Blazers at Timberwolves Game Thread

Blazers at Wolves
7:00 pm CST
FS North

In the summer of 2006, both the Wolves at Blazers were in a bad state. The Blazers had just suffered through a 21-61 season, (their 2nd sub-30 win season in a row) and were mired in the Jail Blazers era with a terrible reputation and a bad roster.

The Wolves seemed powerless to stop the decline of the Garnett era in Minnesota, and were two years removed from the Conference Finals and the playoffs.

That June, the teams engineered a draft night trade that sent the rights to Brandon Roy to the Blazers for the rights to Randy Foye and cash.

Since that summer, the Blazers re-emerged as a 50 win team behind Roy, suffered devastating injuries to Roy and potential franchise center and #1 overall pick Greg Oden, dropped back below .500, and have now once again emerged as a strong team in the hyper-competitive Western Conference.

In other words, they have managed two reasonably successful rebuilds since that summer, and are now once again riding high with a strong roster and the 2nd best record in the conference.

The Wolves? They have failed to manage even one .500 season since that trade. They have been in a perpetual rebuild that can be actually broken down into 4 or 5 distinct rebuilds depending on how you want to count these things.

And they are yet again mired in the league cellar with a 4-16 record and a coach/POBO who admitted today that they are once again rebuilding.

Which raises the question: after a decade, can you even call it RE-building? What is the "re-" referencing at this point?

Anywho. Expected lineups

Blazers

Damian Lillard
Wesley Matthews
Nicolas Batum
LaMarcus Aldridge
Robin Lopez

Wolves

Zach LaVine
Corey Brewer
Andrew Wiggins
Thaddeus Young
Gorgui Dieng

Your blogging buddies are over at Blazer's Edge. Please. Be excellent. Or at least not terrible.

No no and no.

Enjoy the game. Chat here. Go Wolves.