Tonight’s game versus the Lakers was the first time I had watched the Wolves in roughly four weeks. Thankfully, they made it very entertaining for me. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been ridiculously busy and haven’t even had time to speed through the games on TiVo. Hopefully things will stay calm the rest of the season so I can enjoy the Wolves final stretch.
Some observations on tonight’s game:
[ad2] The last time I really got to follow the Wolves closely was at the start of Wittman’s tenure as head coach. I have to say that I was less than impressed with the way he has this team looking after several weeks. I’m not a promoter of Dwane Casey at all, but at least back then the Wolves were playing with some semblance of teamwork. Tonight’s game was pretty sloppy, and often times it seemed that players were just doing their own thing. I’m not going to lay all the blame at the feet of Wittman, as he inherited a ship that was already taking on a lot of water, but he seriously needs to light a fire under his players and get them playing the right way. You can’t expect Mark Blount to bail you out with three threes in the final minutes every night.
Secondly, how unbelievable was Marko’s inbounds pass at the end of regulation. I think everyone in the Target Center thought his intercepted telegraph had cost the Wolves the game. It was just mind bogglingly awful. The only probable explanation for that pass was that some woman in the stands tried to seduce him and momentarily distracted him. Thankfully Smush Parker took free throw lessons from Shaq this off-season and let us off the hook. Only somebody as smooth as The Gigolo could make such an egregious error and walk away unscathed. Word on the street is that he even ended up with the woman’s phone number. Marko, you dog!
The Wolves finally managed to put something good together in the second over time an cruised past the Lakers. I was glad to see McCants and Foye getting some solid crunch-time experience and succeeding. It will bode well for this franchise if the two of them develop into the players everyone was expecting them to be.
Lastly, is it just me, or has there been an extraordinary amount of terrible, terrible calls going against the Wolves lately. It’s really a wonder that the came out of this game with a win after the total snow-job the refs gave them. These bad calls are occuring at such a high rate, that it makes me wonder if David Stern has personally demanded that the refs cost Minnesota as many games as possible. Why would he do this, you ask? So that the Wolves have as many ping-pong balls as possible come June and it doesn’t look fishy when he hands us Greg Oden.
That’s right folks, the Minnesota Timberwolves are the new New York Knicks. After years of trying to get Kevin Garnett out of Minnesota and into a big market, the commish has finally given in. He’s done everything in his power to make The Ticket’s life in Minnesota as awful as it can be, but KG stubbornly refuses to demand that trade to Chicago, L.A., or New York. Now one of the deepest drafts in NBA history is upon us, and where do you think Stern wants the grand prize to go? Charlotte? Portland? Seattle? Milwaukee? Memphis? No thank you. Stern wants Greg Oden playing side by side with The Big Ticket. Can you imagine the buzz that the two of them would create? Out of all the lottery destinations, Minnesota is by far the best place for him to go.
Just remember folks, you heard it here first. I call it: The Frozen Ping Pong Ball Theory
[ad3]