The Rake Magazine

Tag: Walker

  • Rock the Garden

    A small army of bicycles standing
    guard outside the Walker Art Center glints like miniature sunbursts
    while lines stretch like anxious snakes down the sidewalk. The sold
    out crowd of 7,500 brave hour long entry waits, sunburns, and sweat for
    Rock The Garden and a chance to see indie pop’s brightest talents.

    As Bon Iver opens the afternoon
    with his mellow orchestrations and hushed melodies, onlookers pack the
    closed street allowing only inches of legroom. On the hill overlooking
    the stage, a man relives childhood revelry by rolling down the grass
    carpet in shoeless, summer bliss. Squinting eyes are shielded by Wayfarer
    sunglasses. A speckle of straw hats and a gaggle of patchwork quilts
    break up the patches of sunbathers. A small gathering on the Walker’s
    roof looks out with a bird’s eye view. And as Bon Iver’s band ring
    out the last echoing trumpets, bony arms raise to clap, creating their
    own grateful windstorms, then return to wiping brows.

    Minnesota’s own Cloud Cult
    takes the stage next. Singer Craig Minowa greets the throng with a cheerful
    "Hi ya!" before launching into the band’s emotional and raw set.
    As a group focused on ecoconsciousness, Cloud Cult no doubt appreciates
    the festivals "zero waste" policy. Crushed beer cups and litter
    are noticeably missing, as is moshing and the general raucousness accustomed
    to outdoor concerts. A beach ball quietly bounces on top of the crowd,
    as they stand intently watching Minowa hop around the stage, pounding
    his feet and acting in stark contrast to his lyrics steeped in struggle
    and loss. His vocals are fragile. If you could reach out and touch them,
    they would turn to dust and dreams. Embellishing the band’s already
    lush sound, is violist Shannon Frid. She raises her bow in the air,
    like a lightning rod or a rain stick. The audience applauds at the end
    of Cloud Cult’s cover of Neil Young’s "Hey Hey, My My," equally
    for the band and for a brief moment of shade provided by a passing cloud.

    Then comes The New Pornographers.
    There’s something about their rich harmonies that make it feel like
    summer. Maybe it’s memories of the Beach Boys with their sandy, tight
    harmonies and stories of ocean waves that feel like they could drench
    even the center of this city. This is The New Pornographers’ feel:
    bouncy, upbeat guitar pop. Most of their tunes include heavy doses of
    harmonious la-la-las, ba-da-das, no-no-nos and a sprinkling of enthusiastic
    aaaaahhhhhs. This is OK. Save those wallowing songs of heartbreak or
    spoutings about social causes for the dreary winter-or at least the
    riots outside the Republican National Convention later this year. Summer
    is the season of joyous pop music, and The New Pornographers deliver
    with their trademark boppy, poppy controlled spazz.

    As the sun sets on Rock The
    Garden, the Walker’s silver sheen looks like a melted orange popsicle.
    Smoke from food stands rise in wisps, joining threatening gray clouds.
    When Andrew Bird steps onstage to close the event, cool breezes storm
    through the audience, smacking like full kisses on the lips. Bird’s
    music, laden with whistling and tender-sounding violins, sounds like
    an intricately wound toy. Camera flashes match bolts of far away lightning
    in their intensity. In turn, a light rain grows fiercer as die-hard
    Bird fans brave the weather to see the evening’s star. A group at
    the bottom of the hill cowers under a red blanket in an attempt to keep
    dry. As the wind whips the blanket, it looks like a super hero’s cape,
    readying them to take flight.

    See the Rock the Garden Flickr Pool.

  • Cherry on a Spoon

    What she didn’t understand, Miriam thought, what she really didn’t understand was this stupid cherry on a spoon. The huge sculpture sat there in its lake, its bright red cherry poised happily on the grey spoon-bowl’s ridge, a symbol of Minneapolis. What about it excited people? What, exactly, was the point? She sat on the grass by the pond, head tilted upward, mulling it.

    Miriam was a museum studies major, although she had started college doing studio art. During that long first year, she spent more time in the art supply store than actually making art. She loved to touch the taught canvases and read the names of all the colors of paints. Ochre seemed to promise sex, cerulean undiscovered planets-every object was expectant, waiting. But when she set up an easel in her room or in class, the brush made primitive, directionless marks, unresponsive to her oblique desire to paint something. In the hours just before an assignment was due, she would chew on the dead ends of her long brown hair or the handles of her wooden brushes. Finally, she understood why someone might throw a bucket of paint over herself and then run hard into a wall one hundred times.

    But self-abuse wasn’t art.

    When she expressed that opinion in her art history seminar-having by then cut her hair into a blunt bob and changed her major-the professor shook his head. “What, then, is art, Miriam?” Allowing a short pause, he then pressed the forward button on the rickety slide machine with greater than usual verve, as if having made his point.

    If self abuse was art, Miriam had thought, freshman year of college had been a post-modernist masterpiece of cheap keg beer and dubious sexuality, encapsulated in the nickname that still made some of her old friends laugh. Before learning about “Black-out Sniper,” Miriam had never thought about her liaisons buffered by alcohol and darkness as being anything but normal-at least normal within the realm of freshman year. At parties everyone was drunk and looking, scanning dimly lit, crowded rooms with hopeful and later glazed eyes for another pair of eyes with the same idea. Every tasteless poster on her guy friends’ walls validated that practice. Beer Goggles, one read, getting ugly people laid for fifty years! She was under no illusions about her appearance, and was in fact more critical of herself than anyone else.

    She reminded herself of a painting by Goya; her face pale, eyes big, chin receding just a little, like those inbreed Spanish aristocrats. Arrested by her face, people were often surprised by the solid, almost voluptuous frame that contrasted sharply with the fragile tint of purple under her eyes.

    The cartoon man on the poster gave her the thumbs up and smiled, holding his frothing pint out in a gesture of toast. Go for it, he seemed to say. So how could she be doing the wrong thing when, drunk at a party, if she met someone she liked, she stuck with him until the party was dying down, and, if he was willing, took him back to her dorm room? It was true, the guys she picked up usually turned out to be way more intoxicated than her, having proven their manliness by doing beer bongs and 40’s, and they rarely remembered her the next day. But that suited Miriam just fine-they had both gotten what they wanted, after all, and it wasn’t like anyone was watching.

    Or that was what she had thought. As she was leaving a party one Saturday night, a drunk friend grabbed her elbow and whispered, “‘Black-out Sniper.’ Get it?” For a moment, she didn’t get it. She looked around her, trying to figure out what her friend was talking about. The she turned to look at the boy she was with-his drunkenness was suddenly far more apparent. Miriam felt nauseous as the heat of embarrassment mixed with the alcohol in her stomach. She left the boy standing by the door and fled to her empty dorm room, her eyes burning and itchy from tears she wasn’t yet shedding. In the silence of that night, as the alcohol wore off, Miriam’s emotions moved from shock and embarrassment to shame to anger and indignation, then back to shame that felt like anger until the emotions couldn’t be distinguished. That she should have to feel this shame was more than a betrayal of privacy. It was a betrayal of the mantra, the promise, that had helped her, helped them all, get through high school. The promise that when they got to college, the holding back, the fear of discovery, the claustrophobic family dinner table at which nothing could really be hidden, would be gone. No one would be watching them anymore.

    But people were still watching.

    Exhausted and still awake as the sun came into her dorm room window, Miriam decided that she was done. Done with college boys who couldn’t handle a woman taking what she wanted without becoming a needy mess afterwards; done with girls who called you a whore if you tried. After that party, Miriam stopped hooking up with guys and stopped drinking anything except for good wine. After all, she reasoned, she couldn’t be in the art community without learning to like good wine and despise the swill served at openings.

    Miriam had left freshman year and the Black-out Sniper behind her, but she was still of the opinion that if you waited for a man to make the move, you would end up watching hundreds of fucking piano concerts and contracting cancer from second hand smoke in shady music venues. That was why she had sat down on Jason’s piano bench, and why she had held his hand in the light rail, and why she had finally suggested that they move from the couch to the bed.

    Jason. He was probably still sitting in the coffee shop with a stupid look on his face, his forgetful fingers clutching his coffee mug.

    Her eyes filled with angry tears and she was back in the sculpture garden.

  • Mao and Asher, Now Appearing at 20.21

    Faces are changing fast at the Walker Art Center‘s 20.21.

    Chef Scott Irestone tendered his resignation abruptly last week. Executive sous chef Asher Miller — now acting head chef — said he was on vacation and returned to find that his boss of three years had left the Wolfgang Puck family, where he’d been working since 1996 (in Las Vegas, for Spago, Chinois, and Postrio, before coming to Minneapolis to open 20.21 in 2005).

    "There was no indication anything was wrong before I left," Miller says. "All I know is, the parting of ways was very much Scott’s decision."

    Miller, a veteran of Fermentations in Dundas, MN, and Cafe Barbette, also has been with the Walker restaurant since it opened. And he’s refreshingly forthright about his desire to take Irestone’s place.

    "I want the job," says the slim, shaved-headed 27-year-old. "And I’m doing the job now. So it makes sense."

    No word yet from Puck HQ, however, on whether or not they’re even considering Miller or plan to bring in another seasoned Wolfgang-inspired line man from Vegas or L.A.

    No matter what happens, Miller promises the menu at 20.21 will remain consistent. There is, apparently, no room at all for a local man to experiment (which gives one a clue as to what might have ired Irestone, does it not?). The careful fusion of Asian and American tastes — quail in pineapple-black pepper sauce, fried calamari salad, Shanghai Maine lobster — is set in stone.

    "Everything in the restaurant is per Lee Hefter [Puck’s first lieutenant out of Spago – Beverly Hills] and you just don’t mess with Chef Lee," Miller explains. "Our menu is and always has been Lee’s. But the cool thing about that is while everything stays the same, your job is to make it a little more perfect every time."

    One thing at 20.21 has changed, however. The frothy and ebullient hot-pink Andy Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe — a fixture in the lounge since the restaurant’s inaugural dinner — has been switched out with the dour, green-hued likeness of Mao Tse-tung.

    Hey, Chef Lee. . . what’s the deal with that?

  • The Three Pointer: A Big Easy

    Road Game #5: Minnesota 103, New Orleans 94

    Season record: 2-10

    1. Revolt of the Back-Up Point Guards

    While would-be Wolves cornerstones Al Jefferson, Rashad McCants and Ryan Gomes had performances ranging from disappointing to dreadful, the squad bagged its first road win primarily on the strength of the inexplicably calm, capable, and confident duo of Marko Jaric and Sebastian Telfair. For the third straight game, Jaric went to the hole with authority (a moderate surprise), supplemented it with an accurate outside J (a large surprise) and consistently well-considered decision-making (huge surprise). It was his best performance in a Timberwolves uniform.

    Telfair likewise delivered a performance out of the ether, playing better defense on Chris Paul than Paul’s numbers (31 points, 11 assists) might suggest; exercising excellent shot selection (the biggest surprise of all), putting pace into the game without losing the handle, and sinking his free throws in crunch time to ensure that the wire-to-wire Wolves lead never got too precarious. For the night, Jaric shot 8-12 FG and Telfair was 6-9 FG. Jaric had 6 assists, 3 turnovers and 2 steals; Telfair dropped 8 dimes versus 2 miscues and added a steal. In 38:41, Jaric was plus +9 in a 9-point win; in 36:40, Telfair was plus +13.

    The key stat there is the respective minutes: Jaric and Telfair spent a lot of time together on the court, ranking first and second on the team in court time. Because they are players of complementary strengths, there was logical potential for synergy, but I also think there is something to be said for a couple of back-up point guards thriving by sharing the point guard responsibilities. That Marko didn’t have to guard Paul all night did wonders for his confidence and gave him just enough durability to contribute some (but not nearly as much as the first three quarters) down the stretch. That Jaric is a capable ballhandler who was both burying his J and getting productivity in the paint relieved Bassy of the responsibility of always making something happen and let him settle into more of a natural, "take what they give me" rhythm. For him too, it was his best performance in a Timberwolves (and probably NBA) uniform.

    Unfortunately, it should also be noted that Jaric and Telfair both benefitted from not having to play next to McCants much of the time. The ball movement and general flow of the offense was palpably enhanced when McCants was on the sidelines, unable to hoist shots out of rhythm, commit foolish fouls that retarded the sprightly pace, and look to beat his man either off the dribble or with a sudden jumper, both unsuccessful. Shaddy was 3-9 FG with one assist, two turnovers and 4 fouls in 21:38, during which time the Wolves were minus -2.

    But the biggest goat of the game for the Wolves was Gomes, whose sour play has gone from temporary mystery to odd dilemma to legitimate concern. He started well with a solid couple of games, resurrected himself a bit in the Cleveland loss and has returned to the tank. He remains a shrewd player in many facets of the game. He knows how to move without the ball and get open, for example, but there isn’t a player on this team who has missed more wide open looks thus far this season. After shooting 48.7% and 46.7% his first two years, he is currently at 38.9%. It’s not because he’s shooting more treys either–his long range percentage is over 40 and comprising an increasing slice of his total shots–not a good sign for someone 6-8, 250. But the real bugaboo tonight was turnovers: He had 5, versus one assist, in just 17:37, which is why he registered a whopping minus -11, meaning the squad was plus +20 in the 30 minutes he sat.

    The third of the misplaced cornerstones tonight was Big Al, who was much more productive and conducive to the positive outcome than either Gomes or McCants, but hardly the bedrock commensurate with his talent and contract. Against Atlanta the other night, Jefferson began the night with 18 points on 6-6 FG in the first half and then went 2-7 FG in the second half. Tonight it was 4-6 FG in the first half, with a resounding slam dunk and a nice dish to McCants right out of the gate, and then another 2-7 FG in the second half, beginning with a missed bunny in the paint, a blown crunchtime slam after a gorgeous bounce pass feed from Jaric on a pick and roll (he claimed he was fouled), and a crunchtime bailout on another bunny right in front of the hoop where Tyson Chandler was whistled for the foul (and may indeed have brushed the elbow on the followthrough), but Jeff was hardly going strong to the hoop on the play. The point is, Jefferson was supposed to be the beast in the paint that rendered 4th quarter scoring reliable and we’re seeing less evidence that he can overcome defenses designed to take that away. By the way, he missed those two free throws after the Chandler foul, at a time when the Hornets were mounting a serious comeback, and was a minus -6 on the evening in 32:13 of play. That means the Wolves were plus +15 in the 15:47 he sat.

    I love Al Jefferson’s game. Just not quite as much as I did a week or so ago.

    2. Davis for Walker: A Minnesota Steal

    When the trade with Miami came down just before the season started, it was easy to look at it in terms of Antoine Walker and Mark Blount, in that in order for us to accept ‘Toine’s bloated contract, the Heat had to cart away Blount’s absurd deal, and his carcass besides. But as the season has progressed, it has become plain that the swap in reality has ‘Toine providing more than a few of the things RD used to bring, but with just a fraction of the corrosive bullshit and yo-yo inconsistency.

    When Walker, Jaric and Telfair were on the court at the same time tonight, the Wolves produced by far their prettiest offense of the season thus far. The ball zipped around and yet all three players performed with the confident knowledge that they could take their man off the dribble if things bogged down. But even more than Jaric or Telfair, Walker has the experience and the wisdom to enable his teammates. You can tell he’s enmeshed in a fairly constant internal war over whether to try and take the game over himself (an impulse he resists more effectively than McCants but still succumbs to a fair bit) or not, but I love that he often resolves it by massaging his ego with the notion that he’s the daddy mentor out there, showing the young’uns how to share the ball, spice up the pace, and, above all, compete. The trimphant bellow and fist wave he gave when he drove baseline on the behemoth Chandler, missed the layup short but immediately went back up for a successful tip-in, spoke volumes. ‘Toine knew, and Jim Petersen correctly identified, that it was the pivotal play of crunchtime, enlarging the lead to 9 with just a few minutes to go rather than watching it shrink to two possessions with another unanswered Hornet basket. After the Saturday night choke, that would have been a hairy prospect.

    And you could see it again, in the half-second the camera caught his disgusted grimace when Jefferson missed the two free throws–Antoine Walker is busting his ass. The guy who played a key role on an NBA championship team just 18 months ago and was feted in glitzy South Beach for his efforts. The guy who then got traded as nothing more than a contract equalizer to a woefully inexperienced club picked to finish last in its conference while playing up in the freezing tundra. He’s been something of an all purpose glue guy (with occasional dashes of mustard, relish and catnip, of course). If you can’t appreciate the context and the content of his contribution, you’re either way too cynical or not paying attention. Tonight he had 17 points, 5 rebounds, an assist, two steals and zero turnovers in 30:28, finishing with a plus +11.

    3. More Kudos

    Speaking of fabulous glue guys, how about Greg Buckner thriving under the radar tonight? In 29:25, he garnered a team-high 9 rebounds, doled out 6 assists, and w
    as a game-high plus +18. It brought back memories of Buck’s very strong opening week for this team. What I most remember is him laying a body on Melo Anthony and working him over like his elbows and knees were rubber hoses. Tonight, Peja Stojakovic got similar treatment. Put simply, the other aspects of Buckner’s game seem to elevate a notch when his defensive assignment calls for a good physical scrap. That’s not a bad attribute to have on your bench.

    Tonight was also a reprise of the vintage Craig Smith, the guy who mud wrestled in the paint for offensive rebounds and improbably fluttery putbacks, committed smart fouls and played pick and rolls like Rhino Astaire. (You get the sense that the Wolves had solid bench play?)

    Finally, after numerous telecasts compelling him to paint lipstick (and the rare irreverent mustache) on porcine performances, Wolves’ color commentator Jim Petersen was given a relative embarrassment of riches to detail and not surprisingly nailed nearly every one. Only Buckner’s stealth performance improperly escaped adornment by Jim Pete’s satchel of gold stars. He was lightning quick pointing out the synergy of Jaric and Telfair together, correctly identified the unsung value of Madsen’s defense and communications skills, and, perhaps his best insight, lauded the Wolves’ vastly improved pick and roll defense. Getting a rare quality performance from this diaper squad ballclub is by itself a pleasant surprise. Receiving astute analysis as it happens is gravy that further enriches the experience.

  • The Three Pointer: Blown Opportunity

    Road Game #4: Minnesota 93, Denver 99

    Season Record 1-9

    1. Time To Get Angry

    Okay, that’s about enough patience, enough leeway for a basketball team that is playing with stupidity as well as incompetence, and showing very little character in the process. During the off-season, Kevin McHale remarked that any team that really plays hard and within themselves can win nearly forty games a season just by picking up a dozen or more victories left lying around by opponents that for one reason or another don’t bother to show up. Well, Denver didn’t show up tonight. The Nuggets knew they had allowed themselves to get down by double digits in the Wolves’ season opener in Minnesota and still managed to tuck the game away in the second half. And so they played without respecting the Wolves; jacking up a lot of dumb shots from the perimeter, not defending with vigor, and generally lazing around until there was 2:45 left and the Wolves were up by 3. Then, after plopping himself on the bench like a somnambulant toad for the entire game, Nuggets coach George Karl called a timeout and presumably told his squad that it was time to expend the requisite energy to put this sorry Minnesota squad where it belongs, cluelessly flying back home with a .100 winning percentage.

    It was all Fox Sports analyst Mike McCollow could do not to blatantly rip the Wolves; the disgusted look on his face and his accurate statement that Denver "laid an egg tonight," said it all. And if it didn’t, the postgame interview with Denver’s Eduardo Najera–who has more grit than any three Timberwolves combined–sealed it. "We came out flat; I don’t know what it was," Najera said with a grin and a shake of his head. "Maybe we ate too much for the holiday." He was apologizing for the six-point triumph.

    Let’s start calling people out. Rashad McCants played like a punk, like a kid who, despite all evidence, refuses to believe he’s not the best thing on the playground. McCants shot 1-15 from the field, a stat uglier in reality than it is on paper. His only make was a waltzing, uncontested layup after a teammate made a steal and delivered him the ball while Denver conceded the hoop. Of the 14 misses, maybe 3 or 4 were in the paint, and at least one of those was a stumbling toss-up prayer after McCants drove expecting a foul that never came. That leaves about ten jumpers, the sort of chemistry-corroding shots that would have had his teammates irked at Wittman for not sitting him if McCants hadn’t benched himself with a series of fouls. He got to the line just three times; once after a technical foul on Denver, and once on the next possession after Wittman explicitly instructed his squad during a timeout that they needed to take it to the hoop. Otherwise, nada.

    Since his 33-point breakout against Sacramento, Shaddy has converted 15 shots (in 57 attempts) and committed 16 turnovers. Over the last three games, he has mounted a 8-41 brickfest–less than 20% shooting. His defense tonight was actually good in spots, but his offense game was so ugly, so selfish, that it is hard to give him credit for that positive contribution.

    Al Jefferson is an easy player to love for his precocious footwork, realistic self-assessments of his foibles, and strong work ethic. But aside from his low-post offense, Jefferson remains woefully inconsistent. He can be a bulldog on the boards for two possessions and a negligent terrier the next. He can flash hard on the pick and roll two out five times, and bollocks it up the other three. He can spot open teammates out of the looming double team two or three times per period, but might as well be wearing blinders 60-70 percent of the time. On top of all that the recent injury to Theo Ratliff has further exposed him as being a converted power forward instead of a center when he’s forced to play the pivot. Despite all the good things he does and the admirable way he acts, there is a reason why he was a game-worst minus -14 tonight and the Nugs’ center Marcus Camby was a game-best plus +16.

    Neither Sebastian Telfair nor Marko Jaric can be a starting point guard on a successful team–it just won’t happen. There is a point guard gene missing–a different one in each player. Telfair can provide pace and a probing spirit with his passes; Jaric has marvelous hands and good anticipation on defense, and was one of the precious few Timberwolves that heeded Wittman’s admonition to penetrate into the paint. But past failures have fed the demons in both of their psyches, and there are glaring flaws in each of their games that inevitably buzz kill their most painstaking efforts at kindling some personal momentum. Put it this way: You don’t want either one of them bringing the ball up against a zone trap, and you don’t want either one of them with the ball in their hands in the closing seconds of a game with their team down a deuce. And that, folks, are precisely the two situations when point guard play is most crucial. The Nuggets deployed a full court press that coughed the ball from Telfair twice late in the first half, likely robbing the Wolves of a double-digit lead at intermission. Jaric, as I say, actually played one of his better games, but he’s been in the league long enough to know what you’ve got and it’s not enough to fortify this callow squad. There are roles for both Jaric and Telfair, but all the opportunities that Randy Foye’s injury have provided dramatize that those roles should be smaller than the ones they currently occupy.

    2. The Better Gomes

    Ryan Gomes also belongs on the "disappointing enough to be pissed at him" list thus far this season, but it took one of his vintage games tonight to remind us of how far he’d out of our consciousness. Before the season started, I expected Gomes to be the Wolves’ second-best player behind Jefferson. He fulfilled that promise for the first time in more than two weeks by toting up 18 points in less than 25 minutes simply by flowing in the course of the offense–moving without the ball, and seeking out seams in the opposing defense in a way that Flip Saunders would salivate over and utilize to the tune of 20 points per game if he had him. Or maybe not, because Gomes has clanked way too many wide open jumpers this year. Tonight he made 7-13 FG, including 4-5 from beyond the arc. His defense on Melo Anthony game but only partially effective–Melo’s 31 points on 22 shots were boosted by a hot hand early (6-7 FG on mostly contested jumpers in the first period) and trips to the line late (11-11 FTs for the game).

    Which Gomes will we see over the next few games? The Wolves desperately need it to be the Good Gomes, because the the schedule ahead is road-wearying and folks who "play the game right" are at a premium.

    3. A Plus and a Minus

    For about the fifth or sixth time in this brief season, Antoine Walker demonstrated more competitive spunk and both blatant and subtle court savvy than anyone else in a Wolves uni. One might even think the dude is playing to earn himself a ticket to a contender later in the first few months of 2008. It is probably poetic justice that ‘Toine must endure McCants’s pig-headedness, having had his own bouts on many occasions early in his career. Even tonight, his 15 point first half bore an interesting stat within the stat–1-5 from outside the arc, 5-5 shooting two-pointers. It should also be noted that Walker is getting a lot of his points and rebounds using his half-court quickness against opposing power forwards, an advantage that is quickly reversed when the big boys take him into the paint at the other end of the court. Kenyon Martin more than doubled his 7.9 ppg average with 18 tonight.

    See the theme? Walker at the 4 and Jefferson at the 5 are both overmatched on defense, but Walker is one of very few Wolves who can not only get his own shot, but create one for a teammate in the half court, especially because he understands how opponents will concentrate on Big Al and space himself accordingly.

    Yes, it is true that Minnesota really misses Foye and Ratliff, and the failure of players to fill those voids is valuable, if depressing, information for the future. But it must also be said that this squad is *not"–repeat *not* making progress, a fact dramatized by the opening night opponent playing demonstrably worse in their Game 10 rematch and winning just as handily. Almost any NBA player can jump up and have a good game, or two or three good games over a 10 game span. But the glimmers of consistency, the slow but steady signs of progress, are what this 2007-08 must be all about.

    And where are they? Did Corey Brewer get a mere 2:04 tonight because Gomes were going well, because he’s now missed four free throws in a row, because that late to practice stunt still has him in Witt’s doghouse, or because the past two opponents have been LeBron and Melo? Why is Mark Madsen a better bet to start versus Camby than Michael Doleac, who is larger and has more range on his jumper (which is to say he can shoot one)? Has anybody yo-yo’d in minutes and productivity like Craig Smith, who led the Wolves with a plus +8 tonight and had 5 rebounds to go with his 7 points (3-6 FG) but only got 15:52 (likely another victim of the Walker-Jefferson tandem)? Is McCants going through a rough patch or going down for the third time? What do we really know about this team other than they have won once in their first ten games and let an indifferent opponent that had contempt for their ability loiter through the motions and then, after the coach finally sounded the alarm, tromp down the throttle and outscore them 15-4 in the final 2:45?

    It’s not cute anymore.