With football season over here in Minnesota and with the Wolves in the midst of a stretch of fairly exciting ball, I thought it would be a good time to let our new readers know a few things about the site, as it appears that we have quite a few new folks stopping by to check things out.
1: This site is not a daily news aggregator.
If you want links to the latest and greatest Wolves articles from around the interwebs, the excellent Sonia Grover compiles a daily list of must-reads over at T Wolves Blog. There is no sense in duplicating her outstanding efforts.
2: This site is not a forum site.
We don't post topics and then have free-for-alls that have the tendency to quickly devolve into name calling by folks with avatars of half-naked, booty-shaking chicks. That being said, we highly value reader input and we encourage you to share your opinions via comments, FanPosts and FanShots. If you want to know how to post a FanPost or FanShot, click here for SB Nation's welcome guide where you can find a handy-dandy how-to guide.
If you are going to post on the site, we do not take kindly to swearing, name calling, bigotry, and other assorted forms of boobery. We revel in pop culture and politics and if you can find a way to tie an outside reference into the game action a'la MST3K, we will love you forever. With that in mind, this isn't a place to walk around with a big political/ideological stick. People come here to talk and read about basketball, not about how Sarah Palin was really a super-genius who was wrongly smeared by the "MSM". If you can make a funny joke or poignant reference with your politics/ideology, please do not hesitate to do so but this is strictly a No Proselytizing zone. Plus, the folks with the control of the delete buttons are all radical leftists and we will immediately get rid of anything remotely approaching conservative thought. Just kidding. We will give you a warning first. ;)
3: We love stats.
We love numbers. The more stats you bring to the table, the better. If you scroll down the left side of our site you will find a link box entitled stats/reference. If you're interested in the stats part of Hoopus, I suggest familiarizing yourself with 82Games and Knickerblogger above all else. I also suggest checking out these two excellent posts by my favorite SB Nation blogger atthehive: Stats 101 and Stats 102: The Hive Five. The 102 post is especially helpful for new readers as eFG, OReb%/DReb%, TOr, FT/FG, and pace are used with great frequency in these parts. I also suggest you familarize yourself with the Four Factors of Basketball Success.
4: We love front office talk.
Once again if you scroll down the left side of our site you will see a section entitled "Hoopus Features". We have a link to the most up-to-date team contract information to include player options, cap holds, and so on and so forth. We have a link to a page with a detailed list of draft picks owned and owed to the Wolves, as well as the team's draft history. We have links following the Wolves' two Euro draft picks. We even have a section that keeps tabs on all of the mock drafts out there (2008 version here).
5: We have a few lame running gags going here at the site.
The main one you may notice is that we frequently refer to the Wolves as "Our Beloved Zombies". This is in reference to Randy Wittman hoping against all odds that his tweener collection of small-ball, offensively-minded players could be an in-your-face defensive squad that runs a lot of slow-paced offensive sets:
As we have said many, many times before, the Wolves are who they are. They are a small ball roster built for up tempo offensively-minded ball with short rotations. They aren't a defensive juggernaut, they don't have a lot of above-average talent, and they don't have a real point guard. Witt and Big Al can yell at Foye until they're blue in the face (and they often do) and it will not change the fact that he's simply not going to be effective running the sets they have attempted so far this year...There are no shot blockers or guys that can get their own a'la Kobe or Roy in the 4th on this roster; their power forwards are undersized and thick; their shooting guards are lacking on defense; their 3 point specialist doesn't like to take shots; and their only true point can't shoot the ball. Remember folks, zombies only want to eat your brain. They can't do anything else. It's not in their nature so don't waste your time trying to civilize them. It won't happen.
When OBZs win, our readers are treated to a victory dance.
Wrapping things up, if you are thinking of getting back on the Wolves bandwagon we suggest reading the following two posts: Welcome Vikings Fans and Building a Winner. If you are unfamiliar with Wolves coverage around the interwebs, we suggest the previously mentioned T Wolves Blog for news aggregation and Britt Robson's outstanding On the Ball site over at Secrets of the City for game wraps and interviews. OTB is the place to see and be seen in Wolves-dom. Your other daily stop should be former Hoopus member Peter Weinhold's Hoop Springs Eternal. Peter's style is what I call "creative cynicism" and it is a solid representation of what long suffering fans feel about the club.
That about does it. Welcome aboard and we look forward to hearing from you. Come check out a game thread or let us know what you thought about the previous tilt in a game wrap. Go Wolves Zombies!!!