07, hands down. Notwitzki would be a mediocre choice even without Nash in the running, but gets extra credit for sublimating his stats for the good of a 60+ win team. Honorable mention to Kobe Bryant, the anti-Nash in that his legend will always be larger than his collection of MVP trophies, LeBron James, who will demonstrate why this award is best voted on after the playoffs, and Tim Duncan, the ultimate glue guy.

3. Rockets-Jazz Playoff Preview
This is the playoff series I am most looking forward to watching. Here are a few reasons why.

* Sloan vs. Van Gundy
Two of the league’s best coaches. With his multiple screens, weakside cuts and various picks and rolls, Sloan puts meat-and-potatoes offense on the court as well as anyone in the game. The Jazz ranked second only to Phoenix in team FG% this season, despite finishing next-to-last from beyond the arc. What that means is a bevy of high percentage shots developed through physicality, guile, and unselfish ball movement, all hallmarks of Sloan teams. And this outfit is his most talented since the days of Stockton and Malone. Meanwhile, Van Gundy is one of the NBA’s better defensive tacticians, always landing his teams among the top handful is lowest opponent FG% and leading the league this year with a .429 mark. JVG, too, has his most talented team since he took the Knicks to the NBA finals.

* Aces in the hole
The Jazz don’t really have an answer for Yao Ming. Their starting center, Mehmet Okur, is an outside shooter–the team’s only real three-point threat–who is smart and has a nose for the basketball in the paint, but is hardly a defensive stopper and doesn’t even play as large as his 6-11 height, which is a good half-foot shorter than Yao. Their power forward, Carlos Boozer, has brawn but is perhaps generously listed at 6-9.
Expect Sloan to double-down on Yao from a number of angles and try a variety of different players and looks on him. He certainly has some compelling pieces. Swingman Kirilenko is a defensive beast but will probably spend almost all of his time occupying Tracy McGrady. Backup center Jarron Collins is physical and disciplined, perhaps Utah’s best answer if the plan is not to front or double Yao too much. Shooting guard Derek Fisher is wily and experienced at doubling down and will be a Yao pest. Backup small forward Matt Harpring is nearly as large as Boozer and plays a tough, physical game.
In any event, the plan most likely will be to deny Yao touches whenever possible, and collapse on him immediately when he does get the ball. Yao is prone to turnovers not only due to footwork but bringing the ball up to the 6-6 level of his chest. But once he catches and squares to the hoop, he’s a deadly midrange jumpshooter with a quick release.

But the Jazz have their own ace in point guard Deron Williams, and it is to their advantage that point guard is where Houston is weakest, with Rafer Alston running the show. Alston shot 37.4% from the field and dished out only 5.4 assists per game. Both stats are a little unfair because more than half his shots were treys (and he made more than 36% of them) and his assist total is deflated because McGrady dominates the backcourt ball possession. But Alston is hardly John Paxton to T-Mac’s MJ; he’s the opposite of ice water, a streaky, emotional player who makes only 74% of his free throws. But Houston has no viable second option: Alston led the team in minutes played this season.

More importantly, Alston is no match for Williams when the Rockets are on defense. Williams is not only an inch taller but 30 pounds heavier than Alston, and through the tutelage of Sloan and John Stockton (who always played bigger and heavier than he actually was) has learned to excel at shielding the ball with his body on drives and passes. Alston is 16th in the league in steals, but Sloan and Williams are generally too smart to present many opportunities for that.

More likely, Van Gundy will figure out ways to bump Williams off stride, perhaps mixing in a matchup zone and trapping the corners. One advantage for Houston is that with the likes of Yao or Mutumbo underneath, they can gamble and press up on the perimeter. Another intriguing possibility is putting Shane Battier on Williams. (Battier could also find himself guarding Okur on the perimeter while Yao contends with Boozer. That Battier is a plausible option on both the center and point guard attests to his value.) It could backfire–Williams is obviously quicker–but it also might throw a huge monkey-wrench into the best thing the Jazz have going. Put simply, the Jazz don’t win unless Williams has a superb series.

* Battle of the boards
With a pair of leviathans in Yao and Mutumbo, a pair of capable forwards off the bench in Juwan Howard and energy guy Chuck Hayes (who may not play much), and a pair of large swingmen in Battier and McGrady, *and* a defensive that generates more missed shots than anyone in the league, Houston grabs a lot of rebounds–43.5 a game, good for second in the NBA, a tenth of a rebound behind the Bulls. But despite its relative lack of size, Utah parlays Sloan’s fundamentals into being titans on the boards, owning the largest rebounding differential by far–more than 5.3 per game–of any team in the league.

*Kirilenko on McGrady
It is amazing that only now are we getting around to McGrady. The guy had a fabulous year, averaging 24.6/5.3/6.5 in points/rebounds/assists. Who guards him? Not Derek Fisher–too short and probably too old. Not Gordan Giricek, who is rangy but usually a defensive liability. One interesting choice would be Ronnie Brewer but he’s a rook–expect foul trouble if he’s on T-Mac. The best bet is obviously Andrei Kirilenko. In fact he’s probably the ideal McGrady foil; the problem is, who guards Battier at the other forward spot? Between Yao and T-Mac, not to mention three-point specialist Luther Head off the bench and Battier and Alston also bombing from outside, Sloan is going to have to do a lot of rotating and switching on defense anyway. Whether Kirilenio–a marvelous, Swiss army knife kind of defender, like a more wiry Kevin Garnett–can be as much of a disrupter on D as T-Mac is an igniter on O will be another key to Utah’s chances.

* Prediction
I love the Jazz and have great respect for Sloan, but this isn’t a good matchup for this team. The six weeks or so Yao sat out with an injury only rested him a bit and made the Rockets more dangerous by gaining confidence from the wins generated in Yao’s absence. The Jazz have to figure out a way to fluster both Yao and McGrady–possible, but hardly probably. They can exploit Alston, but the streaky point guard will also be a positive factor at least once. On top of everything else, Houston has earned the home court advantage. The Rockets in five or six.

Game #79, Home Game #40– San Antonio 110, Minnesota 91

1. Wittman is Without Defense

We are now 79 games into the season–40 of them coached by Dwane Casey, 39 by Randy Wittman. I suppose we could wait until after Sunday in Golden State to make an exact, 40-40 comparison of the two coaches, but with KG out and the team in full tank mode, these next few games aren’t really going to tell us anything about anybody. Everyone just wants it to be over.

Thanks to Wolves stat guru Paul Swanson, I have the breakdown on team performance under the two coaches, and what is interesting in many cases is the similarity of the numbers. Kevin Garnett, for example, averaged 22.1 points, 12.7 rebounds and 4.3 assists in 39:12 per game under Casey, and 22.8, 12.9, and 4.0 in 39:38 under Wittman. Per 48 minutes, KG numbers under the two coaches were exactly the same in steals and turnovers, .4 apart in assists, .1 away in rebounds, and .6 apart in points. That’s reliability. About the only thing that is revealing there is how quickly Wittman reneged on his pledge not to play guys extended minutes–he rode Garnett and Davis slightly more than did Casey.

But there is one stat that jumps off the page: Team Defense. Under Casey, the Wolves permitted just 96.7 points per game; under Wittman, that swells to an unsightly 101.4, a huge 4.6 point differential that swallowed the measly .4 bump in offense under Wittman (from 95.6 to 96 ppg). One reason for that is the Wolves played a more wide-open game under Wittman, attempting 95 more treys–more than two per game–than they did under Casey. Meanwhile, Wolves opponents shot 198 more three-pointers in 39 games coached by Wittman than they did in the 40 coached by Casey, and made a higher percentage (.353 to .346).

Well, maybe that was because the Wolves were packing the paint down low to discourage penetration and to box out for rebounds? Nope. Opponents shot a better two-point FG% versus Wittman’s Wolves (.495) than Casey’s (.483) and reversed the advantage the Wolves had on the boards under Casey. Rebounds per game declined just a titch under Wittman (from 48.8 to 48) but the opponents’ rebounding total went way up (from 46.8 under Casey to 50.5 under Wittman). Minnesota also registered 50 more blocks under Casey (more than one per game) than they did under Wittman.

Not all the “fundamentals” have been worse under Wittman–turnovers are down with Wittman on the sidelines–but I think it is fair to say that when your squad sacrifices that many more points while getting beaten more regularly both on the perimeter and in the paint, without getting a commensurate bump on the offensive end due to a higher tempo or something, than the team simply isn’t playing as well. That could mean less intelligently and/or less energetically–I would argue both. Remember, this is almost exactly the same personnel, except that Casey didn’t have the benefit of the then-injured Rashad McCants.

Sure, there are some mitigating factors: Mark Blount decided to mail in the rest of the season after the All Star break, and for the past month or so, the team certainly appears to be trying not to have its most synergistic combos on the floor in order to keep its draft pick. But Wittman controls Blount’s minutes, and hasn’t really cut them very much compared to Casey. As for the “tanking with vets,” well, Casey never really was embraced by this franchise–be it Taylor or McHale or KG–the way Wittman was, and is. And those are the folks who created the sorry mess that has provoked this tanking. McHale initially wanted to hire PJ from SA; Casey originally wanted to hang on to Roy, not Foye. Neither one got their way. One would hope, if nothing else, that McHale and Wittman are at least on the same page. Because the next housecleaning–sooner rather than later would be nice–should be very very thorough.

2. More Fun With Numbers
Another way to look at the Casey-Wittman figures is as a progression throughout the season. In other words, regardless of who was in charge, did the rooks develop during the course of the season? Did the vets tank? Did anybody flourish or wither?

The good news is that Randy Foye slowly but surely became a classically more effective point guard in the second half, and under Wittman. Under Casey, Foye’s totals per-48 minutes were 5.3 assists and 4.3 turnovers. Under Wittman they were 6.4 assists and 3.3 turnovers, a much better ratio (his point total declined negligibly under Wittman, from 21.4 to 20.4). Smith’s points went up a bit, from 18.5 to 19.4 under Wittman, but his rebounds per 48 declined from 13.5 to 12.2. In the other categories (assists, steals, turnovers per 48) he was marginally more effective under Casey than under Wittman, but that just may be because he tired a bit, or was better scouted or adjusted to, in the 3+ more minutes per game he got under Wittman.

One player who took a big hit in minutes was Hassell, who went from an average 32:03 under Casey to 26:25 under Wittman, which helps explain the more porous defense. Mike James experienced a more severe decline, from 29:06 under Casey to 21:38 under Wittman. Yet the lost time didn’t affect James that much during the time he did play–he averaged 19.1 points and 7.2 assists per 48 under Wittman and 19.2 points and 6.5 assists under Wittman. Hassell’s rebounds went down slightly under Wittman, but his scoring per 48 remained almost exactly the same (from 11.3 to 11.2).

3. The Tank Race
For those still interested in the gory details of Friday’s blowout, the Wolves got blasted late in the first quarter and it lasted through to halftime, turning a tie game with 3:44 to play in the first into a 16-point halftime deficit. Mike James looked mahvalous, nailing 10-14 FG and posting a superficially impressive 23 points in just 26:31, which would have given him at least 30 with a typical starter’s 32-38 minutes played. Of course he also would have been even worse than the -17 he registered on the popcornmachine.net calibrations, meaning the Wolves were just -2 in the 21:29 he sat down. Wittman knows this–that defense and ball movement (James had just 2 dimes) also count for something–but continues to go with the vets. Thus, the worse plus/minus according to the popcorn was Mark Blount at -19, followed closely by Ricky Davis at -18 and James at -17: See a pattern here? The hustle guys, the fundamental guys, like Mark Madsen (+7 in 18:26) and Rashad McCants (zero in 21:39) fared a little better.

There will be no Three-Pointer after the Golden State game Sunday. I’m still trying to decide whether to bother with any after Denver or Memphis, or simply to start previewing playoff series. I’m solciiting opinions on which you’d prefer.

On a final, positive note, Seattle and Portland play each other tonight, meaning that one or the other will match Minnesota’s 32-win total. Gentleman, start your coin flips.