He missed four shots, and none of them were really close, and compiled a minus -18 in the final 10:58 fo the third period that essentially sealed this latest defeat for Minnesota. With that out of the way, he sank 3-4 FG and had 7 points in the garbage time 4th. And so a pattern continues of McCants missing when it matters and scoring when it doesn’t, the antithesis of clutch. I’ll happily eat those words at the first opportunity. In fact my McCants mea culpa is already cued up and ready to go. But for a long time now, the crunchtime fuses have been wet for Kid Dynamite.
The Wolves could use a little help in the scoring department by averaging 96.5 points per game. As seen in the loss to Orlando, a team can manufacture points at the free throw line while applying pressure to the opposing squad on the defensive side of the floor. Minnesota reaches the free throw line just 22.5 times per game, which ranks 24th in the league. With players such as Randy Foye, Sebastian Telfair, and Mike Miller, the Wolves could benefit from more appearances from the charity stripe. In fact, Minnesota would instantly increase its scoring output with the team ranking seventh in the league in free throw percentage.
I swear that we’ve seen two distinct types of games every time out from the Timberwolves this season. One has them barely managing to string consecutive buckets together for the first three quarters, only to rally once the game is well out of hand for a somewhat-passable final point tally.
The second has them playing solid-to-quite good basketball before falling short in the fourth quarter. Not getting to the line. Not making good decisions offensively. Letting it all slip away. Obviously you’d prefer the latter. For two nights in a row, however, they’ve given us the former.
In other words, the common belief is that losing is a part of the process towards winning when you’ve got a young team.
For Minnesota Timberwolves’ forward-center Al Jefferson, though, that isn’t the way it should work.
“I don’t really look at it like that – young is crap,” Jefferson told HOOPSWORLD this week. “I think that it’s not going to be an excuse no more because yes, we’re young, but we’ve been in the league a while now. It’s my fifth year, a lot of guys going into their fourth year, third year. We’ve been here long enough to know what it takes to win.”
Joseph Oberle/Minnesota Timberwolves Examiner recaps the game at Orlando.
The Minnesota Timberwolves are the National Basketball Association’s 23rd most-valuable team, according to the latest franchise-value ranking from Forbes magazine.
The Wolves are worth $301 million, down 2 percent from $308 million last year, when they ranked 22nd out of the NBA’s 30 teams. Forbes estimates the team’s annual revenue at $100 million with an annual operating loss of about $5.7 million. Glen Taylor, owner of Mankato-based Taylor Corp., owns the Timberwolves.