The Timberwolves open the 2008 portion of this season’s schedule tonight by hosting the Portland Trailblazers at Target Center, carrying their fifth losing streak of at least five games already this season into tonight's game. The Blazers lost their last game of the year in Utah, ending their 13 game winning streak. The Blazers are 18-13, good for 8th place in the deep Western Conference. This looks like a tough one for the Wolves to win.

Not so fast.

The Blazers are 15-3 at home, but just 3-10 on the road. The 13 winning streak, then, coincided with a lot of home games in Portland (yep, all three road winners were included in the streak) and a 10 point loss in Utah puts a little damper on the streak. Still, though, this Portland team is a very good young team (the third youngest team in league history) and they’re facing a squad that is just 3-10 at home, so tonight’s as good an opportunity as any to prettify that ugly road record. The Wolves, of course, have that scary 1-16 road mark (just what did happen that night down in New Orleans?), the worst in the league. They also have the worst home record in the league, too. That shouldn’t be a surprise, considering that they are 3 1/2 games clear of the next worst team in the league, record-wise, Miami, (and 22 1/2 games behind the Cs) just 30 games into the season.

Honestly, it’s hard to think of things to write about with this team. I suppose I could spend a bunch of time analyzing this stat and that, but really what’s the point? ESPN.COM takes a stab at writing about a statistic on the Wolves:

After trading Kevin Garnett to Boston in the offseason, Minnesota is off to the worst start in the franchise's 19-year history. The Wolves would have to win 12 of their final 52 games to avoid tying their worst record, which was 15-67 in 1991-92.

Seriously, the story writes that the Wolves need to finish 12-40 as if that's some sort of huge challenge (and it might be). It's already mathematically impossible for the Wolves to surpass the franchise best record of 58-24, which was only four seasons ago. This team is dreadful, the organization is in shambles, and they are just hoping that luck in the form of a fortuitous draft will somehow bail them out like it did when they selected a skinny high schooler in the first round several years ago (and no, I’m not talking about Ndudi Ebi). The cynic says that this front office doesn’t have the ability to take advantage of their position in the draft (unless it’s a freaking no-brainer). Tonight’s opponent, and their young star, Brandon Roy, provides plenty of fuel for the cynics.

Portland is favored by six. There is no O/U line posted, so I’ll take the Blazers and give the six points. January’s a cold month and the Wolves are providing no warmth for their fans.

<GreekHouse>I am now back from the Twin Cities and have had a nice break from watching the Wolves for a while. I hate having to miss games, but perhaps missing this stretch was good for my sanity. This season is starting to remind me of the first year I had my Twolves blog. Both of these teams have failed to live up to my standards. The major difference is that this time I expected the Wolves to be bad and they've still manage to disappoint me. Ugh.

Back in early December, the Wolves lost a game at the buzzer in Atlanta and then came back and beat Phoenix in the next game. Things were looking up. Since then, the Wolves have gone 1-11. Their only win during that stretch was a game where they gave up 118 points (the Wolves are now 1-0 when allowing 117+ points!). They have been beaten by double digits in 6 of those games including two games to a terrible Seattle team.

In fairness to the Wolves, they've been beset by injuries during this time. When a team is having to adjust its rotations pretty much every night, it's tough for them to establish any sort of consistency–not to mention the fact that these injuries are weakening to an already poor basketball team. I can only talk about Randy Foye's return for so long before it starts to sound like lip service, but I really do think he will help this team tremendously. McCants has been a bit of a disappointment this season and Foye is a good 3-point shooter who can also slash to the hoop and create his own shot. I haven't heard anything on his return since I've been back, so I'm still expecting (hoping) he'll be back by mid-January.

ESPN has the total for the game listed at 191 (line listed as Blazers +5). I think the line is pretty good and probably doesn't offer up a whole lot of value, so I guess I'll take the over.</GreekHouse>