8:24 AM, still employed
by Stop-n-Pop on Dec 7, 2008 8:24 AM CST
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No need for a game wrap. You know what happened. Rock. Bottom.
UPDATE: 11:28 AM and as far as we know both Kevin McHale and Randy Wittman are still employed. Peter continues his search for the real Timberwolves here. Question for our readers: Is is possible to run a franchise further into the ground than what the Iron Ranger has done with the Wolves? Is Matt Millen the only legit competition? It's one thing to make bad decisions; it's quite another to make decision after decision that brings about the worst possible outcome for your squad. Simple error is bad enough. Maximized disaster is what we have here. Remember this:
"Every time you thought, 'I just don't know how this is going to go,' we'd turn around and win three or four in a row," McHale said. "With 42 games left to go, we wanted to make sure Randy had the time to get things going."
This site will feature wall-to-wall Minnesota Swarm coverage if Witt isn't joined on the way out the door by the man who brought him in to clean up the Dwayne Casey "mess".
UPDATE ii: 2:52 PM, Still employed. Here's another question: if Witt and McHale aren't fired at this point, who here amongst us trusts them to make the changes this club needs? Surely McHale can't be trusted with another roster/coaching move.
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Um, there were two positives
That you may not have caught at home.
1. After love got fouled (I think it was the one where he gave the shot fake to Randolph and jumped into him, getting Zach his 3rd foul — pretty smart for a rookie), they played “love train”, which was pretty cool.
2. And the Wally look-alike was not in attendance last night. Here’s hoping that they decided that they didn’t need two of those cheer monkeys so long as the stadium is 1/3 full.
Third positive...
How about Rodney Carney’s night? 24 minutes, 12 points on 4 for 9 (2 for 4 beyond the arc) shooting; 3 steals, no turnovers. He’s flawed. Offensively, in the half court he pretty much stands behind the arc and tries to sink one now and then. And he doesn’t/can’t rebound. But he’s maybe their best perimeter defender right now, and if he sees time with Jefferson and Love, he doesn’t really need to be a great rebounder at the 3.
With Brewer out, I wouldn’t mind if this guy routinely got 20-25 minutes, just to see what he’s got. When Miller gets back, a Jefferson/Love/Carney/Miller/Foye unit might be something to try to work with. Ideally you could play Carney with Telfair in a go-go-go lineup, but that’d leave you with two poor shooters at the 1,2, and 3, which is problematic.
Thanks....
…for the in house take. I wonder if Wally and his gal pal are victims of poor attendance.
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I wish we had DeAndre Jordan.
No, he doesn’t have any skills, yet. But, he’s 20 years old and he’s HUGE. Is it implausible that he’ll be a good center by the time he’s 24? I don’t think so.
He looked awful...
…completely clueless out there with zero game to speak of. He is huge though. I think it’s a stretch that he’ll be in the league when he’s 24. That being said, this team sold a top 2nd rounder that could have been put to use. That’s the real crime. Love is the only player on this team right now. Jefferson is playing like someone shot his puppy.
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Jefferson was great, last night...
until the game got out of reach. He had 23 pts in the early part of the 3rd Quarter, and couldn’t be stopped. He is, by far, the Wolves best player, but it’s good to see Love working so hard on the glass. Those two were the only guys who brought it, last night.
DeAndre had 5 rebounds in 9 minutes and had a nice block wiped away when the ref imagined a foul on Foye’s drive. He also drew a charge on a play where the ref imagined a blocking foul on Love’s bull-dozer move. DeAndre is raw, but raw is ok when drafting at #34. Ugh.
Jefferson...
…certainly had it on the offensive end but he’s a wash with his defense. It’s becoming more and more brutal with each game. Even in the game where he had 6 blocks he was torched. Big Al played about 3 more minutes than love and about 5 more than Foye and he had a -25 compared to their -13 and -9. He’s a brutal, brutal defensive player.
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He wasn’t guarding Randolph for much of it, and he certainly wasn’t guarding Baron Davis. I didn’t notice Jefferson getting torched, at least more than anyone else on the team. You’re exaggerating this point, I think, to try to support your notion that Love will (or already is?!!!) our best player. No, Jefferson is not a good defensive player. That doesn’t mean he’s terrible at it. Teams score 90+ points every night, and a guy who plays 37 minutes is bound to give some of those up, individually. I’m sorry, but Jefferson is the Wolves MVP, and it’s not even close.
He is by default....
…Love already has a better grasp of the two way game. He’s not the best player yet but he will be in short time. Big Al will probably always be a better scorer, but Love will surpass him as a player. I don’t know how else to label his defense other than terrible. It’s awful. He can’t guard anyone. He doesn’t know how to play help defense. Hell, Big Al even has an inkling about it:
http://www.hoopsworld.com/Story.asp?story_id=10821
And he does have some help with Love next to him. “Kevin’s a very smart player as a rookie – I’d never tell him that to his face,” Jefferson admitted. "He knows the game. What he knows right now – it took me to my third year to get what he knows right now, so that says a lot about him.
“He can rebound, he can score, and he’s a great passer. When you’ve got a guy like that on the side of you, that can always help.”
He’s a fantastic scorer but that’s it. Zero passing, zero defense, zero court presence on 1/2 of the court. And yet, I agree with you that he’s currently their best player. That’s what you get on a 4 win squad.
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I side with Andy G on this one...
Although Love is coming around, Al Jefferson is by far the best player on this team, and taking Al to task for his defense while heaping praise on Love for his “two way game” is simply absurd. Love’s defense has looked as awful as Al’s most of the time, and this is a serious problem for our team. Love’s lack of height and quickness both get exploited at least several times per game, and Love usually doesn’t get those points back at the offensive end like Al does. Just because it looks like Love is trying harder on defense doesn’t mean he’s doing it that much better.
I think Al is one of the top two offensive post players in the NBA, and we should be thankful we have him. Is he a top tier superstar in the NBA? Maybe, maybe not – he’s only 23, and I think he has quite a bit of improving left to do. Commentators often say that great players “add” facets to their games during the off-season, and Al added a 10-15 foot jump shot during this past off-season. Yes, he added an offensive component rather than a defensive component, but I won’t be surprised if he improves on defense a lot in the next two or three seasons.
It’s almost hard to imagine, but we would be a much, much worse team without Al Jefferson.
I'm not saying...
…Love is a defensive dynamo. I’m simply saying that he’s the only player out there right now besides Ryan Gomes who appears to have a clue on both ends of the court. He’s 20 times the help defender as Big Al in, what, his 19th game as a pro? Al is a fantastic, fantastic scorer but how much worse could this team possibly be without him? I’m not even saying that to suggest he be moved. He’s simply a scorer. That’s it. 20/10 with little else. Can you win with that at the 4 or can you win with 14-10, passing, help defense, and boatloads of intangibles? Watch Love on help defense next game. Go back and cue up the League Pass against the Clips. He is constantly putting himself in the right position defensively. He hits the right lanes. He covers the right spots. He rotates.
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Exaggerations...
can get out of hand. Is Love really 20 times the help defender that Al is? I doubt it. He shows harder on screen and rolls, but that also lets Zach Randolph post up Sebastian Telfair. (This happened twice, last night). I can’t argue that Jefferson is better than Love at defense, but I think they are both pretty average at it. Jefferson is not noticeably bad—at least not most games. Some games he struggles a little more, and the pro-Love crowd that has emerged pounces on them with the crazy idea that he’s better than Jefferson. Love is not a noticeably good defender, either. He works hard, ala Mad Dog, but he’s undersized and unathletic. By no fault of his own, that will prevent him from EVER being a great defender, and it will probably prevent him from being an above-average defender. It is what it is.
Funny how I praised Love so much at last night’s game, being really impressed by his work on the glass and offensive skills, but then read that Jefferson “is playing like someone shot his puppy” and have to take the opposing view… Jeff’s the man—he just needs better players around him, and next time, we should target a guy who doesn’t play his position.
This is just semantics at this point...
…you know what I’m saying: Jefferson is a terrible defender. Jefferson has looked completely out of sync the past few games and it has been taken note of by both home and away announcers on league pass. Look, I guess it has a little bit to do with frustration with this team on my part but there’s no way to actually quantify the statement “Jefferson is a terrible defender”. You can call it exaggeration or whatever but there is something going on here. The radio crew commented on his out of sync play, the tv crew did, the opposing crew did and I’m sure many of our readers did as well. This isn’t to say that anyone is “right” or “wrong” with their take. It’s all what we see and the more views that get expressed about what they see about this team, the better. I can completely see where you’re coming from on surrounding Al with good players. I just don’t trust this team to do it. I’m increasingly becoming of the belief that he has a very limited ceiling as far as two way play goes.
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One final note about the game and our terrible defense—I thought the Baron Davis vs Randy Foye/Kevin Ollie matchup was more painful to watch than anything on the interior. Just like with Billups, last week, Boom Dizzle was a man among boys, last night. We need an impact guard that plays with some swagger. Whether Mayo is that player or not, remains to be seen, but we need one before we’re going to move forward. You can’t compete when every All-Star guard is going to destroy you, like is happening with us lately.
I like the "swagger" comment -
this is probably the best word to describe what’s lacking in Foye’s game right now – he clearly has none of it. It’s strange because in some way he should be the ideal defender for Davis: big enough, won’t get overpowered, cat-quick, gives enough effort, etc. But you can just see Davis licking his lips when Foye comes over to guard him. Welcome to Team Weird.
by plinytheelder on Dec 7, 2008 12:37 PM CST up reply actions
Swagger...
is also missing from Shaddy’s game, and he sure had plenty of it, last year. What happened to that player? If he gave the same 14 ppg spark off the bench that he gave us for most of last year, we’d probably have 2 or 3 more wins and a few less blowout losses. The guards don’t play with confidence on our team. It’s how Kevin Ollie becomes a starter.
it's like Foye has been neutered...
remember how confident he looked his rookie year? He made dumb mistakes then, too, but you felt confident that he was trying to make things happen and that he had good, competitive instincts. Now, he looks meek and frightened, and he’s overthinking everything and therefore always tentative and a step slow. This is a coaching problem, I believe, and the next coach should just tell Foye to go out there and play his ass off. I don’t think Foye has it in him to play at an all-star level for an entire year, but he could be pretty effective if he were playing as hard and reckless as Brewer was before his injury.
I hear what you guys are saying...
..with Jefferson. Andy G and Shogun make some excellent points. The thing I want most on this board is to get as many different viewpoints of this team as possible. I know there is a particular direction above the fold (and one that is pretty pro-Love at this point) but I don’t want to stifle anything in the comments. Ultimately, the points and takes made here affect the stuff up top so I don’t want to make it sound like I think I’m right on this one. Thanks for making the opposite points guys.
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Exactly
Beater of the early Thabeet drum
by Wim (Belgium) on Dec 8, 2008 4:39 AM CST up reply actions
I don't think he's a terrible individual defender,
he’s just not very good at the help part. It’s strange because I think the effort is usually there, until that point every game where frustration sets in because they’re down by 30.
I think there’s a snowball effect on bad defensive teams: you don’t help because you know that if you rotate, no one is going to rotate to help you – i.e., if you leave your man he’s going to get a dunk.
Anyways who knows what’s going on with this weird team.
by plinytheelder on Dec 7, 2008 12:34 PM CST up reply actions
actually, Jim Pete spoke at length to the contrary last night...
…. Pete was talking about Al’s defensive struggles and then said something to the effect of how he’s “sure” that Al will become a solid defender. Granted, Pete his a homer, but I tend to agree with this particular observation just because Al is a fairly savvy and proud player. I don’t think he’s going to like being ridiculed as a “one way” player for his entire career, and I’d place a bet that he’ll become adequate at defense within two or three years (roughly the time frame we should be hoping for as we’re rebuilding the team to be competitive again by 2010- 2011 or so). Jefferson isn’t stupid, and I think he’ll put it together. We should be more worried about finding an elite guard to play with these guys.
Al's defense is terrible
Here is one example that’s been bugging me for weeks – go to the 1:45 mark and watch his quarter-hearted (can’t even say half-hearted) closeout on Durant in a critical late-game situation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwDRJ_ZUMIY
Luckilly Miller bails him out by hitting a jumper at the buzzer and pretty much everyone forgets about it.
Just because AL plays horrible D...
doesn’t make Love good at it. Yea he understands what to do better than AL but he is equally as horrible. As Andy stated, his lack of height, quickness, and athleticism will keep him from ever being a good defender.
Man, my guess is that something’s happening with this team that we’re not even aware of. I think I agree with both takes on Love and Jefferson – Al’s clearly improved his offensive game all the while looking, as S/P so succinctly put it, like someone shot his puppy; Love does more things and is a better help defender, at least positioning-wise. In some ways they’re as different and as tough to compare as Love and Mayo.
It’s amazing how much better everybody else seems to get when Love’s on the floor. I don’t think you can necessarily say that about Al…but with him raining in points maybe it doesn’t matter as much.
Anyways like I said I think something’s going on with this team that’s making all their weaknesses that much more glaring. Clearly they’re not all this bad. It’s as though the team plays to its weaknesses. It’s really bizarre.
Anyone read Zgoda’s blog post today? I just did and thought it was great. The first thing I thought was: they should hire this guy to coach the team. I love how, despite the fact that he’s working for a major newspaper (i.e.: don’t rock the boat), he basically calls everybody out. He’s as frustrated as everyone else.
The second thing I thought was basically what I said above: there is something really weird going on with this team. How about that bit about McHale hugging Jefferson and Foye? I have nothing against guys hugging, but in this particular context, it just adds to the whole David Lynch-esque aspect of everything. The Wolves are quickly turning in to Team Dysfunction, if they didn’t a long time ago.
I was going to post something about that Zgoda blog too....
…because it was a gem. Zgoda is much less outspoken, at least about his personal opinions, than LaVelle E. Neal and Joe Christensen, who write the Twins blogs. I always wish Jerry would say what is on his mind, because that is part of the comparative advantage of the blog context – it allows the beat writers to say what is on their mind without always citing sources and following all the other rules of journalism, and sometimes their hunches are more interesting/useful than the hard information that is fit for print in the daily paper.
Anyway, I think Jerry gets it right, for the most part. I don’t want to read too far into it, but I’m guessing the McHale hugs were symbolic of McHale apologizing to Foye and Jefferson for putting them in the positions they’re currently in, and it might be a parting apology if he gets axed or quits in the next couple of days. McHale has really put Foye, in particular, in a position to fail, trading Roy for him and then allowing him to be marketed as our savior even though the evidence never suggested that he would/could be. I especially agree with Zgoda’s opinion just to let Foye play the point for the rest of the year. I love Bassy and dislike Ollie, but regardless of what I think about either player, Foye needs to get a full season at the point to answer whatever questions remain. The weird thing about Witt’s infatuation with Ollie is that it happened just as Foye was stringing together some pretty impressive games at the point. Foye still was making a dumb decision or two per game, but he was looking so much better starting with that Pistons game. And then Wittman took that job away from him. That really left me scratching my head. It’s almost like he wants to destroy any confidence that Foye might happen to be building. Foye had a few select moments where his dribble-drive game, his shooting, and even his distribution, were starting to look Billups-esque. Don’t get me wrong, Foye is no Chauncey, but when a guy you’re counting on is starting to show signs, you don’t take his job away from him.
nice points...
…I was wondering about the whole “parting” thing too – I don’t know about “apology,” I don’t know if McHale feels he needs to be sorry for anything, but when you hear about the GM hugging guys in the locker room after a bad loss…well I don’t know about anyone else, but one of the things that crossed my mind was: he’s resigning. Maybe, probably, this is just wishful thinking on my part.
by plinytheelder on Dec 7, 2008 12:43 PM CST up reply actions
Here's Zgoda's post
http://blogs2.startribune.com/blogs/wolves/
It was one of his best. Access can allow for some pretty good blogging and this is a prime example of the direction reporters can go with their access on the blog front. It has everything: behind the scenes take + personal opinion. Fantastic work by Zgoda.
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In other news
Vikes are down with a minute left in the half, Detroit’s about to score, and Frerotte looks like he’s out. Ouch.
gerald wallace?
just heard a rumor of gerald wallace for mccants and collins
truth?
Reader question
How can you talk about running franchises into the ground without including Isiah Thomas? At least they’re not over in luxury tax territory, I guess that’d be a positive for this group…
Very good...
…add Ike to the group.
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RUMOR
I saw a rumor that Wittman will be fired before the game Tuesday (tonight or practice tomorrow), and that McHale will take over. We’ll see.
My guess is McHale...
….or the Skyforce coach.
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PS...
…here’s the link to the rumor on the chat room:
http://www.mnsportsfans.com/forum/showthread.php?s=15a04cbdd5f59ef1595da4f68a586146&t=24418
It’s not very well sourced so we won’t have anything above the fold but I want folks to be able to read for themselves. Here’s who I want:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEaSKjTP-7k
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me too...
(though I bet the Raptors nab him first)
The problem is he’s right in the middle of the season with CKSA – surely he can’t/wouldn’t leave midway through? It would sure be interesting though.
by plinytheelder on Dec 7, 2008 6:39 PM CST up reply actions
McHale
I’m interested to see how he uses Love and Foye. We’ll get a chance to find out what he was thinking on those draft nights.
JVG 4 LIFE!
omfg i <3 jvp. ftw!
Just kidding. Netspeak is dumb. I like Van Gundy, but I can’t imagine that Taylor will shell out the money to go after a big fish. Isn’t he still paying Dwayne Casey?
lolz u + jvg = bff!
Yeah I bet the likeliest suspect right now is McHale himself, I wonder if Taylor’s been hurt by this latest economic meltdown, I guess pretty much everyone has been. Give McHale the reins, dump him like a bad penny at the end of the year, and go after someone good.
Though to be honest the very idea of McHale coaching just depresses me…it would be so nice if Taylor would just fire the lot of them.
OK I’m depressed now.
by plinytheelder on Dec 7, 2008 8:44 PM CST up reply actions
Taylor's definitely hurting right now.
Ain’t no one shelling out big bucks for greeting cards and invitations these days. Plus the Petters Group probably won’t have too much money to keep sponsoring the Wolves with.
by wyn on Dec 7, 2008 8:53 PM CST up reply actions
Is Casey getting paid still?
I know he was but does his hiring with Dallas negate that or does it have to be a head coaching position? I suppose we should find out. I can tell you from Kato that Taylor Corp isn’t exactly rolling in the dough these days. I made my own holiday cards on my mac and millions of others are doing the same.
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Not to divert attention from Canis...
but over on his blog Britt just wrote a damning indictment of just about everyone associated with the Wolves. It’s a good read for the cathartic release of ANGER.
Did you see the tags Brit put on his post???
Kevin McHale incompetence
Randy Wittman incompetence
sports
Timberwolves players incompetence
ouch.
by wyn on Dec 7, 2008 9:47 PM CST up reply actions
That column was pretty late
I assume the editor needed twelve hours to remove all the obscenities in it.
I had to remove some from my original one...
…and I’m forever done with Big Al being The Guy. He literally can’t play ball on one end of the court. No one on that team should be considered safe from the blow up.
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