Weekend WOErriors
3/9 Wolves -vs- Washington Wizards: LOSE 99 – 110
3/7 Wolves at Portland Trailblazers: LOSE 93 – 95
3/6 Wolves at LA Lakers: LOSE 90 – 110
Above are the past three games by your very own Minnesota Timberwolves. We’ve lost to the best, and we’ve lost to the worst (literally.) At this point, what more can any blogger say about this franchise that someone like Britt Robson hasn’t already said? (And more eloquently, I might add.)
So, I figured, why bore any remaining readers with a blah blah blah Wolves lost recap because of this and that, we couldn’t guard so and so, we had some untimely turnovers, missed some key shots, and blah blah blah ad nauseum. The damn script has been the same this entire pointless season. If you have no other outlets for your misery, and would like to commiserate with the few remaining fellow fans, please read on. If not, go to hell I don’t blame you for doing something more important with your time.
Anyways, for those of you that don’t partake in our wonderful TWB Forum Community, here is the “game recap” that I have been posting in the appropriate game threads for each game since Big Al went down with his ACL tear. Keep in mind this “recap” is completely, 100% serious mostly all in good fun, typically used to garner a few cheap laughs. However, lately, it’s been mind-numbingly accurate. If you don’t already know, all one has to do to recap an entire Minnesota Timberwolves NBA game, is simply fill in the necessary player/statistic/situation in the [brackets] below. It’s not hard, believe me. Want to see how it works for tonight’s Wolves-Wizards game?
“Go figure, [Mike Miller] hit buckets in garbage time, because garbage time for the Wolves was [most of the second half.] [Mark Madsen] only played [0] minutes?!?!, while [Smith/Cardinal] played [37] minutes?!?!, and why didn’t [Jason Collins – OOPS, scratch that. Typo.] play? [All our starters] sucked at defense, and could not guard [anyone, specifically Caron Butler and/or Antawn Jamison]. [Bobby Brown] looked completely lost out there, and [our entire bench] completely sucked this game. [Most of our entire organization roster except for Crunch] is completely worthless. Amazingly, [no one] really had a horrible game shooting, and [most everyone] actually hit the broad side of the barn tonight. [Mike Miller] gets the [Fifth consecutive*] “Mike Miller Award”, for taking only [10] shots in [40] minutes. Where was [Sheldon Williams] tonight?
Wolves lose again.”
* Garnering HOF consideration.
To continue on with my recaps/thoughts/musings of the past three games, please click the “Read More” to continue…
If you thought my recap was even remotely funny and would like to join in on the discussions (mostly of us toiling in our misery), please feel free to join our very active forum community. We’ve got some extremely knowledgeable posters about both the Wolves, and the entire NBA in general. There is always something to argue about, discuss, or debate. If you don’t want to join (or even just browse), well again, go to hell I don’t blame you.
Back to the last three craptastic games by the Timberpuppies. What exactly can we make from them? Against the Lakers in LA, as expected, it was an absolute disaster. Much like the Golden State game last Tuesday at Target Center, it did not look like the Wolves had any interest in even being on the court. Heck, even McHale is starting to show the “Randy Wittman Face” far too often. Is he already losing his players? Granted, I don’t think he’s the coach of the future to lead this team to glory, but we might be looking at our fourth coach in four years next season. What is there really to say about this game? I mean, honestly? Who even cares anyways, everyone and their mother knew we were going to lose this game. When we “played the Lakers” hard at Target Center a few weeks back, that was more an aberration than anything. It looked like the Lakers could care less during that game. They didn’t even try until they had to, knowing they could do the absolute minimum and still come away victorious against our sad-sack team.
The next night was a surprisingly close back-to-back game against the Portland Trailblazers. How that happened, I’ve no idea. Since I am a straight shooter, and to be fair, Portland played pretty crappy most of the game, yet was still able to put us away at the end (naturally, when it mattered.) Even the final score is somewhat deceptive, as the Wolves trailed by something like 10 points in the closing minutes, yet went on like a 7 or 8 to 0 run at the very, very end (because the Blazers just got bored?) I don’t remember the exact specifics of it (because I try oh so so so so so so so so hard to forget), but the Wolves made the final score closer than it had any right being. Thinking back, I’m trying to figure out how this game was even remotely close. It surely wasn’t because Kevin Love went 3 for 8 from the field, for 6 points, 7 rebounds, and 5 fouls in 25 minutes. It wasn’t because our inept bench is a complete joke. And it SURELY wasn’t because Mike Miller only shot the ball 5 times in 39 minutes of burn. No, it was because Ryan Gomes freaking rocks (sometimes I secretly wish he was the father of CW Jr.) and because Sebastian Telfair is a lot better than most people give him credit for. Articles have been written about him being a turrrrrible point guard, and some have even said he’s the worst rotation player in the entire NBA. That’s bunk. If you actually watch Wolves games, you’ll see that he’s by far our best PG, and changes the dynamic of entire games. Oh, and he’s leading our team with the best “+/-” ratio for the entire season. I don’t take much stock in individual game “+/-” scores, but over the course of the entire season, I believe there is merit in this type of analyzation. On top of that, he’s only 23 years old and still has loads of unrealized potential. I think he’ll be ok.
Oh, and for all you CanisHoopus readers out there: I agree with you. So far this season Jerryd Bayless, well, sucks.
The Wizards game was “funny.” Funny in the way that you just knew we were going to lose our tenth game in a row, to the worst team in the NBA at home, no less. Funny like a 15 car interstate pile-up type of funny. Funny like, hahaha, I just stuck a spork in my eye and I can no longer see. Funny like, oh my gosh I doused myself in gasoline, lit myself on fire, and now I’m dead. That kind of funny. To be honest, I thought we were going to lose the game. In fact, I predicted in the TWB forums. Granted, I thought the game would be closer, but one can’t be right about everything. Another funny thing is that a lot of people thought we were going to win this game. I mean, it makes sense (I guess.) Hell, even Vegas thought we were somehow going to win this game by 4 points (HAHAHA idiots!) Alas, there is not much to else to say, because we lost and it was incredibly boring. The Wizards were without Gilbert Arenas (knee boo-boo), DeShawn Stevenson (brain boo-boo), Mike James (hates Minnesota), Brendan Haywood (full body boo-boo?), Etan Thomas (heart boo-boo), and Oleksiy Pecherov (Wait… who the hell is that?!?!) and we still lost. But the Wizards did have Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison, who cleary, was all they needed to win. I won’t even mention Darius Songaila going off for 19 points or Dominic McGuire and JaVale McGee looking like complete STUDS against us. Ooops, I just mentioned it.
That was one of the most pathetic attendances I’ve ever seen. It rivaled pre-season games. If I had to guess, I’d say 7,000-8,000 people MAX were actually in the Target Center tonight.
Actual listed attendance: 13,119
HAHAHAHAHAHA YEAH RIGHT! Oh man, that’s funny. Hey guess what, this game was also on NBA TV. I wonder what kind of Nielson rating this telecast got? -15.4 market shares? Did people destroy their television sets so that they wouldn’t have to watch this game? Poor souls. Anyways, I guess on the bright side, Bonk and I were able to move down to the second row behind the Wizards bench… in the middle of the first quarter. Yeah, that’s right, attendance was “sparse.”
Let’s see… what else happened tonight? Mike Miller actually shot the ball 10 times, but my guess is because most of that happened in the fourth quarter when the game was clearly already out of reach. Also, he took the fewest number of shots amongst all starters, while playing the most minutes of anyone (40.) Grumble grumble egads to that grumble grumble. Oleksiy Pecherov was really funny to watch on the Wiz bench. Obviously he didn’t play a single minute, because he was too busy chewing gum (blowing huge bubbles though!) and staring off into space. We were worried about him, because we kinda thought he might be comatose, as he barely even flinched and didn’t say a single word until about midway through the fourth quarter. And then on a play when JaVale McGee embarrassed someone on our team, he actually laughed, stood up, cheered a little bit… and Bonk and I breathed a huge sigh of relief that we would not be having to be calling paramedics to revive him.
Lastly, on top of Caron Butler being really, really good; that man has a massively muscular jaw. At some point in the fourth quarter, we noticed him chewing on a huge straw. (This was not your average McDonalds straw, it was huge. It had some major girth.) Anyways, we were like, “Wow, that’s kinda cool.” I mean, who hasn’t chewed on a straw before? I know I have. I have found it to be oddly relaxing. But then, Coach Ed Tapscott calls his number to put him back in the game. We were like “Hmmmm, I wonder what he is going to do with that straw?” Then, without even touching it, he engulfed the entire thing into his mouth and proceeded to chomp on it for the rest of the game. While he was playing. That’s badass. Then the game finally and gracefully ended.
***UPDATE: Much props to Bonk, who found this article and video all about Caron “Straw Man” Butler. Ha! P.S. Watch the video, it’s good.
The Wolves have now (successfully?) lost 10 games in a row, and 18 of their last 20. At this point all I ask is that our guys play hard. If they win, they win. No big deal. If they lose, great… it helps our draft position. So yeah, bring on the Draft Lottery. It can’t come soon enough.
CW