Minnesota Sports Forum

Mark - First of all, I think SP captured the bigger, more important point. But I'll take one more shot at addressing your unrelenting refusal to understand what you're missing. Of course I didn't select a 7 game stretch at the beginning a season. I selected a comparable point in the season (March 9 v. Feb. 1) with a comparable number of games (40 v 46). More importantly the time frame I selected clearly reflected the presence of Love and Ricky based on comparing the team at the point in the 2012 season just before Ricky went down to previous seasons and to the rest of that season after Ricky went down followed by Love missing a ton of games. It's unfortunate you can't see how silly it is to congratulate Flip for this team having a slightly worse record than it had at essentially the same point in the season two years ago back when Flip wasn't here. And it's odd that you can't see, based on the last three years, that the difference between this team being a .500 club versus a sub-.500 club clearly relates to the presence of a healthy Love and Ricky.

The end.

Congratulations to Flip for bringing us almost all the way back after 46 games to where we were two years ago after 40 games. LOL

Mark, I need to know -- do you not find this season a huge disappointment so far??

Good question papal......(and SP and Lip will see my perspectives on their posts also)......no I do not find this season (to this point) a huge disappointment. Should they finish the season at .500, I will think that is a disappointment.

I have said from the beginning of this season that I thought the team would get better as the season progressed. I think that is in the process of occurring (bench improvement since the beginning of the season, role players getting better at playing their role, Pek's significant improvement etc). I expected this season to have huge learning curves for the players on this team, and i think that is what we are seeing.

I am most disappointed with our "big 3"'s under-performance during clutch time (losing all those close games). I did not expect that Love, Ricky, and Pek would ALL have the significant drop off in performance that we have seen. While I don't like their clutch time performance, all 3 of these guys are trying to learn how to win at this level. I would have liked for them to have done better but. I am shocked that they are struggling in these (numerous) situations?....Not really.

Most every high functioning team needs to learn how to win together in order to be successful. That is what these guys are struggling through right now. And right now, the big 3 is doing better than they have EVER DONE BEFORE OVER A LONGER PERIOD OF TIME (ie more games). Many want to downplay this point.....I appreciate the that they have shown that they can maintain an acceptable standard of play over longer times.......that is a necessary step in the improvement of this team IMHO

Ricky, Love and Pek are in the process of getting closer to putting a full season together. It seems pretty obvious to me that many on this board downplay the difficulty of putting together 82 good games, or atleast trying to do so (Which ricky, love and Pek have never even tried to do that collectively).

I definitely can appreciate good stretches that the wolves have put together in the past.......and the current stretch that this team is on 23-24 (or 23-23 for this initial post), is the best stretch that the majority of the players on this team have put together EVER as wolves.

That stretch, while being perfect by no means, is improvement over what we have seen them (3 key players) in the past. Just expecting for these guys not to have significant learning curves (especially players who have no experience at winning at this level like Ricky, Love, and Pek) is absolutely absurd in my book.

The shorter streaks that the wolves have put together in the past just don't seem very relevant (as base standards for comparison) considering the aforementioned points.

That is why I congratulate Flip, Adelman, and the team for what they have accomplished to this point.

Quick additional point....Everyone knows that last season Love came into to season in poor shape. I understand that some may view his injuries a luck.

At competitive levels in sports, it is pretty common knowledge and being in good shape reduces the chances of breaking you fingers while doing pushups.

~

Attributing Love's injuries last year to "luck" is speaking well outside of your knowledge base.

While I am not sure congratulations are in order, I do agree with markkbu that there are some positives from the season thus far. The most prominent for me is that we rarely are beaten badly. As Q has mentioned several times -- if we just had a handful of breaks go our way, our record could be much different.

Is it possible that this motley crew just doesn't have what it takes to win close games? Yeah, I suppose it's possible, which is a very depressing thought considering our lack of options for improving the team. I guess the one hope I cling to is that some combination of players and coaches may figure it out just enough to swing some of these close games our way. But it is down right frustrating waiting for that to happen...

TheSP wrote:Mark, Its great that you're able to see the positive in the current teams record! However, the longer a team exists as a league laughing stock people's expectation tend to diverge. In your case you see the best record at this point in the season in a decade, others of us have seen enough and demand more.

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. Overpaying for middling bench talent has become a Timberwolves tradition, and it has produced the same results every single time, yet we continue as though this time it might be different. As a TWolves fan from day one we've had exactly two superstar players, and in both cases we've built an embarrassment of a team around them to the point of having zero cap flexibility to improve further. Same team, same story, different cast of characters.... same ending.

How dare you call Joe Smith middling bench talent.

We aren't playing any better than we were at the equivalent point in the 2012 season when we were 2 games over .500 and surging. But I'll give Flip credit for not making things worse than they were two years ago. And I'll give him credit for repairing the relationship with Love that Kahn almost destroyed last year. I will also give Flip credit for bringing in a trainer who may be responsible for our relatively good health so far this season.

Thanks to McHale and Kahn we have three solid building blocks in Love, Ricky and Pek. Unfortunately, Kahn screwed up all the rest of the many opportunities he had. Then regrettably, Flip used up our remaining cap space and trade assets on mediocrity, giving mid-level long term contracts to below mid-level talent (Brewer, Budinger). And among other things, he signed and traded for three one-way players -- Brewer, Luc and Martin - only to tell us now that we have too many one-way players. Actually, re-signing Budinger was arguably a 4th one-way player Flip signed or traded for since he took over. I just can't congratulate him for anything at this point. To be fair, I don't curse Flip. I reserve my cursing for Kahn.

I share Lip and anyone else's cynicism that Flip is going to right this ship. Markbu you are with them through thick and thin. Good for you. Don't let us cynics ruin your faith!