An Artist In His Own Words

…if you have a stand-alone female child, you will not have to buy the gun and learn how to use it until she’s about 10 or 11. If you have multiple female children, the younger ones look up to and want to be like their older sister if the older sister is pre-teen or teenaged. In this case, you will need to buy your second weapon when the middle child is 6.

However, it is always best to develop a non-violent prevention strategy. My strategy is called Operation Dorkify. Math, science, science fiction books, cross country running, and orchestra. If they have glasses, don’t get them contacts. Get them lab coats and ant farms for birthday presents. Your number one goal in life is to make them find anything considered remotely “cool” by a 15-18 year old boy absolutely repulsive. The goal is for them to hit their stride after they finish graduate school with a degree in biology.

I understand how valuable rebounding is as a basketball fanatic. I know how important possessions are. However, they are not as important as WP is suggesting – not even close. A recent fanpost did some quick work on correlating certain stats to wins. http://www.canishoopus.com/2011/1/19/1944182/solutions-to-all-our-problems

Rebounding, while important, wasn’t much more important than offensive efficiency, assists, or other basic metrics. Going to Hollinger’s team stats database and looking at top teams shows the same. It’s important, but not that important to give it the type of value that the WP author did. (By the way, I said earlier that PER doesn’t value them as high as WS – but thanks for adding that “PER doesn’t value them as high as WS, by the way” remark.)

Second, I am offended at the idea that his number shows Love at the top player and people are claiming it to be a good stat. I can view something through a new lens and be okay with it – I do it with other stats. However when a stat is this far off a reasonable line, it becomes worthless to me. This stat does not show me something concrete like the number of deflections a player got on defense – it is a stat that collected many stats and tried to throw them together to make sense of everything… and it failed. Yes, it projects wins relatively fine, but when it comes down to a SINGLE player, it fails.

Much fairer.

No, really… WHY THE FRICK IS THAT?

Top rebounding guard – coincidence that he’s the 14th rated player, valued as a star, and one of the top guards on his rating?

Kris Humphries, top-5 rebounder out of rotational players. He’s 7th.

Kevin Durant, one of the weaker rebounders at his position… he’s 23rd.

Eddie House, efficient offensive player who is playing a bit role and does little else, he’s 54th.

Stephen Curry, efficient offensive player who is playing a major role, he’s 65th.

I mean, I’m not saying he got these ratings out of thin air, only that the formula is messed up and he needs to correct it in order for it to be truly useful. Right now it’s just a list of names, not something which displays who the best players in the NBA are – as he touts on his header.

have opposite meanings, so I don’t understand how one could expect them to occur simultaneously.

He’s talking out of his ass, trying to both hedge expectations, and sell hope. He lies when he should tell the truth, and he’s uncomfortably candid when he should just shut up. He thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, and yet comes off as completely tone-deaf and dumb.

I’ll give you credit—if you defend him after today, your unfathomable faith shall never be shaken, no matter how many more days and weeks he is “working harder” for the Timberwolves.

….that a professional basketball team could have hired someone that doesn’t know the first thing about professional basketball. Also, I’m torn between your arguments here. On one hand, Kahn doesn’t know what he’s doing. On the other, he’s also a terrible salesman who thinks he is the smartest guy in the room. I kind of split the difference in the season preview by wishing for this:

My biggest wish for the season is that David Kahn continues to maintain an ultra-low profile. It is in everybody’s best interest that he says as little as possible, as he has a tremendous knack for being either prodigiously condescending or for putting his foot in his mouth. Even when he does something worthwhile, he is really hard to root for. Again, the focus of anything related to this franchise needs to be pointed back on-the-court. In order for this to happen, we need continued radio silence from the POBO.

Not perpetrating fraud upon the paying public. I know it’s kind of harsh, but last year was an unmitigated disaster that was not only one of the two or three worst seasons in franchise history, but was also an 82-game washout that became (according to team legend) a testing ground for the long term plans of Coach Rambis and POBO Kahn. I’m sure all of you who paid for a ticket are happy to hear that.

I want competitive and entertaining action on a night-in/night-out basis. This probably means that we’ll need to see some solid coaching and player development. For better or worse (most likely for the sake of addiction), I appear to be the type of fan that is in this thing for the long haul. My goal this year is to not feel like a dupe for following this team. Again, congratulations Timberwolves—low expectations have garnered you another victory.

The team’s strengths:

In theory, this team should control the boards on both ends of the court, play decent defense on the wings, shoot well from beyond the arc, and win 10-15 games simply by showing up and shooting the rock at a general percentage unseen in the post-KG era. In practice, I’ll believe it when I see it. I like what I’ve seen so far this preseason, but the current mixture of this club is volatile and could go south in a hurry. Martell Webster and Wes Johnson are not known as good shot creators off of the dribble, Michael Beasley hasn’t proven he can be a solid gunner, Jonny Flynn is suffering through the 2nd-year Wolves curse, this coaching staff has shown exactly nothing so far, and [insert your own possible blunder here]. When this team is winning games (or losing in a competitive manner) Kahn’s “plan” will seem like it is headed down the right track, as we should see lots of hustle, athleticism, length, passing (especially from the bigs) and good shooting. When this squad is losing games, it will certainly be pitched by the team as a work in progress (and, to be fair, it is), but it will also still be the result of a long-running tradition of horrific front office decisions (both pre and during the Era of Kahn). At the end of the day, this is still a 15 win franchise with an under-performing coaching staff and front office that passed on the BPA with a top 5 pick and was unable to turn additional (and multiple) 1st round draft picks into anything other than Martell Webster. The one thing they have going in their favor is that anything approaching average will be greeted by us die-hards as honest-to-Pete manna from heaven. The soft bigotry of low expectations finally has a home at 600 First Avenue.

The guy’s not exactly lying. He’s just wrong,

Don’t forget that they traded Cardinal for Darko and then brought Cardinal back because he was a good influence in the locker room and on Love. They talked about it a lot near the end of the year on the radio broadcasts. Every now and then Cardinal will drop a quote about Love:

Brian Cardinal was changing out of his practice sneakers into his ready-for-snow-and-ice sneakers after the Mavericks’ shootaround this morning at Madison Square Garden when I got a chance to ask him how many games he’d won last season when the calendar hit February.

“Not many,’’ he said.

That led us to reminiscing about his days with the Minnesota Timberwolves last year, a time when the starting forward for the Mavericks (again, tonight against the Knicks) made a good friend in Kevin Love and learned to hate losing even more than he thought he did.

“A while back,‘’ Cardinal said, "I took a picture of the standings and texted it to Love, just to bust his chops,’’ Cardinal said. "He sent me a picture back of a snowdrift.’’

Love and Cardinal remain friends and Cardinal can sympathize with the Timberwolves, who remain at the bottom of the Western Conference standings. But that’s as far as it goes. Being with the Mavericks and being on pace to win 50-plus games is way preferable to losing that many.

Muss was not exactly a proponent of playing young talent. He got fired over things like not playing the illustrious Gerald Glass, to develop him.