1. The latest ugly
First Mark Blount got his shot blocked by Dirk Nowitzki. Then five straight turnovers, two apiece by Blount and Ricky Davis and one by Kevin Garnett. It was 8-0 Dallas by the time Blount hit a jumper nearly four minutes into the game. By the end of the first quarter, not a single Timberwolf had made half his field goal attempts, with the team as a whole shooting 31.8%. Then it got worse. When it was over, Minnesota had set a franchise record for lowest team FG percentage, 29.6%, and scored the fewest points at home in its history while losing 65-91.

Yes, Dallas plays team defense as well as their Texas brethren in Houston and San Antonio, and probably rotates more efficiently than any team in the league, with once-derided defenders such as Nowitzki and Jason Terry doggedly doing their share, setting the tone demanded by coach Avery Johnson. But the Mavs, on the second end of a home-road back-to-back, didn't play that well in winning their 48th game in 53 tries. Minnesota had open looks and clanged them. When the Mavs turned it over (11 in the first half) the Wolves couldn't convert (only 7 points off those 11 miscues). Coach Randy Wittman, who occasionally swore a blue streak on the sideline, and, if nothing else, gives much better postgame than his predecessor Dwane Casey, neatly summarized the low points.

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Once again, the National Baseball Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee has banded together and voted to disallow anyone else from joining their club. Among those snubbed were two huge figures in Twins history: Tony Oliva and Jim Kaat.

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For all the acrimony and greed clouding the stalled land acquisition for the new Twins ballpark (see "Squeeze Play," CP 02/07/2007), one major point seems to be lost while everyone waits for eminent domain proceedings to run their course: Namely, that as the clock ticks, the stadium costs creep upward on what is now almost a daily basis.

This was evident at the February 16 Ballpark Authority Meeting. Dan Mehls, a representative for Mortenson Construction, the general contractor for the project, laid out the price of any delays: "One week would costs thousands of dollars, and one month would cost tens of thousands of dollars." He hastened to add that the money would come from the capped $90 million Hennepin County has to spend on acquisition and site prep.

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1. Garnett: Appreciation #432
The Wolves suffered their third loss in a row coming out of the All-Star break Friday against Phoenix, then barely beat a Washington team that was 10-15 on the road, was missing both Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison because of injury, and spent a miserable couple of days battling the Minnesota snow, including a multi-hour stint on a Duluth runway after circling for 2 hours over the Twin Cities trying to land yesterday. I understand the glass is 2/3 empty. But I've never been a big fan of despair, martyrdom, or apathy, especially when it comes to pro hoops, so it's important to me to also focus on the stuff that makes the glass 1/3 full.

Specifically, a point in my last trey was entitled "Toasted Superstar" and referred to the mental exhaustion I noticed in Kevin Garnett, via his inability to dominate matchups in which he was clarly the superior player. That the opponents in question, Andray Blatche and Emet Okefor, were considerably younger was also mentioned. Then I went on KFAN with Chad Hartman, and, when pressed, acknowledged that if the goal of the Wolves franchise was to win a championship, trading Garnett was the only option because I did not foresee how they could rebuild quickly and thoroughly enough to do it during the remaining years of his career.

All this left me feeling lousy. I've always been a huge KG defender, and felt very comfortable at it, arguing on pure basketball grounds. Now I was wavering, caught up in the frustrations of this season, the inevitability of Garnett's timeline and the simple fact that I believe this franchise will miss the playoffs for a third straight season with him on the roster. I don't take back anything I said previously, in these Three-Pointers or on the radio. But it is also time--past time, as always for those of us who have learned to take this superstar for granted--for another appreciation of Garnett's game.

First of all, who is the second-best player on this season's Timberwolves? A case can be made that it is a four-way tie between the other current starters--Davis/Hassell/Foye/Blount (the way I'd order them if I had to)--which tells you all you need to know about what an undistinguished lot Garnett has to work with. Here's an exercise: Pick your own second-best player. Now ask yourself if you'd deal that player for the second best player on any of the other 14 Western Conference teams, strictly for what they can bring in the 2006-07 season and without factoring in what the Wolves already have or don't have in terms of that position on the court. I'm choosing Ricky Davis, but I could also lean toward Hassell or Foye. Nevertheless, here are the players I would trade for anyone but Garnett if I were assembling a roster and the remaining 25 games of this season and a potential trip to the playoffs were all that mattered:

Dallas: Nowitski/Howard/Terry/Stackhouse
Phoenix: Nash/Marion/Stoudamire/Barbosa/Diaw
San Antonio: Duncan/Parker/Ginobili
Utah: Boozer/Kirilenko/Deron Williams
Houston: Yao/McGrady/Battier
Lakers: Kobe/Odom/Bynum
Denver: Melo/Iverson/Camby
New Orleans: Paul/Chandler/West
Clippers: Brand/Maggette
Golden State: Harrington/Biedrins/Pietrus
Sacramento: Artest/Bibby
Memphis: Gausol/Mike Miller
Portland: Zach Randolph/Pryz/Roy/Webster
Seattle: Allen/Rashard Lewis

Every team has at least two players better than the Wolves's second best. I see only one close call here: Rashard Lewis with Seattle, who has been hurt and is pretty much a push with Davis in many ways (and no, I don't think either Chris Wilcox or Nick Collison are better). Some might say Biedrins (and Pietrus, for that matter) are still too raw this season, but I feel pretty good about what Biedrins has brought and in any case, GS has been hampered by injuries to their two best players, Baron Davis and Jason Richardson, so a case could be made that under normal circumstances, Biedrins is no better than their 4th best player.

But toting it up, I would trade the Wolves second-best player for the second-best player on every single Western Conference team, the third best player on half of those teams (7 out of 14) the fourth best player on two teams, and the fifth best player on Phoenix. That's the short-term supporting cast of these Wolves.

During the Wolves' weekend split--a 12-point loss to Phoenix on Friday night and this afternoon's 98-94 win over Washington--KG averaged 27 points, 18 rebounds and 2 assists. Against Phoenix, he constantly forced the action, making it difficult to believe anyone ever regarded him as too unselfish, registering zero assists and six turnovers while racking up more than twice as many points (and nearly four times as many rebounds) as any one of his teammates. When I asked him if it was purposeful, this lack of sharing, given that he did get 28 points on just 16 shots and went off for 44 the last time he played the Suns, he talked about needing to be aggressive and looking for his shot, while acknowledging that the team plays better as a unit when the ball is moving and everyone is involved. "It puts me sort of between a rock and a hard place," he concluded.

There was a lot of talk--by me included--about how well young Blatche played versus KG last time out, but this afternoon was no contest. Garnett was 26-17-4 in 35:58 versus Blatche's 6-6-1 in 31:56. What struck me was how much KG was going to the hole--when was the last time you remember him getting 6 buckets in the deep paint (3 dunks, a tip-in, a lay-up and a five-foot bunny) and 9 FTA in the same game? That was probably a main reason why, as Steve Aschburner noted to me after the game, that the Wolves were +16 with KG on the court and -12 during the 12:02 he didn't play. When I mentioned his paint-oriented focus after the game, Garnett said, "Witt's been on my ass lately about bringing a little more force and challenging me to find different ways to score. I'm trying it his way...he thinks I'm perfect and when I mess up he looks at me all weird and shit. I take it." A minute later, when asked if he wants Wittman to return as coach, KG paused a half-beat and then said, "Absolutely."

He also talked about boosting Foye's confidence with a pep talk, and also getting into Ricky Davis's face--RD's nickname is "Pretty Ricky," likely in reference to both the R&B group and his diva personality--a little bit with encouragement during the game. "Sometimes Ricky needs someone to say something real to him. He only respects a few people around here. Fortunately, I'm one of them."

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1.The Randy Wittman Show
Sometimes he's been wry, sometimes rueful, sometimes angry, sometimes circumspect, but if Randy Wittman's Timberwolves are going to continue losing 9 out of every 14 games they play, and especially if they include such abominable, belly-up displays like tonight's blowing of a 17-point lead in a 95-100 home loss to a 20-33 Eastern Conference team like the Charlotte Bobcats, he's going to run out of ways of pretending to be in charge as the franchise crumbles under the corrosive chemistry in the locker room and the unremitting boredom displayed by those expected to be once and future fans.

Wittman knows that deadpanned platitudes and oblique criticism didn't work for his predecessor--and he had a .500 record. Thus, as the Wolves continually make liars out of their Owner and Personnel Veep by not being a juggernaut of consistency clambering up the playoff-seed ladder, it becomes incumbent upon him to do variations on the theme of exasperation. The catch is that Wittman's hands are tied--the roster is the roster, and will remain so unless a deal is swung before tomorrow's trading deadline. He may monkey a little with minutes to ostensibly send a message, but even Greg Popovich doesn't have any more than two or three players in his doghouse at a time--and Larry Brown proved with last year's Knicks that even the best coaches crash and burn when they publicly embarrass more than half the team. So it was a few weeks ago when Witt took special aim at his guards, threatening to shake up the rotation, only to reverse himself the very next day and say that the real problem was that he hadn't made it clear enough what he wanted--that, essentially, it was a communication issue and that he was at fault. Uh huh.

In the growing pantheon of Wolves 2006-07 losses, tonight was the worst on Witt's watch, and ranks second only to the epic Lakers loss when the Wolves were outscored 7-34 at home in the 4th quarter. Minnesota had 19 assists versus just 5 turnovers while shooting 63.4% to build a 58-45 first half lead. In the second half they shot 29%, squeezing out two assists--zippo in the 4th quarter--while committing 7 turnovers. It was the kind of performance that might even have compelled Dwane Casey to push past cliche in his postgame comments. What wrinkle would "take no prisoners," "no nonsense" Wittman come up with to show that this time he really was going to grab the wheel, or find the directions, or broil a newt's eye, and get this thing turned around once and for all?

"Our frame of mind was focused on `me' rather than 'we,'" Wittman began..."we got caught up in 'Am I getting enough shots? Are they running plays for me?' That's what happened to us tonight. We stopped playing... they outhustled us." In other words, the coach was calling his players selfish and lazy. It would have been more effective if he had named names, and to the discredit of myself and other members of the assembled media, we didn't ask him to. I did wonder out loud whether using playing time as a cudgel and being this specific in his criticism with them directly might cause him to "lose the team."

"Our record is 25 and 29," Witt replied. "I'm not worried about losing my team, I'm trying to find guys who want to play. I want five guys who are going to play for the team, not to score 16 points and get 10 rebounds. I would rather lose that way than the way he lost tonight...I am tired of guys pouting on the court during a game, worried about not getting enough minutes or enough touches. We didn't go down fighting tonight."

So, I said, There will be changes? "I don't know," the coach replied, feeling the rock and the hard place getting tighter.

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1. A Smart Rotation
There were about a half-dozen reasons to take heart from tonight's 99-94 win over Denver before the NBA pauses for its all-star game break, and the umbrella nurturing most of them was coach Randy Wittman's substitution rotation.

Wittman's hooks were quick, decisive, and purposeful. They didn't rely upon recent past performance--Marko Jaric, whom Stephen Litel pointed out to me had a team-best +31 over the last five games, logged just 6:50, while nine others finished with double-digit minutes played--or some predetermined pattern. And for the first time in a long long time, every one of them seemed to make sense.

Two mismatches dominated the early going: Classic point guard Steve Blake was schooling Randy Foye two out of every three possessions and Nene was having his way butt-backing Mark Blount down in the paint and diving toward the hoop on KG. So Wittman yanks Foye after just 6:37 (Blake already with 5 assists and zero turnovers, Foye with one assist, two turnovers) and the Wolves down 9-20. With Davis at the point, the ball doesn't automatically rotate through KG or Ricky Davis every time, although James is also looking for his shot more. The Wolves nearly double their point total in three minutes. With 1:59 to play, Madsen subs in for KG; by quarter's end, the Wolves whittle the lead down to five.

Coming off the bench to start the second period, Davis is the only starter left playing, and he sits after 23 seconds in favor of Rashad McCants. Wittman gives 8 guys at least 5 minutes of second quarter play, sits Trenton Hassell for the entire period despite Carmelo Anthony playing more than 9 minutes, and has the starters plus McCants in for an 11-2 over the final 3:13 that gives the Wolves their first lead of the game just before the halftime buzzer. At the half, five different Timberwolves had between 6 and 8 shot attempts.

I won't keep going with this kind of detail for the second half, but the other two points in this trey will provide plenty of examples. Suffice to say that at the end of the game, Wittman focused on those who statistically had bad games, like Randy Foye and Ricky Davis, stepping up and maintaining their effort and keeping their poise. I think a large part of it was that Wittman put the players in a position to succeed, but it often was also a circumstance that required his trust in them, circumstances when each of 9 players could look back and legitimately feel that he had contributed to this win. There was also some tough love and hurt feelings, and that too was a good thing.

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The game-within-the-game that is the major league arbitration process may be fascinating from an economics standpoint, but for casual fans and, I imagine, the players themselves, it's something you want to put behind you as quickly as possible. After all, is there any chore so tiresome for millionaire athletes than to bicker with their billionaire owners over a measly few million dollars more ? Christ, wrap it up already, it's the off-season. There are rounds of golf to be played!More >>

1. Celebrating against the Celtics
There probably isn't a good reaction to tonight's last-second win over the pitiful Boston Celtics, but watching the normally inscrutable Mark Blount sweep shot-winner Ricky Davis up by his armpits and haul/drag him halfway down the court in full-blown ectasy was simply weird, and a little unsettling. The Celts had lost 17 in a row, their last victory occurring against Memphis on January 5. They had an overtime loss at Washington on January 20, but for the most part they have been thumped pretty thoroughly for the past six weeks--their previous 7 games, they've lost by 14, 7, 14, 21, 7, 12, and 14 points. Yet there was Blount cavorting like the Wolves had just clinched the playoffs, and Randy Wittman proclaiming in the post game press conference: I told you earlier that I thought this would be one of our toughest games of the year.

It was tough in the sense that if you lose back-to-back games against 12-win Memphis and 12-win Boston, the two worst teams in the NBA, you can allow yourselves no more illusions about your potential playoff hopes with two months still to play in the season. And it was tough in the sense that Blount really scrapped, really wanted this one, and that the team as a whole played with more passion than skill. But a two-point win at home versus Boston after blowing a lead on the road versus Memphis? It must be asked: Is this the best the Wolves can do?

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1. Self-Fulfilling Failure
In some respects last night's overtime loss to the team with the worst record in the NBA was worse than the Houston blowout a week ago. This wasn't a question of talent, or even of execution so much as timing and confidence, which is all to say that Minnesota played just badly enough to lose. Not to look horrible. Not to abandon all hope. But just badly enough to slowly and surely screw themselves further into the ground when it comes to imagining any sort of future for themselves.

This is a collective failure of will, an almost psychological need to prove yourself unworthy. Garnett, Blount, Davis, and Hassell all had a bevy of admirable plays that pleasurably rerun in the mind and make you think that there is something here worth holding firm. But then crunchtime lays bare the psyche. Garnett throws a skip pass out of the low post to the referee, and only pretends to pick up Mike Miller on the pick and roll. Hassell throws a bounce pass that even KG's Inspector Gadget arms have no chance of corralling. Blount commits a stupid turnover handing the ball off to James in a crowd by the sideline. And Davis ignores Wittman's instructions to get the ball to KG in the low block on the final play of regulation, almost jacking up his own shot, then dishing to Blount with no spacing, enabling Hakim Warrick to block the shot. These are all pieces of a crumbling basketball team, the "little things" you always hear about winning games turning into little things that lose them. Minnesota was up by 9 with 10 minutes to play; up by 6 with 8 to play; up by 4 with four and a half to play; and tied at the end of regulation. It wasn't one huge bone-headed thing; it was a team-wide, self-fulfilling failure.

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I am on a deadline that gives one renewed appreciation for the word and thus had to catch tonight's blowout of the Warriors on television. Before I return to my odious task, I'll throw out a few quick things and let you good folks have it from there. I promise to tackle Friday's Memphis game sometime over the weekend.
Thanks,
Britt

1. No D in Nelson
Don Nelson's teams never play defense. That's the biggest cavaet to the latest Wolves's personality switch, in which they roared back from the offensive somnambulance of 77 points in Houston to ring up 121, replete with 38 assists, including the ten that enabled Kevin Garnett to have one of the quietest triple-doubles I've ever seen.

But maybe KG was muted because for a change he was just a cog in the flow. Mike James still can't play defense, as evidenced by Jasikevicius's 20 points and 8 assists, but #13 did push the ball--igniting that vaunted "flow" offense we've heard so much about from two coaches now--with relatively daring passes and asserting himself much better than he has in weeks, if not months. Ricky Davis and Mark Blount actually created marvelous spacing in the half court sets by, respectively, bombing away from outside (Davis was 5-6 from beyond the arc) and taking it to the hole early and hard (Blount drew two quick fouls on Biedrins and the big kid was never the same after that). Hassell was Hassell, filling voids like water. KG was able to just play: 17 points, 15 rebounds, 10 assists. Against a Don Nelson team, last in the NBA in points allowed, natch.

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