Category: Timberwolves

1. Theo In the Pivot
Let’s begin with some positive news, eh? Theo Ratliff, valued first and foremost for the $11 million he will take off the books when his contract expires at the end of the season, is alive and swatting, providing the best interior presence this franchise has ever seen, at least as long as this 34-year old seven-footer fresh off a 44-minute 2006-07 season due to a bulging disc in his back can remain healthy. He had four blocks and 5 boards in 20:53, and the ballclub has a totally different feel when he’s patrolling the paint. Coach Randy Wittman says if it was a regular season game rather than a warm-up during tonight’s 95-106 loss to the Pacers, he would have gotten more burn. Against large opposing front lines, it’s possible we’ll see 28-35 minutes from Theo, for as long as it lasts, and probably half that when teams go small and quick.

Who expected this when the blockbuster KG trade was made?

Now, the cavaets. As much fun as it is to watch a legit panther-poacher looming around the hoop, Ratliff is almost destined to break down if he gets the kind of playing time his current upside merits. And even if he doesn’t, will it help the Wolves’ grand rebuilding to rely on a guy who will almost certainly be either retired or toiling for a contender as the 2009 version of Mutumbo or Mourning? Probably not. But this is the equivalent of Eddie Griffin on blocks, without EG’s emotional seesaw, screwy shot selection, or clueless pick and roll D. So let’s savor the tastes we get this season, some rare sweetness amidst the tart and tough rebuilding campaign.

2. Ricky At the Point?
The best stretch of play for the Wolves vs. Indiana was when Witt threw Ricky Davis on Pacers point guard Jamaal Tinsley in the third quarter. In the first quarter, Pretty Ricky languished while Mike Dunleavy sped to the corner to receive a pass and bury a trey en route to an 8-point first frame. And he committed five, count ’em five, turnovers, compared to just one assist in those opening twelve minutes. But matched against Tinsley to start the second half, Davis naturally rose to the challenge. Thus engaged on defense, he also doled out five dimes (versus just two turnovers), four of them to pivotmen in the paint (three for Al Jefferson, one for Ratliff) and one out to Marko Jaric for a trey.

After the game, I asked Wittman why–if Davis is going to lead the team in assists (he did tonight with seven) and guard the point guard in crucial stretches, and if Minnesota is already without a pair of points in Randy Foye and Sebastian Telfair, resorting to Greg Buckner as the backup to Jaric–he doesn’t officially make Davis the part-time point guard. The coach essentially answered that it takes a lot out of Davis and robs the Wolves of Davis the scorer at shooting guard.

Bah. If anything, I worry about the Wolves relying on Davis too much this season, as he and Ratliff provide a double boost of contract expiring glory on their way out the door. Hey, if you’re playing Greg Buckner at the point and you’ve got last year’s assist leader more poised and primed when he’s guarding the point and controlling the rock, who cares if his minutes get cut? Isn’t that a good thing; easing the sting on RD’s ego and opening up time for the young’uns who are expected to carry this franchise when Davis takes his yo-yo show on the road to some other teased out sucker next season?

Meanwhile, point guard remains the biggest obstacle to this squad reaching 30 wins. Maybe Randy Foye will become The Most Improved Player in the NBA, as more than one national magazine has predicted (albeit some of them fantasy-oriented stat-freak pubs). But right now he and Telfair have lost two-thirds of the preseason games to injury and you have Al Jefferson filling the Garnett role of barking loudly at Jaric in the second half of last night’s tilt. The Strib’s Kent Youngblood asked Jeff about it after the game. “We’re just playing ball,” Big Al replied diplomatically. But stick another small shiv in Jaric’s chances of getting a lot of point guard time when Foye and Telfair are healthy. And let the team’s best passer and largest potential malcontent run the squad every now and then to keep his focus up and his mood chipper.

3. Gomes, the New Glue
Ryan Gomes didn’t have a very pleasant first half, especially a horrid stretch in the second period when Danny Granger got in a rhythm and burned a guy most of us expect to play stolid defense for a bevy of quick baskets. But come the fourth quarter and the chance to log time at power forward beside Jefferson instead of chasing Granger around the perimeter, Gomes put on a nice little understated show, canning 5 of 7 shots, grabbing three rebounds and dishing two assists–all team highs for the period, and all done with an economical anti-flourish that is destined to make Gomes a purist-fan favorite.

Like Theo and Davis, Gomes has an expiring contract, and an appreciative mass of fans who saw his handiwork the previous two seasons back in Boston. That’s the franchise with three stars and a great need for a large swingman with glue-like qualities. So let’s hope this isn’t merely an appetizing rental.

Among the more contrarian aspects of my sports fandom is an aversion to hyperbole in general, and Big Events in particular as a means of describing and defining the games I witness. It’s probably a snobbish impulse, because Business 101 tells us that supersizing anything is the way to bring in the casual consumer, and I fancy my approach to watching sports as anything but casual. Nevertheless, superstars boost ratings, and every sport secretly hopes that their league will be blessed with the next Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan, etc. (This is not limited to sports: Longtime music fans have lost count of the number of people anointed the “next Dylan” or the “new Bob Marley.”)

I say this, of course, in the wake of all the hoopla piled on top of LeBron James’s legitimately spectacular and unarguably memorable performance in Game Five of the Cavs-Pistons series. I’ve read at least three or four accounts that refer to the performance as the real crowning of King James, as the moment LeBron went from everyday superstar to the status of icon or myth or legend–what we used to call a “superstar” before the language was cheapened.

When confronted with this stuff, a little war goes on in my brain. First, I guess I’m envious that I can’t just submit to the frenzy of the moment, devoid of all context, and swim in the melodramatic agony and ecstasy of it all. But the more rational, analytical side is saying to the television (or computer or newspaper), “get a grip.”

Here’s why: A year ago at this time, everyone was raving about how Dirk Nowitzki had taken that next step, had emerged from pure scorer up to inspiring team leader. The hype and hubbub over Dirk’s playoff performance last season (until the last four games against Miami, when everyone then immediately went crazy for Dwyane Wade) is how and why Notwitzki was awarded the MVP this year; which, if anyone watched both Nowitzki and Steve Nash this season, was a travesty even before Nowitzki was exposed against Golden State.

Now, LeBron has always had way more raw talent and potential than Nowitzki, and, in my opinion, has been a better player the past two seasons *even before his world-shaking Game Five.* (Readers with good memories might recall that I picked LeBron as the NBA MVP in 2005-06.) So, obviously, the point here is not to rip or otherwise belittle LeBron, but to chafe at the black-and-white, all or nothing way the major-media machinery operates when covering sports. I practically threw a shoe through my television set listening to Magic and Barkley and the rest criticizing LeBron for passing off to Donyell Marshall for the trey attempt that was a make-or-break bucket in Game One. Who doesn’t think that if Marshall hits that shot the same blowhards aren’t gushing about how the superstar “made something happen” by drawing the defense and shrewdly compelling the win with his pass, perhaps even pointing out how it is an example of LeBron wanting to be more Magic than Michael in the way he involves his teammates on the court? The bullshit came full circle when LeBron eschewed all passes and took it hard to the hole in Game Two, only to get hacked by Rip Hamilton and thus missing the basket for another last-possession loss. Magic and Barkley both put on their bobbleheads and agreed that “you can’t expect to get that call on the road.” Hey, maybe that could have been a reason to dish it to Marshall in Game One.

So now LeBron scores 29 of his team’s final 30 points and those who subscribe to the philosophy that your superstar has to be selfish and win games by himself are vindicated. Yup, it’s nice and neat that way. It’s just that a part of me wants to point out–as the wonderful trio of Marv Albert, Doug Collins and Steve Kerr did during the contest–that if Eric Snow isn’t in the game to strip the ball from Pistons players without fouling down the stretch, LeBron never gets the chance to be a superhero. Putting Snow in for defensive purposes was just one of the many smart moves Cavs coach Mike Brown has made in this series–another was giving LeBron a 3 and a half minute rest to start to the 4th quarter–but Magic and others such as The Sports Guy Bill Simmons had been ripping and second-guessing Brown before then. (Now, of course, it is Flip Saunders being ripped and second-guessed for not guarding LeBron more diligently. Perhaps Saunders was set up by the ball movement LeBron had fostered in the previous games; you know, the thing Barkley and Magic ripped on.) For that matter, if LeBron had missed only two instead of three crunchtime free throws, the game never would have gone into a second overtime.

So what’s my point? That team sports are just that; a team game, full of all sorts of wonderful subtleties and wrinkles that ultimately mean as much or more than the jaw-dropping performances by the superstars. That the glory of LeBron had emerged before his Game Five explosion, when he combined with Hughes and Pavlovic to create the most suffocating perimeter defense in the Eastern Conference; and when his constant encouragement of rookie guard Daniel Gibson gave Gibson the confidence to come in and attempt, let alone make, a series of tough shots that totally swung the momentum of this series over the Cleveland. (Ask Fred Hoiberg why he was more valuable with the Wolves than anywhere else and he’ll tell you it was the confidence invested in him by KG.)

The all-or-nothing crew is now going with the meme that LeBron single-handedly beat the Pistons. And sure, if all you do is read the box score and focus on the superstar, you see that 29 of his team’s last 30 is pretty damned single-handed. But how has the previously unflappable Chauncey Billups gotten so flustered in this series? Why has a seasoned squad of Pistons who nearly all the “experts” claimed was the undisputed class of the East and would wipe out the Cavs in this round, has instead gotten just two nail-biting home wins (that could have easily gone the other way) in the first five games? The fact is that those who called for an easy Detroit series underestimated LeBron’s supporting cast (team defense is so boring and easy to ignore, doncha know). Now that the Cavs are on the verge of upsetting their conventional wisdom, these same “experts” continue to disregard Brown’s coaching savvy and the Cavs’ synergy, and instead proclaim King James–it’s so much easier, and cleaner, without the messy details.

The reason I love LeBron James is because through it all, and against an industrial-strength myth-making machinery that could inflate even the soundest of egos, he understands the context of what is happening here. No one disputes that without LeBron the Pistons win this in 4 or 5. But it isn’t all spectacular talent and a knack for coming up big either. Substitute Kobe for LeBron and the Pistons win this in 4 or 5 too. (Imagine how Kobe would have made Z and Varajo and Pavlovic feel during the season and the post-season; or how he would have reacted to Gibson taking over once in awhile.)

And yes, LeBron *has* matured and taken it to another level in this series, and, just maybe, we’ll look back someday and consider this the great harbinger of the second coming of Jordan. But, eh, maybe not. And that’s my problem with The Sports Guy lately. I single him out, Bill Simmons, because he’s my favorite sportswriter (has been ever since Bob Ryan went simultaneously senile and Neanderthal a few years back and then Ralph Wiley died), and has proven on many occasions that he knows the beautiful intricacies of the game, beyond the hype. But in the past six months or so, Simmons has stooped to conquer. Humor will always be his saving grace–he makes me laugh out loud nearly every column–but he’s increasingly decided to shelve nuance and play into the lumpen “regular shmoe” stereotype. And that means hype. So it’s not enough that LeBron, in Simmons’ words, “made LeLeap” in Game Five; it has to mean that the Cavs “are gonna own the East for the next 10-12 years.”

This is consistent with Simmons proclaiming the team that acquired Allen Iverson to be a world-beater, and that AI would practically destroy every opponent in his path once freed from Philly. The reality, of course, was that he was paired with the wrong fellow-star (Melo) and the wrong coach (George Karl) and faded away this season, even as Iguodala was emerging as his star-replacement for the Sixers. Ditto Simmons’s obsessive fixation on his beloved Celtics getting Greg Durant in the lottery. It wasn’t enough that this was, perhaps, a one-in-five chance: Every team had to be evaluated on whether they were or were not tanking, and what that meant; lottery histories had to be analyzed; college basketball had to be trumpeted while the NBA was besmirched. And for what? So a bunch of ping-pong balls could blow the whole fucking thing out of the water and expose the fixation to be much (much much much) ado about nothing? So, now that his Celts don’t have Durant and LeBron goes off for 48 and puts the Cavs on the brink of the first trip to the Finals, Boston is toast through 2017? Here’s hoping the Sports Guy stops looking for the, ah, Big Picture, and contents himself with the games, one game at a time. Because the beautiful thing about sports is that nothing ever stays the same, or very predictible for very long.

And when it does, when genuine team greatness occurs, the casual fans frown and turn off their sets. That seems to be the case with the San Antonio Spurs, who have won so often that they have lost their cache, or become like rooting for the Yankees or something. Except that’s bullshit. First of all, the Spurs are not your classic “overdog.” Yeah, they totally lucked out winning Tim Duncan in the lottery, but since then have built their team by being ahead of the curve by scouting international talent, which is how they landed Tony Parker (France) and Manu Ginobili (Argentina) with very late draft picks, making a trio with Duncan that, along with demanding coach Gregg Popovich, comprise the heart and soul of the Spurs. And few teams in any sport have produced so much heart and soul over a 5-10 year period.

Second, in almost direct opposition to their second and third championship teams earlier this decade, the Spurs have become a hell of a lot of fun to watch. In this year’s playoffs, only Golden State provided more sheer basketball excitement, and unlike the Warriors, the Spurs weren’t going to keep pulling the trigger on a game of Russian roulette until things ended predictably badly. San Antonio isn’t about lightning in a bottle: Their fireworks are gorgeous precisely because they’re as voluminous and well-choreographed as the skies over the Hudson on the 4th of July. Just because everyone on the team–from Duncan down to 12th man Benny Udrih–has a pretty well-defined role doesn’t mean it isn’t exciting or downright glorious to watch. No NBA has a pair of penetrators as adept as Parker and Ginobili. Few if any teams have a half-dozen players who are legitimate threats to hit the three-pointer. With Ginobili’s former Argentian national team collegue Oberto emerging at age 32 beside Duncan, no team has a more intelligent pair of low-post players. Oh, and I know this is boring and “hard to watch,” but *no* team in basketball plays defense as diligently and seamlessly and selflessly as the Spurs.

But the Spurs are also a flavor that the public thinks it has already tasted, and so they get ignored, even by the commentators. In Game Four of the Jazz-Spurs series, if one had only been listening to the idiotic spew of Mark Jackson and (to a lesser extent) his cohorts Jeff Van Gundy and Mike Breen, one would have thought that Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer were laying waste to San Antonio: In fact, despite all the gushing Jackson was making about the Jazz’s top two players, Utah never led after the midpoint of the first quarter and was beaten at home by a dozen.

To their credit, Sports Illustrated and Simmons have both correctly noted that after more than a decade in the league and with three rings already in his safe deposit box, Tim Duncan is playing the best basketball of his life. But Duncan has to share MVP honors with Ginobili for the Suns series (the true NBA Finals this year) and with Parker for the Jazz series. And Duncan probably doesn’t get those “better than ever” headlines without Oberto making opponents pay dearly for all the low-post double-teams on TD, especially the numerous times he’s cut along the weakside baseline and Duncan has found him for an easy layup.

For all the times Parker and Ginobili have flown through the air, that Duncan has dipsy-doodled a turnaround hook for a banker on the right low block, the Ginobili has drawn the charge or pulled up for a trey or he or Parker have drawn the D and then dished to vets like Barry and Finley and Horry for treys–well, it is just beautiful, beautiful basketball that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the classic Celtic teams from the 60s as well as the 80s (and I saw them all). Simmons is wrong: This hasn’t been a terrible year for the NBA. Not with the Spurs refusing to give an inch to all comers (and the AI-Melo Nugs, Nash-Amare Suns and DWill-Boozer Jazz are a pretty good test). Not with LeBron and the Cavs’ defense quickening. Not with an eight seed toppling a 67-win team in a manner that indicated it wasn’t a fluke. On the brink of the NBA Finals–which the marketers are probably already concocting to be a Godhead versus Dynasty matchup–the game has produced a bounty of marvels. And just between you and me, they’re especially satisfying when put into their proper context, with the subtle, team aspects allowed their place.

1. Warriors in Command
The big news of the first round of the NBA playoffs is obviously Golden State’s 3-1 lead over 67-win Dallas, a series that would have any neutral observer pulling hard for the Warriors even if he/she didn’t know they were enormous underdogs. Golden State epitomizes the coming out of FUN in the NBA this post-season, flipping the bird to the conventional wisdom that you need an airtight freeze-dried stiff upper-lipped dose of disciplined, didactic conservatism in order to win pro hoops in the spring. In fact three of the four most enjoyable teams among the 16 combatants are painting mustaches and spinning whirlagigs on that shibboleth.

No, the new news is that speed, athleticism, transition flow, and ball movement are threatening to be in vogue for the first moment since the Showtime Lakers a pair of decades ago. And joining Steve Nash as the poster child of this stomp-the-throttle fantasia is Baron Davis, who is turning in a folk hero style performance this series. If you like serendipity, your favorite Baron moment tonight was the half-court bank-in to the tie the game at the halftime buzzer. If its plain grit and hustle you hanker for, that jousting with Jason Terry for the steal on the out-of-bounds pass and subsequent transition layup with Terry riding his hip like a bad jockey, all in the last three seconds of the third period, comes out on top. And if seize the moment ingenuity is your thing, Baron’s rebound off his own free throw miss and followup lay-in might be the snapshot.

Of course everybody is going to gush about Golden State–we’ve all got guilty consciences for picking against them, not truly believing until tonight’s gritty victory. That they still might lose is a possibility, of course, but irrelevant to the lasting glory of these first four games. If they keep going, sweet. But it’s that initial rush that really salts away the memories. Golden State fans feel better right now than they will if the Warriors win 55 games and make it to the conference finals next year.

There are a couple of things still worth pointing out about Dallas, however. First, the universally accepted label slapped on the Mavs was that they were stylistically versatile, that they could play Bump and Grind with the Spurs and the Jazz and Beat the Clock with the flyboys. But it wasn’t so. Of the team’s mere 15 losses in regular season play, a third of them were to Golden State, who beat them in all three meetings, and Phoenix, who beat them twice in a row in the final couple months of the season. People mistake the Mavs’ quickness for a team that enjoys transition play. They don’t. Even their fastest players like Devon Harris and Josh Howard have the sort of explosiveness that works best in the half-court for them, and regular rotation guys like Nowitzki, Stackhouse, Dampier, and Terry don’t thrive against teams that love uptempo play. And if you need further convincing, the 45-4 edge the Warriors had in fast break points tonight over the first 46 minutes of the game might be the smoking gun.

Second, this has not been a good series for Avery Johnson, who was the single biggest reason why I decided the Mavs could withstand what was clearly going to be a difficult series for Dallas (but highly entertaining for the rest of us). It began when he went small with the lineup change, a move subsequently discredited by the fine performance of Dasagana Diop in the middle, who has been as much of an obstacle to the Warriors as anyone in a Dallas uniform–the key to tonight’s game was when he picked up his 5th foul with the Mavs up 7 in the fourth period. The other mark against Avery is that his inflammable emotions on the sidelines haven’t inspired his squad and may have contributed to their rattled demeanor. There was no way for anyone to know how the Mavs would react, of course, but if anyone should have had a clue, it was Avery.

Third, as someone who has watched Kevin Garnett be pilloried for playing fundamentally sound, unselfish basketball for lo these many years, I’m a little suspicious on the pile-on Nowitzki is being subjected to right now. TNT announcer Dick Stockton (oh I wish Harlen and Collins could have done this game) was a real asshole about it, justifiably pointing out Nowitzki’s absence of aggressive point scoring, but either deliberately or blindly not noticing all the little things Nowitzki was doing on defense and for ball movement tonight. Granted, Nowitzki has not had a great series by any means, but neither has it been a classic choke–far from it. According to the popcornmachine.net totals, Dallas was +3 tonight in the 47:09 Nowitzki played, and -7 in the 51 seconds he sat.

2. Bullish in the East
Speed kills, exhibit B was Chicago’s sweep over ossified Miami, the pathetic defending champs who mailed in the entire regular season in the belief they could just flip a switch in the playoffs, only to get de-pantsed by the Bulls’ squadron of small, quick, very talented and poised top 5: Deng, Gordon, Wallace, Nocioni and Hinrich, with PJ Brown the token slowfoot.

My advice to any neophyte or otherwise clueless GM: Get some players from Argentina. Like Manu Ginobili, Nocioni seems to kick it up a notch when it matters most–otherwise known as having a killer instinct. Deng, like Baron Davis, is writing his name in neon across these playoffs, sending poor Eddie Jones packing with his combination of strength, size and quickness. Gordon has so much confidence in his shot right now that a priority for opponents should be to frustrate him and get him out of sync, even at the expense of leaving others open a little more. Wallace is the experienced hand, the guy who can battle in the paint and play superb interior D without retarding the high powered pace that is the Bulls metier. And Hinrich, well, he had an off-series, beset by fouls, and if the Bulls are going to beat the Pistons in the second round, he’ll have to raise his game and move his feet better against Chauncey Billups. I wouldn’t bet against it.

3. Hidebound SOB/PhDs in San Antonio
Watching these games for the pure basketball of it all, I found myself rooting for Golden State (even my disdain for Don Nelson abating), Phoenix, Chicago, and….the Spurs. How could this be? AI is one of my all-time couch potato lures, and I dislike Tim Duncan’s “noble carriage but blatant whiner” hypocrisy almost as much as ref Joey Crawford. Worse, if there is a team that can send the NBA back to the stone age in terms of bruise-over-cruise prioritizing, it is Gregg Popovich’s unmerry men.

But damn it if the Spurs don’t have grit and guile and team synergy that isn’t lightning in a bottle but fermented for eight years in oaken casks in the dusky depths of their collective souls. The key plays in Saturday night’s pivotal road win over Denver were Robert Horry’s steal and bucket to trigger a deadly surge at the end of the third quarter, and Michael Finley making them pay for doubling Duncan while keeping close watch on Ginobili and Parker–he buried treys. The key plays that nobody ever thinks about being key plays were all the times the Spurs scrambled back on defense.

I don’t understand why Pops wants to throw Bowen on Iverson every third or fourth possession, especially when Tony Parker is playing decent D for a change and hair-shirt defenders like Bowen are the only guys that usually give Carmelo Anthony fits. But I don’t think it is a very bright idea to criticize Gregg Popovich’s decisions about how to play defense. Still, it’s a head-scratcher that doesn’t seem to be working.

Another reason I swung to the Spurs is Denver feels like a punk-ass outfit. Nene has had a bevy of marvelous moments, but is still prone to putting a little mustard on the rage when he finishes an open dunk with his team down 6 with two minutes to go–and he’s whining more than Duncan. Karl hasn’t worn well since his heyday in Seattle, even, or especially, his fluke year in Milwaukee that bagged him the huge contract. And Melo, well, Melo is the poor man’s Kobe Bryant, and that is not a compliment. Can score in the clutch. Does a lot of things well. Obviously smart, pretty well-spoken, and often fun to watch. But from afar, he doesn’t feel like a great teammate–there’s a distance there that might be arrogance or immaturity or simply a lack of inspirational leadership. In a playoff year when speed and transition are the rule, a squad with Melo and AI should ready for their close-ups. Instead, the Nugs don’t seem ready. Or maybe the Spurs are simply that good.

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.

Game #78, Home Game #39–Dallas 105, Minnesota 88

1. KG “Hurt”–And Gone for Good?

For the first time in a dozen years, there is a distinct possibility that the Minnesota Timberwolves will not take the floor with Kevin Garnett to start the year in the 2007-08 season. Garnett has been put on the shelf with a right quad injury that everyone knows would not prevent him from performing if it were beneficial to the Wolves future to win rather than lose games at this point in the season. He has an opt-out clause in his contract at the end of next season, meaning that for the Wolves to get full value in a trade, they would probably have to move him during this off-season. Then there is the question of whether even KG’s patience has finally run out after three straight pathetic seasons out of the playoffs.

My gut feeling, right now, is that Garnett stays, at least through the mid-point of next season. That assumes the team will keep their draft pick and be choosing among the top 7-8 teams in the lottery this summer. But, hey, I’m only guessing and so is everyone else. The point is, like the rest of us, Garnett is sick of this season, tired of the same old April bullshit, tired of hearing for the past 12 months that all the team needed was a tweak or two, then that all the team needed was some consistency, then that all the team needed was better chemistry–and when all that dense delusion was exposed as being clueless wishful thinking, THEN hearing that McHale and Wittman were probably coming back.

Seriously, what can anyone from the front office tell the fan base with a straight face at this point in the proceedings? It already almost too late for people to do the honorable thing and resign.

2. The Usual Suspects

Dallas had nothing to play for, having already secured the top record in the entire NBA. They sat their MVP candidate, Dirk Nowitzki. They sat their starting center, Erick Dampier. They sat their starting point guard, Devin Harris. They sat their 6th man, Jerry Stackhouse. They had Austin Croshere and Devean George in the starting lineup and gave rookie Maurice Agar the second-most minutes of anyone on the team. They also were outscored in the second and fourth quarters and tied in the first.

Ah, but the third quarter. With 6:36 to go, the score was tied at 63. At the end of the period it was 66-86. And who was on the court for most of that blitzkrieg? Mark Blount, Ricky Davis and Mike James, with Craig Smith and Marko Jaric along for most of the dysfunctional ride. So, what happened Coach Wittman?

“Ball domination. I think we had two guys score. I just thought our offense was terrible, which led to bad defense.”

Yes, indeed, Mike James had 11 of the team’s 15 points for the period, taking 6 shots and earning zero assists. The other four points belonged to Mark Blount on 2-4 FG. Davis had the club’s only two assists of the period but missed all 4 of his shots. Smith likewise was 0-4 and Marko was 0-1–ditto Randy Foye and Rashad McCants, who came in in the last 2-3 minutes and couldn’t stop the bleeding.

It is good to know that the veteran tankers did not let up with the decision to waylay Garnett. And good to see that Wittman didn’t chance fate but subbing in hustle, fundamental guys like Hassell and Madsen. Philly beat Boston tonight, so that draft pick is a wee bit more secure.

3. Consolation Prize

The game’s two high scorers for their respective teams, Croshere with 19 and Justin Reed with 17, got tied up under the boards and nearly came to blows at the other end, each earning a technical. Bracey Wright demonstrated admirable restraint by attempting just one shot in 12 minutes of play–the entire garbage time 4th quarter in a garbage time point of the season. Wright must believe that everyone knows he can shoot, and concentrated on grabbing three boards, doling out a dime and playing decent defense.

Hassell played 11:13 and was +1 in a 17-point loss. Madsen played 10:57 and was even.

Regular Season Game #77, Home Game #38: Toronto 111, Minnesota 100

1. The Kids Are Alright, Part 729

For a variety of reasons I wasn’t able to make it to the Target Center until 4 minutes were left in the third period tonight and the Wolves were up four. Since there was no television coverage, this will be an abbreviated trey. Comments are welcome, and for a change of pace I’ll use point three to address some of the questions from respondants in the previous post.

Shortly after I’d arrived and was straining to catch up with the ongoing flow and nuances, all the things that accrete when you see the whole game (which is why it’s so important to catch it from tap to buzzer), there was a moment that made me feel good about the future. Craig Smith and Rashad McCants were fighting each other for a defensive rebound and contested the ball out of bounds. An exasperated Smith sternly told McCants something to the effect that, “I was telling you I had it!” and was about to launch into a second sentence when McCants just casually put out his hand in apology. Smith just as casually grabbed it for a second, stopped talking and let it–the hand and the subject–go. The very next possession, Davis was on the low left block (the KG spot, except he was on the bench) and Smith cut baseline and got the feed. At the time, Smith was 8-9 FG and having a marvelous game, so the Raptors bum-rushed his baseline penetration from all angles. Smith teased it right until he was under the hoop–and then zipped a pass to a wide open McCants in the corner, who promptly buried the three-pointer.

Neither Smith nor McCants are perfect players. Tonight, and increasingly throughout the season, Smith has become a drama queen when he believes he isn’t getting calls from the officials (as if an undersized rookie who is fond of drawing charges and using his big butt for textbook box-outs is going to have it easy with the refs). For McCants’s part, he was scoreless until 1:24 remained in the 3rd, and then erupted with a series of impressive drives and jumpers (for their strength, agility, and savvy) to rack up 11 points over the next four minutes. But during and shortly after that marvelous spurt, he played some of his worst defense of the year, frequently forgetting to close out his man in the corner (ditto Ricky Davis–Trenton Hassell was the only one who did, although I didn’t see any of Marko’s minutes). I’m hoping that as McCants retrieves his sublime athleticism, he doesn’t forget the superb D that has made him so valuable despite not being 100 percent physically. But seeing the way Smith and McCants handled their little misunderstanding, that was a comfortable sign of mutual maturity.

2. Sam Mitchell Would Make a Nice Timberwolves Coach, eh?

When the final horn had sounded and the Raps had rung up 38 points in the final quarter to beat the Wolves for the sixth straight time under Sam Mitchell (he has never lost to his former team), Wolves owner Glen Taylor scurried over and gave Mitchell a warm handshake and spoke with him for a minute or so.

It would be nice to start a rumor that Taylor wants Mitchell to come run the Timberwolves. After all, Mitchell is a free agent after this season, and had to endure lots of speculation about how he would be gone by Christmas this season, if not before, pushed out by new Toronto GM Colangelo, who would obviously want his own man. People remembered Mitchell’s run-in with Rafer Alston and his hard, abrasive ways with last year’s team. They figured he was on his way out. Now Mitchell will get some consideration for coach of the year, having guided the injury-wracked Raptors to 45 wins and counting, with a favorable matchup with the depleted Wizards a distincts possibility in the playoffs. It is Mitchell’s time to call the tune in Toronto and it might be delicious to take a lucrative deal somewhere else… like in his old stomping grounds of Minnesota, guiding his most renowned protege, Kevin Garnett, who frequently cites Mitchell as an invaluable mentor when the two were teammates.

It almost certainly won’t happen, of course. This franchise seems committed to Randy Wittman, Mitchell knows and likes his current team after a tumultuous first couple of years, and Mitchell and former Raptors GM (and current Wolves assistant GM) Rob Babcock weren’t the best of buddies during their stint together up north. But one can dream…

Anyway, I hadn’t talked to Mitchell since he came to town in his rookie year as coach two seasons ago, and then only briefly, so I figured I’d skip the Wolves post-game and shake his hand and offer my congrats on his stellar season. I do my best not to feign friendships with millionaire athletes because I loathe jock-sniffers and also worry about it compromising my coverage. But I’d covered Sam Mitchell’s long tenure with the Wolves for all but the first year he was in town, and, like everybody else, had a pleasantly contentious back-and-forth with the guy over the way I’d ask questions or apprach the game. And he had a habit of confirming suspicions or theories I had about the internal workings of an often dysfunctional franchise without actually coming out and saying so–he was a smart and good source. Besides, there was another sportswriter who wound up being very good friends with Mitchell, to the point where Mitchell was the best man at his wedding. And on two occasions, including a Roy Hargove gig at the Dakota, we all went out and socialized.

Anyway, Sam came out and gave a gracious postgame media chat, praising his team for sucking it up in the fourth quarter of a back to back, and indicting the Wolves perimeter D by lavishly lauding his own players, TJ Ford and Jose Calderon: “TJ and Jose: 29 points, 17 assists and 3 turnovers from the point guard spot. What can I say?”

Then the Q&A was over and Sam offered hearty greetings to Tom Hanneman and sports columnist Larry Fitzgerald, and Terrell, the former PR liaison for the Wolves who had stopped by, and former Raptors assistant coach cum Fox Sports commentator Mike McCollow. A couple of times his eyes flitted my way, almost enough for me to extend my hand and congratulate him, ask him how the kids were doing, the usual. But it soon became obvious to me that Sam couldn’t place me; that he might be having this nagging feeling he knew who I was, but had forgotten at least my name if not the entire context by which he might know me, and just thought it better to ignore me. And I was trying to figure out how to still congratulate him without embarrassing the hell out of the both of us. I got my chance shortly after Mike James (who played for Mitchell last year) and his wife came by and had warm, playful words. I just stuck out my hand, said, “Britt Robson, Sam, and I just want to congratulate you on your season,” and split.

Every now and then it is good to get your ego deflated a little bit, so you’ll remember who exactly you are, as compared to the famous athletes and coaches you rip or praise, and glean a smidgen of notoriety by association from along the way. I’m serious. It helps you concentrate on the things that matter, the passion and quality of what you have to say. So, it was awkward, but I don’t have to be buds with, or even recognizable to, Sam Mitchell to admire what he did as a player and what he has done as a coach. Congratulations, Sam. Wish you were here.

3. Comments and Queries

Shawn in Rochester asks if I think KG and/or Wittman agree with me that “KG + the kids” is the team’s best lineup. I think Garnett does. I suspect Wittman does. I know that Dwane Casey used to go crazy behind the scenes about Ricky Davis and yet still play him copious minutes. Davis has been even more inconsistent under Witt than he was under Casey. For instance, tonight he was fabulous, not only leading the team in scoring and assists, but warning KG that he had to go cover the baseline shooter in rotation–and sure enough, a Raptor squeezed off a trey a split second before KG arrived there after heeding Davis’s words and flying over. The part I don’t know is whether anyone within the franchise can see the forest for the trees after 77 games.

Right on cue, Nate asks why the organization show more “tough love” on Davis. You’re preaching to the choir with that question, Nate, and it baffles me too. But maybe the answer is that RD is what he is, and you have to accept it. After all, he’s been dealt three times already. I know there is a large segment of fandom in Boston who really like Ricky’s game, and I daresay a similar, though perhaps smaller, throng of folks feel that way here. Maybe Davis isn’t teasing with his inconsistency–he’s just one of those guys who explode in a good way every now and then, and if you think there can be anything more, you’re deluding yourself.

Born To Be Hated….(a name obviously connoting a McCants lover, since it is Shaddy’s tattoo saying) wants to know what kind of off-season moves this squad will make, and helpfully chimes in with the notion of getting rid of Mark Blount and getting something for Trenton Hassell. Quick answer is, I don’t have a clue what the franchise can do. First off, find out whether or not you have a draft pick. Second, find out, right after the final game, whether KG is still committed to the franchise, and, if not, how uncommitted he is–in other words, is making moves to placate him a doomed strategy? The draft pick and KG are two variables that determine every other move.

Bottom line, Blount is untradeable but this squad cannot go another season without securing a reasonably good banger, whether or not KG stays. Hassell could fetch a decent player in return, and probably should go, unless Jaric is more highly valued. Finally, a decision has to be made on whether Randy Foye is this franchise’s point guard of the future or not. If so, maintain a crash course and stop supplementing him with shoot-oriented points like James and Huddy; get a quality mentor either on your roster or your coaching staff. If the conclusion is that Foye can’t be enough of a quality point guard to hold down that position, then either he or McCants need to be dealt and a point needs to be acquired. Time is a-wastin’ and KG isn’t getting any younger.

Patrick thinks we’re playing the vets to showcase them. I think scouts are smarter than that. I firmly believe that Davis, James and Blount are all worth much less right now than they were on opening day. And I don’t think all the minutes in the world will appreciably boost their stock, and may very well hurt it.

Regular Season Game #75, Road Game #39, Minnesota 99, New York 94
Regular Season Game #76, Home Game #37, New Orleans 96, Minnesota 94

1. Hitting The Semi-sweet Spot

Timberwolves fans and management couldn’t have choreographed a better game than Saturday night’s entertaining loss to the Hornets. At this point in an already collapsed, disheartening season, where if the club falls out of the top ten picks in the draft it forfeits it to the Clippers via the terms of the Jaric trade, the unspoken goals in the remaining games are not to degrade yourself and the game by tanking, not to ruin your short-term chance at a quality collegian by winning, and to feel good about the way you are building for the future. That’s a convoluted, occasionally contradictory trifecta, especially for this team, whose better pieces to place around the superstar are kids. Improving the Foye-McCants-Smith axis with copious minutes, especially alongside KG, might also bag some inconvenient wins, and lose an another important building block that could otherwise entice Garnett not to opt out.

This situation puts Wolves partisans in the awkward position of rooting for a bevy of good and great individual plays that reveal promise, improvement, and hope for the future, all the while inwardly urging that they don’t add up to a victory. And Saturday, the game unfolded exactly along those terms.

The Wolves bomb home 14 treys in 23 attempts, deliver 27 assists on 35 baskets, put six players in double figures, with McCants and Foye 1-2 as scoring leaders, and wow the crowd with a fabulous second quarter in which the team goes 15-18 FG…and they still lose in the end. But not without a spirited attempt to snatch a victory. McCants and KG hit treys in the final 10 seconds, and Craig Smith’s prayer from 3/4 court clangs off the iron as the buzzer sounds. Perfect.

And necessary, because the previous night the Wolves beat the Knicks, pulling ahead of them record-wise, and thus behind them in the draft pick sweepstakes. With the Knicks losing to Milwaukee in the second half and the Wolves up by six at the half, things looked grim for those who count ping pong balls as they go to sleep and dream about Oden, Durant and the rest in white, green, and blue. When it was over, the Knicks had triumphed in overtime to the more obviously tanking Bucks, and the Wolves had eased back into a tie with NY by dint of their very elegant second half fade.

And how was that accomplished? Coach Randy Wittman did what many commentators-cum-tank-enablers in this space had urged him to do, and were perplexed that he wasn’t doing earlier: Playing Garnett fewer minutes. KG sat down with the squad down a point with 1:22 to play in the third. Even when Mark Madsen picked up his 4th and 5th fouls in the first 5 minutes of the 4th, KG stayed put–this after getting only 15:16 of burn in the first half. There were other subplots: Fox Sports had the bad timing to put an iso-camera on KG for the entire game, and his multi-year streak of consecutive games scoring in double figures was in jeopardy. When he finally checked in with but 5:42 to play, the Wolves were down 6, 80-86. It was barely enough.

2. Mike James, Human Sieve

No one can accuse Minnesota’s starting point guard of sabotaging the squad’s chance at bagging that draft pick. Mike James had a wonderfully energetic first quarter Saturday night, blowing up for 13 of the team’s 21 points via 5-9 FG (3-5 from trey land), and twirling up three dimes besides. In other words, James had a hand in all but two of Minnesota’s points in the game’s opening 12 minutes. This came on the heels of a 7-point first quarter versus the Knicks on Friday, when James helped propel the squad to a 14 point lead before sitting with a minute and a half to go in the first.

Yes, let’s keep starting Mike James. And then sit him down for the other three quarters. The guy’s defense is Troy Hudson terrible, and that, folks, is very bad. James doesn’t usually play in the second quarter, nor the fourth, properly ceding it to Randy Foye. But that third quarter….Friday night against the Knicks, Nate Robinson came out and just torched James for 15 points on 5-5 FG in 8:57 of play, the main reason why a 18-point halftime lead shrunk to 6 before Wittman mercifully subbed in Foye. For the remaining 15:03, Robinson scored 6 on 2-6 shooting.

Coincidence? On Saturday, Chris Paul was 5-5 FG in the 23:12 James played him, and 1-7 the rest of the time with Foye the primary opponent on D. In the past two third quarters, point guards have scored 25 points and shot 9-9 FGs in the 20:09 James was supposed to be guarding them, and the Wolves were -19 during that stretch. One way to look at it is that James’s nonexistent defense is costing his team a point for every third quarter minute he plays. It wasn’t too hard to figure out the main source of KG’s ire when he said after the Knicks game, “I don’t know how many first-teamers want to play defense out there, but I know I’m one of them.”

3. Silver Linings

A couple months back I openly wondered if Foye and McCants could juggle their egos well enough to coexist synergistically in the same backcourt. The answer in the past two weeks has been a resounding yes. Latest evidence: Saturday’s 36-point second quarter blitz that saw Shaddy and Foye each go off for a dozen on 9-11 FG (4-5 from 3), a combined 6 assists and 2 turnovers.

Nice to see Trenton Hassell at least somewhat escape the doghouse over the weekend with a pair of strong efforts. Hassell was the third leg in the triangle with Foye and McCants in the third period on Saturday, getting 10 points on 5-6 FG. He and McCants were tied with a team-high +16 for those two games. I wonder if Randy Wittman defenders will spin Hassell’s resurgence as a response to the coach’s discipline, specifically his sitting him for all of the Orlando game, 3/4 of the Miami game, and putting McCants ahead of him in the second-line rotation when the starters rest. If so, may I suggest Witt try it with Ricky Davis, who after blowing up for 36 points in a stirring victory in Orlando has gone -35 over the last three games, a span in which the Wolves as a whole are -10. That’s -35 in the 85:02 Davis played the past three, versus +25 the 58:58 Davis sat. But by all means, bench Trenton Hassell.

Finally, kudos to Garnett for stepping up big time and guarding centers when Wittman wisely goes to the younger, smaller roster at crunch time. His defense on Eddy Curry cinched the game and led to a bevy of Curry fouls and turnovers. His play on Marc Jackson and just his low-post shot-blocking presence in general on Saturday compensated for his scattershot offense.

Regular Season Game #74, Home Game #36, Cleveland 101, Minnesota 88

1. An Unlikeable Basketball Team

Unlikeable is putting it mildly. If you still care about this edition of the Minnesota Timberwolves, they are infuriating and aggravating in the extreme. Looked at objectively, it is plain that they lack the integrity to even properly go through the motions in the final weeks of a miserable season. And everyone among the “braintrust” is either stupid or lying.

Strong words, maybe, so let’s back them up. Kevin McHale fires Dwane Casey for a 20-20 record and a bottom-rung playoff position because the team is “inconsistent.” Randy Wittman flounders to a 11-23 record and every indication is given that he will be rehired next year.

Tonight, Wittman bemoans the fact that the team gets off to slow starts, especially at home, at beginning of both halves, the first and third quarters. He actually says, “I don’t know why that is.” Well, let me give you a hint, coach: You’ve playing three veterans who don’t respect you, the team, the game, or themselves, at the expense of three kids who you claim are your blueprint for the future. The vets are chronic losers who are playing you and anyone who cares about this franchise for a fool, and you are going along because your personnel guy bartered away a draft pick that you desperately need and the only way to ensure you keep it is by playing this smug, pathetic trio.

Again, let’s back up these strong words. The Timberwolves were outscored 23-14 during the first 8:28 of the game. Only then did Wittman yank Mike James and Mark Blount in favor of Mark Madsen and Randy Foye. After another 2:11, the team had been outscored 4-2 to trail 27-16 when Wittman pulled the third contemptuous sleepwalker, Ricky Davis, and inserted Rashad McCants. With all three on the bench for the next 6:59, the Wolves outscored LeBron James and the Cavs 18-15, to cut the deficit to 10. With Davis playing the final 6:12 of the half but the other two sitting, they lopped another two points off and trailed by 8, 55-47, at the break.

Rookie Randy Foye is leading the team in scoring and assists, and rookie Craig Smith is third in scoring and second in rebounds, but Mike James and Mark Blount once again take the floor to start the third quarter. This time Wittman is a whole two seconds faster in giving James and Blount the simultaneous hook after 8:26 and deficit bumped from 8 to 14. When McCants comes in for Davis 1:26 later, the margin is 18 points.

At the third quarter buzzer, Minnesota is down 20, 80-60. James, Blount, and Davis are a combined 4-20 FG. They collectively have grabbed 2, count ’em, 2 rebounds in a combined 60 minutes and 31 seconds of play. They have doled out 4 assists and committed 5 turnovers. Individually, Bount has 4 points, 1 rebound and 1 assist and is a -15 in 16:54 of play. James has zero points, 1 rebound, 1 assists, and 2 turnovers and is likewise -15 in 16:54 of play. Davis has 7 points, on 2-10 FG, zero rebounds, 2 assists and 3 turnovers and is -21 in 26:43 of play. And none of them played defense worth a damn.

Meanwhile, Wittman does not play a group I only half-jokingly refer to as the Fab Five, a lineup that statistics reveal to be their best unit: Garnett-Jaric-Foye-McCants-Smith. It includes a superstar who is trying to figure out whether or not he wants to exercise his opt out close at the end of next year, a hungry ‘tweener signed through 2011, and the team’s top three drafts picks from the past two years. Now, truth be told, this unit did not play well together in very limited time during Sunday’s win in Orlando. But that isn’t why Wittman has watched his sorry excuse for a team half-ass its way to a 84-60 deficit with 10:58 left to go in the game–premature garbage time–and *then* decide to play the quintet. No, he’s either purposefully tanking with vets or he’s afraid of standing up to them by appropriately penalizing their lack of effort and absence of pride.

By the way, the Fab Five immediately went on a 15-4 tear over the next 3: 38 to cut the margin to 13 with 7:20 to play. Cavs coach Mike Brown was nervous enough to reinsert starters Larry Hughes and Z Ilgauskas into the game (and no, he wasn’t totally played scrubs during this stretch–LeBron was in the entire time).

2. More Verbatim Posturing

After the game, Wittman said, “They just kicked our rear ends on the boards. There is no other way to put it.” But does anyone expect him to start Madsen, or, god forbid, Smith, instead of the 7-foot Blount next game?

“Kevin can’t get every rebound. Our guards have to get involved too; instead they stand and watch,” Wittman continued. But does anyone expect him to start Foye, who outrebounded James, or McCants, who outrebounded Davis in five fewer minutes?

“We had no alertness. That’s what it boiled down to. We didn’t have that sense of urgency we had in Orlando. It is like we were two different teams,” Wittman said. Well, Ricky Davis was the best player on the court in Orlando, going off for 36 points. Is Wittman perplexed or surprised that Davis followed that up with this turd of a game? Does he not know at this late juncture that turning the ballclubs he plays for into “two different teams” is a Ricky Davis specialty?

When I asked him what he was trying to accomplish and what the meaning of these final games of the season would be, Wittman replied, “I’m trying to lay the foundation of how we’re going to play next year…and it’s not one guy dribbling the ball 11 times, 13 times…We’ve laying the groundwork of how we have to play and they are showing me who wants to play that way and who doesn’t; who can be counted on in tough times when we do get into the playoffs, and who can’t.”

So if the Boston Bobbsey Twins of Davis and Blount, along with 13-dribbler Mike James are still with the team next year–let alone making any kind of contribution to it–we’ll know this is just more meaningless posturing from the hapless head coach. Meanwhile, the franchise will continue to give you back the stub on your full-priced ticket for the five belly-flops remaining on the Wolves’ home schedule.

3. And Two More Bronx Cheers

Although he certainly looked good by comparison and put forth a mostly admirable effort, Kevin Garnett was also frequently abused on backdoor cuts, baseline maneuvers, and muscular tip-ins from Drew Gooden and company as the Cavs outscored Minnesota 40-28 in the paint.

Last and probably least, Wittman has decided that of all the players on the roster, Trenton Hassell is the most deserving scapegoat for the team’s month-long doldrums. Yes, Hassell has had a pretty lousy stretch of play recently. But why he has played a grand total of 6:50 over the past 11 quarters while the BoTwins and 13 bounces continue to get regular burn probably says more about Wittman and the braintrust than it does about Hassell.