On January 1, 2006, University of Minnesota football coach Glen Mason signed a five-year contract worth approximately $1.65 per year. On December 31, 2006, Mason was fired.

Never a charismatic nor particularly amiable coach during his decade-long tenure in Minnesota, Mason did take the Gophers to five straight bowl games. On the other hand, his teams never finished higher than fourth in the rugged Big 10 Conference and the bowls he went to were decidedly minor affairs, including the Insight Bowl this year, where the Gophers blew a 31-point lead to finish with a record of 6-7 and seal Mason's demise. The coach's overall mark of 64-57 was padded with nearly two-dozen games against non-conference patsies. This season, the Gophs were pressed to eke out a one-point win over North Dakota State, a Division I-AA school.

The Mason era saw some of the finest players ever to perform in maroon and gold. In the last three years alone, he coached the running back tandem of Laurence Maroney and Marion Barber III, both now gainfully employed in the NFL. Center Greg Eslinger won the 2005 Outland Trophy, awarded to college football's top interior lineman. And Matt Spaeth captured the John Mackey Award this year as the best tight end in the NCAA. And going back to 1999, Tyrone Carter captured the Jim Thorpe Award as the best defensive back in college football. The Gophers' lack of success despite this surfeit of top-flight talent leaves Mason with a checkered legacy.

1) There is no D in backcourt
There have been two occasions this season when Kevin Garnett has looked awful on defense; the first game against Milwaukee two weeks ago on the road, and last night versus New Jersey. What those opponents have in common are potent scorers in the backcourt (Redd and Mo Williams for the Bucks, Kidd, Vince Carter and Richard Jefferson for the Nets) and a nondescript front line (Brian Skinner and Andruw Bogut for the Bucks, Mikki Moore and Jason Collins for the Nets), which indicates that, visually as well as physically, KG may have been focusing too much toward help D on the perimeter.

I don't want to excuse the superstar here. The Nets entered the game last in the NBA in offensive rebounds and KG allowed Moore to corral five of them, most resulting in putbacks as part of Moore's tell-the-grandkids night of 20 points on 9-9 FG. But if all Garnett had to do was shut down Moore, don't you imagine it would get done? This team has a backcourt containing a maddeningly inconsistent defender in Ricky Davis, and a guy who hopefully just hasn't figured it out yet in Mike James. But James in particular was torched a variety of ways against the Nets--baseline cuts that also burned Garnett, Davis, Hassell and others, and perimeter jumpers from the likes of Eddie House, who is nothing but an inflammable gunner, with a quick release and a deadly eye but not quick feet or much height. In other words, if Eddie House gets 9 points in less than 6 and a half minutes, as he did against James in the second quarter last night, then House's man isn't guarding him very closely.

Again, without knowing the specifics of the defensive assignments, I can't rip James, who maybe was cheating toward Kidd and Vinsanity the same way KG was cheating off Moore. But I think it's telling that coach Dwane Casey sat James for the final 15:49 last night, even subbing in Bracey Wright for the entire fourth period after Marko Jaric had hurt his hand and was unavailable. Personally, I think that's a bad idea for a number of reasons--you further damage James's fragile confidence, and James is the most complimentary ball-handler for Randy Foye. James had 6 dimes and no turnovers last night while Foye, who had one of his better ball-movement games of the year, was at 4 assists and 2 turnovers. Yes, James continues to have trouble with his shot, going 3-10 from the field, with two of those being first-half layups. Bottom line, I continue to think that the team's best prospects for a playoff push this season involve Foye and James in regular rotation in the same backcourt.

All that said, Casey has a sound argument for benching James in crunchtime. The coach has maintained that he wants this club to establish a defensive identity, and that is almost impossible to do when James is on the floor. (Well, it's possible if you play a battered and dead-tired team, as Minnesota did Friday night at home against the Sonics. I understand Seattle had a rough flight in out of Denver the night before and were pretty much sleepwalking. But that was a horrible, feeble basketball team, easily the Wolves' most lackluster foe of the season thus far.)

Davis has ceased being the club's biggest albatross on defense. I'll concede that his incredible athleticism and occasional displays of commitment to that end of the court whet my appetite to see him explore his potential; and that when he inevitably takes plays off--sometimes bunches at a time--it intensifies my ire. Imagine how KG must feel, knowing the assignments, knowing what he's got in front of him, knowing that Kidd, Vinsanity and RJ are setting up while Collins and Moore are hanging out. A little more consistency from Davis, a clue or two for James (and Foye, for that matter) and perhaps the perimeter D will be such that we won't have to rub our eyes and wonder if that really was Mikki Moore going off for 20 on Kevin Garnett.

More >>

1) Goats with no backbones
So with 10:51 left to play in the game and the Wolves up five, 78-73, on the road in Toronto, coach Dwane Casey crosses all of his fingers and toes in fruitless hope and decides to rest Kevin Garnett for the first time in the second half. You know the rest: 3:13 later, KG is rushed back in because the Wolves have failed to score, ceding the lead via a 7-0 Raptors run. Ricky Davis misses a pair of jumpers and turns the ball over. Randy Foye blows a layup. Marko Jaric jacks a brick. It's the second half, so Mark Blount disappears. And Mike James is next to KG on the bench, waiting for his chance to prove that he's not ready for prime time.

Folks who believe Garnett just needs to put the whole team on the back of his shoulders toast their wisdom as he goes hard to the hoop on numerous occasions, hitting a baby hook and a short turnaround in the paint, banging home free throws, dishing crosscourt to Foye--the only other player with a pulse when the game is on the line--who nails a trey.

But of course it isn't enough because one-man ballclubs almost never can surmount the efforts of five opponents and the hindrance of three or four wilting teammates. Let's name the goats in order of obvious culpability.

Mike James: Yup, he had 20 points. Yup, he led the Wolves on the popcornmachine.net site with a +1. Yup he didn't turn the ball over one time. Yup he ranked third in the entire NBA in free throw percentage heading into tonight's tilt. Did he rise to the occasion and earn the trust of his teammates (not to mention a prorated portion of his $23 million over the next four years)? Nope.

His "defense" on Toronto point guard TJ Ford brought back memories of Sam Cassell back when Sammy was playing with an enormously painful back and hip injury (or, if you prefer, a year later when Sammy seemed to be trying to sabotage the Timberwolves season). Dribble penetration against Mike James is roughly akin to the dribble drills through those orange highway cones. Ford had 28 points and seven dimes, and was the clearcut player of the game thanks to James's matador D. Then, with the Wolves up by 4 with less than four minutes to play, James has the ball behind the three-point arc, ready to sink the dagger in. His jumper doesn't even clang, it caroms off the backboard without hitting the hoop. Then, to cap off his night, James is fouled with 8 seconds left to play, awarded three free throws that will tie the game if he makes them all. But the 93 percent free throw shooter is way off line on his second attempt and that's essentially the ballgame.

Mark Blount
Was it only last night that Kevin Garnett was lobbying hard for more second half minutes for Blount? Be careful what you wish for. With 8:24 left in the second quarter, Blount executed a nifty layup for his 9th and 10th points. He also had 5 rebounds at the time. Since he sat for three minutes, that's 10 and 5 in his first 12 and a half minutes. When the game was over, Blount had logged a team-high 41:12. He finished with 10 points and 8 rebounds. That's zero points and three boards over the last 29 minutes for a seven-footer who didn't even have to contend with Raptors' pivot man Rasho Nesterovic (who was guarding Garnett).

Ricky Davis
The second best athlete on the team. Tremendous passer, explosive scorer, fitfully indifferent defender who can wreak havoc when he puts his mind to it. Tonight he was 5-16 from the field and didn't score in the 4th quarter.

More >>

1) Foye leaps up the pecking order

It was happening again. Six days ago, the Wolves played their most ignominious game of the season, choking through a 7-to-34 4th quarter waxing that transformed a double-digit lead into a double-digit loss. Tonight, after being up 25 with 17:51 left to play and by 14 with a mere 5:34 to go, the Chicago Bulls reeled off a dozen straight points in three and a half minutes, forcing Minnesota coach Dwane Casey to call timeout up just 94-92 with 2:03 on the clock.

Casey called up a play that sent Kevin Garnett to his favorite spot on the left (if you are facing the basket) block, and a passell of Bulls dutifully followed him. Then Marko Jaric inbounded a beautiful bounce pass along the right baseline to rookie Randy Foye, who caught-and-shot a 15-footer that broke the Bulls run. Thirty seconds later, Foye drove the lane, was fouled, and nailed both free throws to bump the lead to six with 1:30 left. But Chicago tied it with 7 seconds to play. In the huddle, Casey again called Foye's number; a high pick-and-roll that was really more KG catching the inbounds, flipping it to Foye, and watching the rook work his patented right-hand runner, banking it in from seven feet. After the game, fellow rookie Craig Smith said Casey's tabbing of Foye for the game-winner was "automatic. I knew exactly what he was doing. Nobody can stop him...That [move] is his bread and butter and I haven't seen anybody stop it."

Having your embattled coach look smart by calling your number on the two most crucial offensive possessions of the game while the embattled personnel guy who manuvered to secure your services on draft day watches from the stands is one of the surest ways to move up in the pecking order of any ballclub. It also doesn't hurt that the Wolves need Foye to emerge quickly to lessen the sting on both KG and their hardcore fans over not landing Allen Iverson. It won't be an immediate and total fait accompli--there is still Ricky Davis and Mike James, not to mention a rapidly recovering Rashad McCants to contend with--but right now it is hard to imagine Foye not settling into the role as KG's primary sidekick and staying there until the superstar retires or is traded.

This is not all good news, by the way. During the Wolves' last four game winning streak, it seemed pretty obvious, and heartening, that if James found his aggressiveness and Davis humped on defense, Garnett had a nice little nucleus--or maybe orbiting electrons--against which to parlay his skills and weave his synergistic magic. But Davis and James are unreliable. They don't feel like winners. Davis does a lot of things well, and actually was sorely missed after he fouled out with 4:45 to play. But his defensive effort was again lacking--only the Bulls' ennui and succession of missed open jumpers saved his ass in the first half, although he did improve some in the second half--and the strong arguments you can make both for and against his overall game make it fitting that he was essentially acquired for Wally Szczerbiak, another teaser who bounces between solid second fiddle and shakey third wheel.

James is worse than that. At the 25 game mark, it is time for him to demonstrate why he was the Wolves' most significant free agent signing. Right now he is playing without confidence, and is THE weak link, including Davis, in the team's defense, has trouble making sharp passes, is clanging open jumpers at an alarming rate and has the second-worst plus/minus ratio--ahead of only Eddie Griffin--on the roster. Tonight he was 2-8 from the field, finishing with 8 points, 5 assists and 3 turnovers in 33:28 and was the defender the Bulls' most obviously picked on (although Foye, too, took his lumps on dribble-penetration) when Chicago played a small lineup and made their second-half run. Bottom line, Mike James was signed to be a catalyst and at the quarter-pole of the season has more often been the opposite, the dampener on the lit fuse. It's too bad, because Minnesota needs a perimeter player to initiate their offense (Foye, who was fabulous with 25 points in 25:53, nevertheless had just one dime and three turnovers) and James seemed tailor-made for the role abetting this personnel.

More >>

1) The return of Avis

For three weeks, Ricky Davis has provided team and on-ball defense ranging from mediocre to well above-average. But not once in that seven-game span had Davis shown the maddening gaps in concentration and listless energy that characterized most of the games in the first month of the season.

Tonight, Avis returned with a vengeance. It started innocently enough, with Charlie Bell, Davis's assignment and the Bucks' 6th leading scorer at 10.6 ppg on 42.4 FG percentage, getting half his average on a trey and two free throws in a first period that ended with Davis letting Michael Redd waltz downcourt to nail a trey with one second on the clock. After a three-minute rest in the second quarter, Davis returned with 6:33 left in the half and the score tied at 35, and proceeded to put on a shameful display of defensive indifference that might help add some zeros to Charlie Bell's next contract negotiation. At 6:06 Bell drove for a layup. At 5:46 he drove for another one. At 5:18 he nailed a 21 foot jumper off the fast break. At 4:57 he hit a 17 footer. Davis fouled him at 4:08 and Bell hit both free throws. For those counting at home, that's 10 points in 2:25, and a 7 point lead for Milwaukee. At the half, Charlie frickin' Bell had 22 points in 20:20 of action, all but 2 of them coming with Davis in the game as his primary defender. Bell finished with 28 points, negating Davis's 23, though Ricky did add 6 assists to Bell's 2. Still, when Ricky Davis and Charlie Bell are a push, the Wolves' chances of securing a win plummet.

More >>

The Cubs announced yesterday that former Twins rightfielder Randy Bush will be the team's new assistant general manager. Bush was a member of both the '87 and '91 World Series teams in Minnesota, and he's #40 in Aaron Gleeman's unfinished opus, the Top 40 Twins of All Time. I always liked Bush, but if his scouting and managing skills are anything like his post-season batting average (.227 in 11 games), the Cubs are in trouble. Personally, I think they already had one too many former Minnesota rightfielders in the organization.

1) Two examples
To be a good head coach in the NBA essentially is a matter of massaging egos and establishing a consensual pecking order in the locker room and putting your players in the best situations to succeed on the court. The presence of Kevin Garnett makes the first of those duties much easier for second-year coach Dwane Casey. Tonight's hide-your-face loss to the Lakers--in which the Wolves were annihilated 7-34 in the 4th quarter en route to a 94-111 pasting--was primarily attributable to Casey failing in the second of those duties.

Among many options, I'll choose two examples.

In a series of comment postings earlier today, I referred to Vlad Radmanovic as a "matchup nightmare" because he is tall (listed at 6-10) but plays like a two-guard, preferring to shoot threes or score in penetration or transition. Very few people Vlad's height get a lower percentage of their points on the low block. Casey knows this; he coached him for many years in Seattle. And yet Casey allowed Phil Jackson to match Vlad up with Craig Smith, the paint-centric center-power forward who stands 6-7 and weighs 272 (6th tallest and heaviest player on the Wolves). Now Smith has a huge heart, and gamely tried to stay with Radmanovich during his time on the floor. But if Vlad wasn't luring Smith out to the perimeter with his three-point shooting prowess and then blowing by the stronger but much slower player for layups, he was running Smith ragged behind screens and popping that trey in the Lakers' half-court passing offense. Bottom line, according to popcornmachine.net, is that Radmanovic was an incredible game-best +33 during his 20:09 on the court, while Smith was game-worst -20 in his 14:14 of play.

After Radmanovic blew by Smith for a pair of layups early in the 2nd quarter, Casey got Justin Reed up at 7:45 of the period. Okay, I thought, he gave Smith a shot and found out it didn't work. Reed is a much better option on Vlad. Except that Reed went in for Marko Jaric (who was having his own problems and seems to be dangerously close to last year's moody funk). Nor did Casey learn from his mistake. Because like everything for the Wolves in this game, things were much worse for Smith in the 4th quarter. Radmanovic bombed for eight points in 6:10 as the Lakers were turning a 77-87 deficit into a 96-91 lead, before Casey subbed in Reed for Smith, leaving Radmanovic scoreless until a meaningless trey in the final minute.

The second example involves Casey's insistence on foisting the classic point guard role on to Randy Foye. Now, I've said this before--Foye does many things well, and is also a guy you want with the ball in important situations. He breaks down opponents as well as anyone on the team. What he does not do well, and hurts his team doing when thrust in the role, is being the primary guy to bring the ball up and provide some creative initiation when the club is working their half-court sets. I'm talking about court vision; the kind of pass that might seem risky unless you are gifted at dishing. Kevin Garnett certainly has it--seven of his eight assists tonight were passes resulting in relatively easy layups for his teammates, and the other one was a dish-out to Mike James for a trey. More than half were stunning in their peripheral acuity and rapid execution. In other words, there were no "Stockton-to Malone assists" where he lobbed a pass to a guy on the block who made it happen pretty much on his own. Ricky Davis is another player who can probe with a pass, and Mike James, especially if his penetration game is going, can also dish.

Not Foye. Not yet. Maybe not ever, although I wouldn't conclusively rule it out. All I know is that right now, in his rookie season, when he is the point guard, Foye typically brings the ball up, surveys the floor for possible openings for his own drive, looks around for cuts and screens that leave a teammate wide open for a non-risky pass, and, if nothing presents itself, simply dishes to a player beside him out on the perimeter, usually with the shot clock at about 12 or 13. It is very similar to what Troy Hudson used to do when he "ran" the offense a few years ago, except that Foye doesn't dribble as well as Hudson and drives through traffic more often, so his turnover rate is higher.

Put it this way: Through tonight's game, the 22nd of the season, Foye has 38 assists and 36 turnovers in 348 minutes of action. He's the guy you want to swing it to with 12 on the clock and the defense not totally focused on him yet. He's not the guy you want dribbling the length of court, perhaps against pressure, with everybody watching and waiting intently for his next move. And if you do put him in that situation, you better have plenty of smart ball-handlers and scoring options out there with him. As I've written many times now, I think Mike James and Kevin Garnett should be his dual safety nets, but if not both, one or the other.

Tonight, Casey began the 4th quarter with Foye at the point and KG and James on the bench. Foye's options were an obviously rattled Jaric, a scoring but frequently stone-handed Blount, a slightly winded from chasing Radmanovic Craig Smith, and a decent safety net in Ricky Davis. When Casey mercifully subbed Foye out at the 5:02 mark, Minnesota had been outscored in the period 21-4 and had lost all sense of rhythm, rhyme or reason in their half-court offense. It wasn't that Foye was throwing the ball away--he had just one turnover. But he wasn't initiating anything positive either: He had zero assists and the team had exactly one basket in those 7 minutes. Again, this is not the fault of Randy Foye, a marvelously talented rookie who was put in a situation that significantly reduced his odds of success.

More >>

The Wolves never really had a great chance to land Iverson. The reason they were talked about at all is because Garnett and Iverson both wanted it and encouraged it so thoroughly. And they're right--they would have been fabulous together.

But from almost all accounts, what Philly wants to do is start from scratch. That's tough to do when dealing $18 million worth of contract, but the Denver deal does the deed rather nicely. Both Joe Smith (at $6.8 m) and Andre Miller ($8.6 m) have deals that expire at the end of this year (according to the salary page at hoopshype.com)[***correction: Miller is signed through 2008-09, according to shamsports.com]. The two first-rounders are not high up, but Philly's will be. In fact there is a fairly decent chance of them landing Greg Oden with the top choice AND having two other first-rounders to go with him and Iguodala; and they'll actually have cap space(!) after Chris Webber's deal expires at the end of next year. Bottom line, Philly blew themselves up pretty well, and with Miller around for a few months won't have to suffer the indignity of starting Kevin Ollie at the point the rest of the season.

For Denver, it changes the conversation away from Melo's punch, and gives Iverson a chance to establish himself without Melo around for awhile--a good thing, I think. But it also puts a phenomenal amount of pressure on George Karl, who is now coaching a team that, without even factoring in Iverson's contract and Melo's eventual extension, owes $28 million in salary to two dinged up players--Nene and K-Mart--in the 2009-10 season!!

Oviously, Melo and AI won't mesh nearly as well as Iverson and KG would have, and there will be issues about who the alpha dog is. BTW, Karl isn't all that great at managing personnel--he usually pisses people off after a couple of years together. So, it is a net plus for the Nugs--getting Iverson is a net plus for anybody--but not the overwhelming improvement needed for them to overtake the Dallas-Phoenix-San Antonio trio. I'd put them with Utah, the Rockets, the Lakers and, assuming Sam Cassell hasn't totally screwed them up, the Clips, in the second tier of playoff hopefuls. You note that's eight teams. To get into the playoffs, the Wolves have to beat one of them, not to mention New Orleans.

But to repeat myself, Minnesota never had a realistic shot at AI, even if Foye and Craig Smith were on the table. Why? Because they have no large expiring contracts and no first round picks for the next two years.

1) Dropping a Toss-Up Game
For all the hullabaloo about Wednesday's tilt with San Antonio being a "test" of the newly invigorated Wolves, beating the Spurs on the road was always a pie-in-the-sky dream--c'mon, the Spurs are 113-21 at their place over the last few years! Let's get real: The brass ring for this current squad is a number 7 or 8 playoff seed, and the way to make that happen isn't crossing your finger in San Antonio, it is beating sub-mediocre Eastern Conference teams missing their starting power forward and playing the second game of a back-to-back. In other words, beating the Bucks in Milwaukee on Saturday night was one of those realistic barometer games by which you measure the team's prospects. Right now you can go through the schedule and identify many games where you'd be frankly surprised if the Wolves won, a fewer number of games where you'd be surprised if Minnesota lost, and then the ones that really determine the season: the toss-ups. Playing Milwaukee on the road was a toss-up, and the Wolves squandered that opportunity, blowing an early 11-point lead and falling 104-108.

More >>

1) No contest at the point

The lead-in to tonight's television broadcast depicted the point guard matchup between the Wolves' Mike James and the Spurs' Tony Parker as being second in importance, and, it was inferred, competitiveness, only to the classic KG-Tim Duncan rivalry at power forward. But as Parker soon proved, he has more talent, poise, quickness, and court vision than James at both ends of the court.

Yes, Gregg Popovich is a better coach than Dwane Casey, the Spurs are more familiar with their systems, and Parker's teammates are more talented than James's. None of that adequately explains why Parker is capable of so thoroughly disrupting Minnesota's defensive schemes, or why James was choked off from scoring and dishing. Even in the first half, when the Wolves raced to an improbable 54-38 lead with a 44-19 run, Parker was outplaying James before he was compelled to sit with foul problems, and the Wolves were more effective when Randy Foye subbed in for James.

When it was over, James had one field goal (on seven tries), two assists, four turnovers and six fouls in 28:17. Parker scored 23, added six assists, and committed a single turnover. Parker is among the top half-dozen point guards in the NBA. James is somewhere in the middle among the 30 starting point guards. No criticism, just fact.

To reiterate what I said in my last post, when James, Ricky Davis and Kevin Garnett can establish crisp, unselish ball movement, everybody benefits. When James and Davis can't break down defenses or otherwise compel opponents to stop double-teaming and trapping KG, their stats are ugly and the Wolves lose. So it was Wednesday night.

More >>