Now what?
For those of you who haven't been to a game at Target Center this year, one of the most interesting developments of the season has been for the home crowd to cheer wildly when Kevin Love gets another double-double and then promptly leave the stadium.
The Wolves marketing department has done a wonderful job building up a non-record record for the best player on the team and now it's gone. All we're left with is the new marketing campaign: "more". More losses? More bad draft picks?
One thing we can be reasonably certain of is that Kevin Love will continue to be the best thing about this franchise. Even the Warriors (excellent) announcing crew made note of this fact. Love will probably start yet another historic double-double run. What the Warriors crew didn't mention is that it will likely be accompanied by other assorted Wolves-related consistencies; namely...well, break out your draft raters and get ready for more June/July disappointment.
While the end of the double-double streak will get the majority of pub for the game against the Warriors, the in-game story of the night probably belongs to the fact that the Wolves were only able to muster 77 points against the Golden Staters.
The Warriors are the 2nd worst (only to the Wolves) team in the league in terms of opposing points/game, with 105.9/game allowed. The Wolves somehow managed to score the fewest points against the league's 2nd worst defense. They shot .366 from the floor. They turned it over 26 times while getting 10 shots blocked. That's crazy.
The play that stood out the most, to me, was after Kevin Love spent 2-3 straight possessions getting murdered with no calls from the refs. He was pretty worked up and he demanded the ball on the low post. After getting the entry pass, he made a move towards the center of the lane and made a nice pass to Darko Millicic, who then went up softer than a down pillow and had his shot blocked. Tons of effort by the best player on the team met by a candy-ass effort from a guy who should clearly care more about his play. The Warriors absolutely went after Love tonight and their physicality was not matched by any Wolves player not named Kevin Love. If ever it was possible to have an individual streak unceremoniously ended by a team, it was tonight's effort in the bay area.
And so it goes with Love and the Wolves. How many more wins would they have with near-average play at the point? How many more wins would they have if David Kahn had taken anybody but Jonny Flynn with the 6th pick? How much "more" will fans have to put up with the front office's inability to surround Kevin Love with guys who are able to play good pro ball?
I don't know what else to write at this point. Do we start talking about the draft? Do we hope for more dog-days wins against bad teams who bring sub-par efforts?
What I do know is that you should go here and donate what you can to earthquake relief efforts.
Up next: Utah and the Lakers. Only 14 more games to go before it's all said and done with. Then we'll get to talk about untapped potential and which player smiled the brightest during the NCAA tourney. We'll also get to talk about the high comedy that will take place during the press conference after Kahn fires Rambis. That should, at least, be somewhat entertaining.