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First thing is, the Minnesota Lynx are pounding their opponents. Last night they won their 9th straight game to reach 16-3 on the season, thrashing the Seattle Storm 90-72 at Target Center.
They are outscoring their opponents by 10 points a game behind a balanced and devestating offensive attack led by the four all-stars in the lineup. They are also forcing a huge number of turnovers and turning them into points.
Short story: They are kicking the league's ass.
And you should watch, because it's excellent fun.
In the meantime, the Pekovic watch continues. Doogie Wolfson reports in his most recent scoops column that the Wolves offer is in fact 4 years, $48M. Apparently agent Jeff Schwartz was hoping for a max deal, but that now is clearly not possible. In truth, if that's the offer, he'll sign it eventually and be happy. There is some thought now that Pekovic might be stalling because he doesn't really want to go through too much training camp with the Montenegrin National team that is getting ready for Eurobasket next month.
Doogie also reports that despite Andrei Kirilenko's remarks that Flip Saunders chose not to re-sign him, the Wolves did in fact offer him a 3 year, $21M deal, which is obviously much more then he wound up getting from Brooklyn.
Not entirely sure of the truth here; at the time (early July) the local reporters seemed in agreement that the Wolves didn't really want AK back. I still think that is likely true. My best guess is that the Wolves floated the 3/21 early in free agency, when Kirilenko thought there would be more out there. Once he realized there wasn't, the Wolves had moved on and that deal was no longer available, if it ever really was.
That would have been a terrific deal, and it's pretty disappointing that it didn't happen. Certainly more appealing to me then the Corey Brewer deal.
A link worth checking out is Mark Cuban writing about the Mavs strategy over the past couple of years. Lots of interesting stuff in there, but one of the points he made is that the more teams try the "tank to draft superstars" strategy, the harder that strategy is to execute, and the more opportunity there is to successfully pursue alternate strategies.
Finally, schedules are set to be released Tuesday evening, so stay tuned.
Today's musical birthday: Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys was born on this date in 1964. He died in 2012.
This is an open, thread, you know what to do.