The WGOM

The death march continues with a home date against the Jazz. The NBA season is extremely long and few have been as long for Wolves fans as this one. This post, though is going to be short.

Please, oh please, let this season end.

Utah is a six point favorite, after opening at an eight point favorite. The O/U is 209. I like the under here.

Friends, this should be an ass kicking. The Spurs are locked in a heated battle for playoff position in the Western Conference and I can't imagine that they'll be looking past our T-Wolves. The Wolves, to their credit -- and detriment -- have been playing much better of late, as we have pointed out. There's still time, though, for our club to jump in the tank and now's about the best time to do so. The next five games on the schedule, including this one, are @SA, Utah, Detroit, @Utah, and @Phoenix. How's about losing all five of these, boys? Maybe BAJ will suffer a toenail injury that needs three weeks of rest. Who's with me? Top Jimmy?

That's all I've got. SA are the defending champs. They should win. We want our guys to lose. No more analysis is really necessary. SA is favored by 11 and the O/U is 186. I'm taking the Spurs and giving the points.

As his first season in the NBA comes to a close, I think it’s fair to say that Corey Brewer is somewhat of a disappointment. Brewer was picked seventh overall in the 2007 NBA Draft. The Wolves, I think, expected that Brewer would have a little more offensive game than he has shown. I don’t watch college basketball and I had no idea what Brewer was until he landed in Minnesota and started showing me zero offensive game. John Hollinger knew, though, that he’d have trouble. His pre-season remarks on Brewer were as follows:

Brewer might be the single happiest person I've ever seen. Minnesota's first-round pick is constantly smiling, but this season might provide a stern test for his good spirits. Not only will he be toiling in an NBA backwater, but Brewer might have a tough adjustment to the NBA at the offensive end. He's great in transition, but he's also an awkward ball handler and a mediocre outside shooter, two qualities which might limit his offensive production.

The prospects are brighter at the defensive end. Brewer is 6-9 but has the agility to defend shooting guards; his length and quickness should make him a quality player at that end right from the word go. But unless his skill level increases sharply, my guess is that his impact will be as a role player rather than a star.

Indeed. Brewer is a terrible ball handler and he lays so many bricks, you’d have sworn he was from Hebron. Of the 28 rookies on pace to play 500 minutes this year, he’s 26th in PER. Of course, what Brewer brings is hard to measure by PER. But, David Thorpe of ESPN has him rated the 20th best rookie (and dropping), which would be great if you are a second round pick, but the kid was picked seventh. Corey plays hard and he’s a pretty good defender, but man, you have to be Ben Wallace in your prime to be a premier player in the league with that big of a cipher at the offensive end. Brewer’s got the chance to be a decent, serviceable player in this league with a lot of work, but there’s an ocean between what brings to a game and what a truly elite player brings.

I’m not writing this to denigrate Brewer, but to comment on the nature of the NBA Draft. If you are picking seventh, chances are better than zero that you do not end up with an elite player. I mean, this isn’t like the NFL, where, say, Troy Williamson falls into your lap at number seven (heh). No, this is the NBA. To get a really good player, you have to be way up there (and of course, there have been some really epic flops high on the draft board).

Which leads me to this. The Wolves (18-51), by winning, are making it far more likely that they will get a player with limited skills with their first round pick. They now have the fourth worst record in the NBA and are only a half game behind the Knicks. The Clippers are now within reach. It’s not inconceivable that the Wolves will finish with the sixth worst record. With a little bad luck in the lottery, they could end up with, say, the seventh pick. Thank goodness that it's unlikely they'll move up further in the standings and risk losing their pick (top ten protected) to the Clippers. That would be an unmitigated disaster.

Start scouring the scouting reports for flawed players. One is likely coming this way. Also, think of some poultry references, because a Top Jimmy column decrying the Wolves winning ways (they are the only team of the bottom ten in the league to have a winning record over their last ten) is coming soon to a KFC near you. Butterball and Cornish Game Hen references be damned, it's hard to argue that things have gotten decidedly less optimistic about the 2008 draft over the last couple of weeks. If only we had a top five player who wanted to sit and tank the rest of the season.

The Wolves play at Houston (48-23) tonight. It seems like a month ago that the Rockets won 22 straight. They followed that up by losing three of four before beating the Kings. Houston is now 3rd in the West, one game behind the NO Hornets, but also tied with the fifth seeded Spurs and just a half game ahead of the sixth seeded Suns. In other words, they’ve got no room for error. The Rockets need to right the ship and our hard fighting Wolves are the kind of team they need to beat to avoid falling further in the standings. The West is a cruel, cruel place to be. Rockets are favored by 11 at home and the O/U is 190. I think we’ll see the Rockets win, but that spread is pretty big. Houston has a suffocating defense, so I’ll take the under.

It's the Ping Pong Ball Derby. Both Memphis and the Pups are sitting at 16-50, just 1/2 game better than the Seattle club for the second worst record in the league. The Wolves have clearly stated that, unlike the last two seasons, they will actually try to win games down the stretch, as if this year's effort can somehow restore some semblance of dignity to a franchise that has sunk to some pretty low depths. Meanwhile, Memphis makes no such claim and has been losing with impunity. Including tonight, there are three more games to be played between these clubs. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see these toothless old bears lie down as if it were time for the hibernation. Meanwhile, our sick and diseased dogs will lash out and win these games to spite themselves.

Eff this team. Eff their stupid, lazy VP. Eff their stupid owner. I feel bad for the good soldiers. BAJ, you should have never signed that contract. You could have gotten max dollars to play somewhere else.

Minnesota is favored by seven and the O/U is 203. I've got them and I'm giving the points.

<GreekHouse>During the last game log, SBG made a note about Hanny and Pete BSed for a while about how the Wolves shouldn't tank. There is something to be said for letting your team's young players develop and tanking might hurt that. But from an ethical perspective, is it so wrong to tank? Isn't it unethical for the team to do things that would hurt the organization long term? From this perspective, isn't it more ethical for the team to tank in order to maximize their chances of getting the top pick?

Let's face it, the lottery system is terrible and needs to be fixed. There is no sport in the world with a higher correlation between the draft position and future success of its players. This gives teams more incentive to throw games than in any other sport, and with such a long season, it gives them plenty of time to do so. If a team starts purposely losing games in order to maximize potential draft position, all they are doing is exploiting the rules of a broken system. In fact, you could make a good argument that it's their duty to their fans to do so.

What the NBA needs to do is institute a draft system that encourages teams to play well throughout the season. One idea would be to say that if a team's winning percentage falls by a certain amount after the all-star break, then they move down in the draft order. There could be allowances made for teams that really suck in order to prevent any team from getting too screwed over. It wouldn't be a simple system, but it would still be simpler than the salary cap.

Tonight's game features two teams that should both really want to lose this game. Can you imagine this game if an idea similar to the one I described above were instituted? One team or the other could be struggling to finish the season with a second half winning percentage high enough to not lose their draft pick. The other one could potentially increase their draft pick by winning this game rather than losing it! This would add an entirely new element to these otherwise uninteresting bottom of the barrel matchups. Instead, the Wolves will probably continue to do the "ethical" thing and win this one while the Grizz lie down and die. Wolves win by 20. So long ping pong.</GreekHouse>

<SBG>I'm back, having read GH's preview. It's clear to me that "not tanking this year, dudes" is an organizational mantra. Draft position is important the NBA like in no other sport, to be sure. I would add this qualification. That depends on how deep the draft is. If there are five really good players, you'd damn well better be in the top five slots if you suck as bad as the Wolves do. However, if the draft is one player and then a bunch of second tier players that are all about the same (which I've heard this draft is), well, then, maybe tanking isn't all that important. The Wolves ain't going to have the worst record in the league, we all know that. Moving down a slot or two may or may not hurt all that much. We'll see. That's, I think, the calculation that the Wolves have made. So, we get the sanctimonious BS about not tanking. The last two seasons were just about as embarrassing for me as a fan as I can believe. We had a top five player in the league and we tanked.

I can see tanking this year for everything it's worth, unless the draft is like what I think it is. One player, plus a group in the second tier. Then, play hard, dudes, you probably weren't getting the Number One anyway. Just don't tell me how much you think it's important not to tank. You just got done tanking two years in a row. I have a certain level of intelligence and I don't like the way you keep insulting it.</SBG>

<GreekHouse>I haven't got a whole lot to say at this point. From the Twolves perspective, this season is really starting to drag. From an NBA perspective, the season is getting really exciting!</GreekHouse>

The Wolves play in the Northwest for a second consecutive night, taking on the T-Blazers. This is the second time in five days that the Wolves play Portland. The Blazers won in Minneapolis on Tuesday, 103-96.

Tonight the Blazers are favored by 9 and the O/U is 191. I'm inclined to take the Wolves, but they are coming off of a game last night. I will take the over, then.

The Wolves are tied in the loss column with the Sonics at 49 wins. The Sonics have two more wins than the Wolves. It would behoove the local five to lose this game.

Seattle is favored by three. The O/U is 199, after being ridiculously low for the past several games. I think the Wolves will shoot themselves in the foot and win this game. I'll take the Wolves and the points.

A great Citizen of this fine nation offered me a ducat to this here particular game and I was pretty excited about getting to my first game of the year. Unfortunately, life had other plans for me today, and I had to cancel out.

The Wolves are taking on a surprising Portland team, although the bloom has come off the Rose a little bit. Plus, our club is coming into this game on a two game winning streak. Even the despicably bad Jimmy Rodgers squad had a three game winning streak (although not every T-Wolves team has had one), but our guy Randy Wittman, despite having coached in four separate NBA seasons, has never had a three game winning streak. Maybe tonight will be the night for Wittman to get off the schneid.

The Blazers are favored by 3 and the O/U is 185. I'm going to take the over again. I think Minny wins 99-97.

I've spent way too much time on the site today already, so just a short post on tonight's game. The Wolves won a rare road game last night over Sacramento and took the season series from the Kings. Tonight, they try to make it two in a row against the Franchise We Don't Want to Turn Into, the LA Clippers. The Clips are a sad sack organization that has had high draft picks seemingly forever and still has never been a consistent winner. They've also had a premier power forward in Elton Brand (now injured) around which they built, but futility has been the dish served to Clippers fans from day one. Let's hope our squad doesn't look like the Clips have for the last two decades over the next 10-20 years.

The Clips are favored by five and the O/U is 185. I like the over here, and think that the Wolves will win 102-99.

Everyone knows that a baseball season is a marathon. But, the NBA season isn't exactly a stroll through the tulips, either. The season is now about 75% complete, and our club has 12 victories. A little ciphering has me speculating that they are about on pace for 16 victories, which is darned good if you are an NFL club, but horrible otherwise.

I read in the Strib today about how Randy Wittman sees improvement in the young players on his squad. He's got better sight than I have, because I've not seen a lot of improvement anywhere. Oh sure, BAJ is a great player in the making. But, Corey Brewer is floundering along, Randy Foye has taken several strides backwards, Rashad McCants has shown that he can't be a regular on this team, Chris Richard never plays, Ryan Gomes has shown flashes but is generally inconsistent, Craig Smith is who he is, and so forth. Perhaps the one guy who's shown some improvement is Bassy Telfair, who may or may not be with this team next year. This team is going nowhere without some key additional pieces, starting with the draft.

Grandpa Sports chimes in with a love letter to Glen Taylor, saying that the rebuilding project will take about three years. Have patience, Wolves fans! One wonders if Sid will live to see the rebuilding process through to its fruition. And no, I have no information about Sid's health -- I just think that the rebuilding process here will last about as long as the Gopher football rebuilding process, now entering its, what, 42nd year or so. (Come to think of it, I might not live to see it.)

Tonight, the Wolves play Sacto, who may be without their top two scorers, Kevin Martin and Ron Artest. The Wolves split a pair of games with Sacto early in the season and tonight is the rubber match. It's the third game in four nights for our squad. I'll probably not be watching, but I'm thinking that the Wolves will continue to tank. Sacto is favored by 6.5 and the line is at 200. Sacto has been scoring plenty, so I'm going to play the over. Sacto wins 112-105.

The Wolves head to Salt Lake City to match up with the Utah Jazz tonight. Wow, have the Jazz been a great franchise over the last 25 years or so. If you remember, I linked to a story by J.A. Andande a week or so ago in which he displays a ridiculous bias towards the bigger markets in the NBA. Of course, the Wolves had to unload KG, but it wasn't because of the market. It was because of the lack of any brains in the front office.

Now, consider Utah. They had a brilliant run with StocktontoMalone as their marquee players. Stockton was as tough as nails and way more talented than he appeared. Malone was absolutely unguardable. The Jazz put some pieces around those guys and were thisclose to a pair of championships. That they never won a championship with those two was a shame, but nevertheless, they provided two decades of sublime performance for the faithful.

SLC is not exactly a mecca for NBA free agents. With its overwhelmingly white population and almost rural setting (although my brief time in SLC was fantastic -- the view there of the mountains is tremendous), there isn't a big clamor for big time NBA players to go there. Nevertheless, they were able to steal Carlos Boozer from the Cleveland Cavaliers, and that proved to be an extremely fortuitous signing. Boozer was relatively unheralded coming out of college (he was the 34th pick -- a second rounder! and the third Dookie picked), but he's become an absolute stud in the NBA. I still think it's a shame that he stiffed the Cavs the way he did -- they tried to do him a favor and he screwed them. Just imagine him with LeBron. Oh man.

Anyway, the Jazz have rebuilt around Boozer and Deron Williams, the third pick in the 2005 draft. Williams is a brilliant point guard who's averaging 19.1 points and 10.1 assists with a sterling TS% of .595. That's off the charts for a point guard. He has a tidy 20.5 PER, which looks pretty nice next to Boozer's 22.3 PER. Throw in Mehmet Okur (another nice free agent signing), Ronnie Brewer, and a rejuvenated AK-47 and you have a pretty nice five to put out there. Plus, the Jazz acquired a sharp shooter in Kyle Korver to add a little outside punch. I like this team a lot. I don't think they can compete yet with LA or SA (but hell, they went to the WCF last year) this year, but they are young and talented. Too bad they aren't located in a big city, right J.A.?

Utah's won 16 straight at home. I can't see it not being 17 after tonight. The Wolves have lost four straight since they surprised the Jazz back on February 26. The Jazz will avenge that loss tonight with ease. The spread is a ridiculous 15 points, so I'll take the Wolves and the points.

<GreekHouse>Gogogo Jazz!!! Let's get us some ping pong balls.

Wolves BTS tho.</GreekHouse>

I don't have a lot of time today, as I have family responsibilities. Still, though, I wanted to get a post up. The situation in Seattle is not good. They have a premier rookie -- although I'm not sure he's as good as advertised -- in Kevin Durant, but they've gutted the team, and as has been discussed here, they look like they are going to leave Seattle for Nowhereville.

This is a game that the Wolves should win. They are favored by eight (!) points. The O/U is 194. I'll take the over.

<GreekHouse>Much like SBG, I don't have a whole lot to say about this game. They played ok against Cleveland, but not great. When the Wolves go up against the premiere teams in the league (Cleveland ain't exactly premiere, but they're still pretty damn good), we can see how far they still have to go to become even a .500 team. Yeah, they've played some really good games against some of the top teams, but when (if) they start contending again, they will need to be able to do that every game. With no perimeter shooting, it's hard to do that. Teams can still beat the Wolves most of the time by overloading the paint on defense. Every once in a while, we'll get good enough perimeter shooting to win the game, but it basically requires a lot of luck for the Wolves to win games that way.

It'll be nice to see the Wolves go up against a team that they can and should beat tonight, but I'm not counting on them covering an 8 point spread more than 52.5% of the time. I'll go Seattle on this one.</GreekHouse>

Yeah, the Wolves are playing Cleveland and possibly the best player in the league tonight, LeBron James.

What I want to talk about is that the Wolves bought out Theo Ratliff, allowing him to (probably) head to Detroit for the rest of the season. Ratliff, of course, came over to Minnesota in the KG trade, he was always part of the trade to satisfy salary cap rules in the trade. As an expiring contract, he had value -- he could be moved for a player to a team seeking cap relief for, say, a player with two years left and a draft pick. Or the Wolves could simply let his K expire and save the $11 million off of next year's payroll. The Wolves are still going to be over the cap next year, thereby limiting any free agents to a mid level exception, a veterans exception, and anybody willing to sign for the league minimum.

One thing Ratliff was not was a real asset on the floor this year. He was hurt for all but a few games this year, coming back only recently. When he came back, Ratliff was, according to the Wolves, an important piece. On February 21st, an eternity ago on the Internets, but eights in real life, the Strib wrote the following:

Whether the man with the expiring $11.6 million salary slot plays again for the Wolves beyond this season, his return to good health after knee surgery for the season's final 30 games would allow management to see how a bonafide shot-blocker fits among the pieces the team has assembled in its rebuilding efforts.

"If you say it fits beautifully, then it becomes a major, major priority," said Kevin McHale, Wolves vice president of basketball operations. "If you decide it's not a monumental change, then you say, 'OK, there are a lot of teams who are very successful who don't have that shot-blocker in the middle.' It's going to be a chance for us to see what impact that particular type of player has on our team."

This statement is ridiculous on its face. Let's see. Would the Wolves benefit from a guy who can play interior defense? If they can't, they'd be the first team in the league's history that couldn't. So, that was just a line of bullshit that is insulting to fans who have a functioning brain. Perhaps, though, Kevin McHale, the Best GM in All of Sports, wasn't sure. Maybe this team was different from every other team that has ever put on sneakers and taken the floor.

I guess we'll never know. Because after 54 minutes of playing time, the grand defensive experiment is over. Ratliff had $3.7 million left on his contract for this season and he had to gotten at least some of that, but suppose Glen Taylor saved oh, $1 million. He could put that pile of cash next to the $1 million that he swindled out of the Blazers along with the rights to Randy Foye. And all we had to do is give up Brandon Roy. The Greatest GM Evah probably was able to discern in that game of playing time that Ratliff got was indeed enough to tell him that having a good defender is, generally speaking, good. I wouldn't be surprised if he drew another conclusion, though.

In the final analysis, I suppose it doesn't make much difference. Ratliff wasn't in this team's plans or at least he shouldn't have been. Just quit insulting us, please, with proclamations like the stinking pile of dung flipped our way last week.

Cleveland is favored by 10. I'll take them and give the points.
<GreekHouse>I don't have a whole lot to say about this one. I've been preoccupied with my own life lately and haven't done a whole lot of deep thinking about basketball. Tonight the Wolves have another difficult road game at Cleveland. Although the Wolves got destroyed in Toronto a couple nights ago, I like their chances in this game a little bit more. Cleveland is largely a one man team on offense. I'd like to see Corey Brewer guard LBJ for the bulk of the game and see if he can contain him. If Brewer can shut him down, I think the Wolves have a pretty good shot at winning this one. </GreekHouse>

Hey, hey! What a win last night for our hometown five. The T-Wolves, after a pretty crappy eight game stretch, beat a very good Utah team last night. No rest for the weary, though, as they head to the land of the Strong Dollar, Toronto. Seriously, the Canadian Dollar costs Americans $1.02 now. I remember buying it for about $.65 back in the day when I used to go up to Manitoba on an annual fishing trip. I would imagine that the owners of the Raptors are only too happy to pay their players in American Dollars while taking in Canadian Dollars at the gate.

That's apropos of nothing, except maybe to say that the Raptors have improved about as much as their exchange rate. Their record is a relatively pedestrian 31-24 (or at least that would be pedestrian in the West), but they've been a little better than that, if you put much stock in scoring margin. They are winning games by an average of 4.3 points per game, a pretty healthy margin. More impressive, though, is their recent performance. Over the last 25% of their season, they've won games by an average of 10.9 points per game, a huge number. Last night, the Wolves played -- and beat -- the fourth ranked team in the league according to the Hollinger Power Rankings. Utah, with the loss, fell to fifth, supplanted by, you guessed it, the Toronto Raptors.

Toronto is sixth in the league in offensive efficiency and eleventh in defensive efficiency. That makes for a pretty solid combination. They play at a very slow pace (91.7 possessions per game, 27th in the league), which ain't all bad, either. I doubt that they are good enough to match up with the Cs and Pistons just yet, but they are certainly a very good young team. This team is built around Chris Bosh and Jose Calderon. They've got an interesting mix of foreign players (come to think of it, they might all be foreign born, at least with respect to Canada), young players, and of course, they have maybe the best center in Wolves franchise history (and that ain't saying much), Rasho Nesterovic.

Toronto is a huge favorite in this game at -12. The O/U is 199. I'm thinking the Wolves will cover.

<GreekHouse>After watching the Dallas game on Sunday, I couldn't help but think about how it seemed like a good metaphor for the KG era in Minnesota. The Wolves seemingly dominated the first half and had a 7 point lead with less than a minute to go, but somehow managed to only go into the half tied. When the third quarter came, many mistakes were made. Mostly, it was the Wolves taking bad jumpers and ignoring BAJ. Wittman didn't seem to notice though and let it go by and somehow at the end of the third were still tied. Then came the 4th quarter, where the Wolves took a game that should have been an easy win and turned it into a blowout loss.

Last night's game was much better. The Wolves looked very good on defense, transition offense, and moving the ball. These are three areas that they've really struggled at throughout the season, so it was good to see them showing some improvement.

Tonight's game against Toronto will be a tough one for sure. They've got a point guard named Calderon who was the fantasy pickup of the year for many people (people like me!). While Wolves fans constantly complain about their PG situation, Toronto has two excellent ones in Calderon and TJ Ford. Calderon started the year coming off the bench, but gained the starting roll when Ford kept getting hurt. It would make sense for them to try and trade one of these outstanding PGs for some depth at another position. It would be great if they could make a trade with the Wolves this offseason, but I'm not sure exactly what the Wolves would give them in return.

Wolves cover.</GreekHouse>