Minnesota Sports Forum

The Wolves organization has made many draft blunders over the years. Some decisions (D-Will, Wes Johnson, etc.) can be overlooked because they were logical moves at the time.

But the decision to draft Jonny Flynn, a guy who had one outstanding college game and otherwise did not stand out, in lieu of Curry, the college basketball leading scorer his junior season, DESPITE being double or triple teamed every time he touched the ball, is the DEFINING MOMENT of this franchise's many failures over the years.

I remember being in Vegas the year of the Curry draft, jumping up and down when Rubio fell to us, and then turning to my buddy with all the confidence in the world, and saying "and now we're taking Curry." It just seemed too good to be true: we get the best passer in the draft AND the best shooter! Pumped up about this, I was poised to have a legendary night in Vegas, and then this happened:

"With the 6th pick in the NBA draft, the Minnesota Timberwolves select...Jonny Flynn."

What? I turned to my buddy and said "we have a trade set up." It was the only thing that made sense. Then the draft went on and on and on, and no trade. From what I can remember, I did have a good night in Vegas, but not legendary.

Afterwords Kahn spoke about his vision of Rubio and Flynn playing together. And Flynn's smile and Kahn's amazing ignorant confidence made me start to believe maybe, just maybe, he and whoever else involved had figured out something I could not grasp.

Well, Curry is simply amazing. MVP of the league, about to win a championship, and could go down as the best pure shooter of all time.

Flynn? He can't stick on an Australian team last I checked.

This is Bowie/Jordan material now. Epic fail.

What would have happened if we had taken Curry? Probably this: Curry would have shown great promise, become the face of the franchise, and I'm guessing we would have traded Rubio (who had insane value at the time) for another very nice piece to go with him. OR, Rubio would have came over and a Rubio/Curry Flynn backcourt would have been insanely fun to watch.

Hindsight? Yeah. Still, Curry seemed like the obvious pick at the time. Or if anything, picking Derozan at least would have made sense.

To the present: We got Wiggins. Huge. And we have some decent pieces around him. The question is, can we nab another superstar to go with him?

I have a feeling this draft is going to be another franchise defining moment. Please, for the love of Ndudi Ebi, don't draft Flynn.

Let me know when Curry wins 6 championships, redefines the game for a generation, and creates a completely new level of celebrity-athlete, and then we'll talk about the Bowie-Jordan Flynn-Curry comparisons. :) It still blows me away that Jordan almost certainly would have won 7 straight championships if he hadn't tried to play baseball that one year.

Kahn was horrible, and that was definitely a big one that got away. I feel you, man, but we've got to let it go.

Memphis took Thabeet 2nd in that draft. Was that their defining moment? No, they're a real threat in the playoffs year after year because they do all sorts of other stuff really well. You can't blame one missed draft pick for your fate. It's the compilation of lots of different choices, it's the way a team develops both players and a culture, it's avoiding injuries, and it's a pretty decent amount of luck. We've just made too many mistakes over a long period of time to blame one bad decision.

Yeah, I wouldn't paint it as the franchises' defining moment, but Kahn's defining moment.

I would say those three drafts were definitely defining moments over our past decade. With Love on board from the year before and Rubio in hand, Kahn had a chance to add a 3rd major piece and he failed. He had two other chances the following two seasons and failed again (Johnson and Williams). Those three drafts were absolute killers and has helped contribute to a continuous cycle of losing and re-re-re-building.

Curry refused to work out for us. Kahn hadnt hired Rambis yet, we didn't even have a damn coach. He wanted know part of us. But lets say we draft him anyway. He forces a trade, or comes here and gets stuck in Rambiss's triangle bullshit. It wouldn't have worked anyway.

Should Curry have been taken over Rubio?

Lets say Curry, and someone who doesn't play the same friggin position? Who would that have been? The wing who ended up in Toronto?

I'd probably put Ray Allen refusing to come here leading to a trade for Starbury and the Joe Smith debacle over the Curry miss because they both probably combined to cost us 1 title. I have to believe an Allen/KG duo could have pulled one off back in the day when you only needed two stars to win. The Joe Smith debacle pretty much put the finishing move on being able to properly build around KG after that. Curry is most effective on offense off the dribble which takes the ball out of Ricky's hands and we have no idea how Ricky holds up for 82 games primarily guarding 2's.

I'll never forget that draft night. If I remember right Michael Jackson had just died and it was one of the major news stories going on. I was waiting for something to be ready at a shopping mall, and was sitting in my car listening to the draft. Like Misty I was ecstatic when Rubio fell to us. And then I was euphoric when our turn came around again and Curry was sitting there. There was no doubt in my mind he was our guy and we were going to own this draft. You have to remember at the time nobody knew how bad Kahn was going to be. It was natural to assume he was going to make the right pick, do the right thing. Of course it didn't happen that way and the rest is Wolves history.

If we had taken Curry our roster would look much different than it does today. I'm not going to speculate on who the major pieces would be, but it's reasonable to think Love would still be here. I tend to agree with Misty that it was a major defining night in our history. And it's not completely out of the question to think that we would still be alive in this years playoffs had Kahn made the obvious choice.

1. While I'm not suggesting Flynn = Curry, I do wonder what people think Curry would be today with the same unfortunate hip injury Flynn had.

2. If we had Curry we would likely still have Khan, how does this work out? Not nearly as well as it has in GS.

Good point SP. I still think Flynn's injury and stupid offense did more then anything for his career.

As for Curry. I wanted Derozan and wanted to keep Lawson. We would have been pretty good with that group.

Shouldn't we be just upset that we drafted Ricky over Curry at this point?