IF Glen had picked me...

This is rough and some of the stuff might be wrong, but I've done a lot of research and believe that this is how my team should look come Friday morning.

Trade Miller for Camby, gain 2 million dollars in the process. Go with a rotation of Jefferson, Camby and Love at 4 and 5.
Trade Foye (3.5 Mil and qualifying next year) Gomes (3.8 Mil expiring) and Madsen (2.8 Mil expiring) and 18th to Washington. Washington Gives us The 5th pick and (maybe) Andre Blatche. With the 5th pick we select (1)Tyreke Evans or (2) James Harden.
Take the 6th pick and trade it to the Knicks for their 8th pick and Wilson Chandler. We Basically give them their choice of PGs, which is what they want and gives us a reliable SF in return. At 8 we make a choice about Stephen Curry, Jonny Flynn, Brandon Jennings and Jrue Holiday). Most likely Two will be gone. My guess is Knicks take Stephen Curry and maybe The Warriors go with Jennings. That is fine with me, I kind of want Flynn as my PG with Evans at 2. Feel free to add the 28th or either of the 2nd rounders if the other teams won’t quite bite yet. NY may need a 2nd rounder in return for Wilson.

Maybe package other 2nd rounder and 28th to move up to the early 20s for one more prospect. Austin Daye is my #1 target and will most likely be around, but Eric Maynor, Sam Young, James Johnson, a sliding Earl Clark or Gerald Henderson or possibly another Euro Stasher to go along with Pekovic for future reserves.
Do Not Pick up team option on Sheldon Williams. Do pick up Rodney Carney’s option.
A shade under 60 mil is the cap this year. As is the Wolves clock in at 50 mil, the Wiz at 75 mil and NY a shade under 70 mil. Dallas (at 22) is at 69 mil, New Orleans (21)is at 72 mil, Utah (at 20) is at 72 mil, Philly at 17 and already a stretch is 2 mil under.

Depth Chart looks like this by game 42
PG- Flynn (or other rookie)- Bassy
SG- Evans (or Harden)- Carney
SF- Wilson- Brewer
PF- Big Al- Senior Amor
C- Camby- Blatche

Bench- Brian Cardinal, Craig Smith, Bobby Brown and Austin Daye (fingers crossed).
That makes 14 and cost a bit over 46 million. We shaved 4 million and became way more competitive. The following year Camby and his 7.6 and Cardinal and his 6.7 mil come off the books, that is good trade bait.

Blatche has 2 more years at around 3 mil each, Chandler has 2 more at 2 and 3 mil. Love has got 3 going to 6 mil. Brewer has 2 going to 5 mil, but the last year is a team option. Bassy has one more at 2.7 And carney at 3.6 after the signing. Big Al and Love are currently the only people on the roster going into 2013

Theo Ratliff has Flown the Coup

The Wolves have waived Theo Ratliff. According to The Detroit News he'll be picked up by the Detroit Pistons and have an opportunity to get his ring before his ever looming retirement. Unfortunately for Antoine Walker, it was not Antoine Walker who was given his walking papers. Walker is also having trouble understanding that you don't need a passport to enter Ohio.

This was bound to happen knowing that Ratliff was in the last year of his huge contract and would be holding back the development of Chris Richards in terms of actual game play over the last 30 games of the season. It would be silly to expect that Richards end up as the starting center, and I'm pulling for out lottery pick to be a center* so we can move Big Al to power forward, but its good to get him into the game more.

Best of luck to Ratliff in his quest for a championship and thanks for opening up that gaping hole in our cap space. TWolves Blog is the best place to find out more on the deal.

*unless Derrick Rose is available

Gerald Green Brings his Cupcake to Houston

The Wolves traded Gerald Green to the Houston Rockets For Kirk Snyder (Above), a second round pick in 2010 and some cash. Green was the odd man out in the core of young players we received from Boston for KG. Its too bad that somebody as athletic as Green couldn't translate that onto the court with the Wolves. The team did the right thing in trading him for a pick and some cash, but I'm afraid that somewhere along the line somebody will be able to teach this high school pick how to play at this level properly. Green played High School ball in Houston and said that the trade was a dream come true.

Snyder, a 6-6 guard, hasn't had much of an NBA career averaging 15 minutes, 2 rebounds, 1 assist and 6 points while playing for the Jazz, The Hornets. He lead the Nevada Wolf Pack to its first ever sweet sixteen in 2004 after beating Gonzaga and Michigan. That season he averaged nearly 19 points, 6 rebounds, 3.5 assists and a steal per game. Most likely Snyder will be gone from the team when the next season begins, but hes still got about 30 games to prove that he belongs on a team with very few certainties.

Thank God Almighty!

The Wolves won. Their victory made me realize that I have my own dream.

Two years less a score Marv Wolfenson and Harvey Ratner, in whose symbolic shadows we stand today, signed the expansionation proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light to thousands of Minnesotans who had been frostbitten by the winds of withering injustice. It came as a joyous ray of sunshine to end the long winter of discontent.

But eighteen years later, the Minnesotan is still not free. The life of a Minnesotan is still sadly crippled by the manacles of ineptitude and the chains of it's ownership. The Minnesotan lives on an island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity (Portland?). And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

We have come to this hallowed spot to remind the NBA of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promise of victory. Now is the time to lift our team from the quicksands of injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to making winning a reality for all of the shivering children.

It would be fatal for the ownership to overlook the urgency of the moment. This freezing winter of the team's legitimate discontent until there is an invigorating spring of defense and teamwork. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in Minnesota until the Timberwolves are granted the right to victory.

But there is something I must say to my team, who stand on the warm threshold which leads to the palace of parquet and iron: in the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for victory by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative defense to degenerate into violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of physical force with contact on the ball and the ball alone.

We cannot walk alone. (Travel)
And as we walk, we must pledge that we shall always push the ball forward.
We cannot turn our back. (on the ball handler)

There are those that will ask the fans, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the team is victim of the unspeakable horrors of road losses. We can never be satisfied when our bodies, heavy with fatigue and travel, cannot gain the upper hand in the Arenas along the highways and the Gardens of the cities.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. it is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that this team will rise up and live out the true meaning of it's creed, " We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all teams are created equal."
I have a dream that Al Jefferson will make us all forget about Kevin Garnett.
I have a dream that Randy Foye can make up for his not being Brandon Roy.
I have a dream that Sebastion Telfair is the truth and not just a throw in to make the money work.
I have a dream that the Wolves will actually get the number one pick when they deserve it.
I have a dream that one day I will open the front page and it will contain these four words- McHale, Whitman, Murder, Suicide

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that Theo Ratliff's contract along with the other expiring contracts will be enough to coax a worthy free agent into the snow an blistering cold.
I have a dream that we will make the right decision when deciding which SG/SFs to keep and get good value out of those who no longer remain on the roster.
I have a dream that this team will free itself from the dungeon that is the bottom of the NBA standings. And we will let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every lake and every hill, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Protestants and Catholics, we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of that old Spiritual

free at last, free at last
Thank god almighty, we are free at last!

This is meant in no way to be disrespectful to Dr. King or any of his beliefs. He has done more for this nation than a good number of presidents and did it all in a way that would seem impossible if I hadn't seen the footage with my own eyes. If you have taken offense to this I sincerely apologise. Unless you are Kevin Mchale- seriously, its time to leave dude.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Ricky Buckets, Largest Small Forward in the League No Longer Have to Play on our Shitty Team

It looks like the Wolves traded Ricky Davis and Mark Blount to the Miami Heat today. In return we'll get Antoine Walker, Micheal Doleac and Wayne Simien, but don't worry because Doleac and Simien have expiring contracts. According to ESPN we also get a future first rounder. For those of you keeping track at home that's some good shit... 3 expiring contracts next year, 3 1st round draft picks, one less year on Walker's contract than Blount's and a bunch of young kids with promise down the road. As far as the 1st round draft picks go I'm not sure what year the Heat's will be and technically one of the Celtic's picks was originally ours.

With Blount and Buckets gone I think the team will put up more assists, grab more boards and have a higher 3pt percentage. That won't translate into more wins this year, but hopefully this sort of play will become a theme of the new look Wolves. I think it will also help with team chemistry... I don't know for a fact that Ricky Davis has a bad attitude but I always sort of got that feeling and I heard that Blount and Big Al have had something going ever since their days in green.
For those of you who don't know Doleac is a Center who averages 3.4 rebs and 5 points. Simien is a forward who averages 2.9pts and 1.4 rebs. Antoine Walker's production has been steadily decreasing over the years, but that will probably pick up a bit on a team full of kids. Last year he averaged 8.5 pts and 4.3 rebs but his career average is 18 pts almost 8 rebounds and 3.7 assists. I don't know what this will do to the roster seeing as we already have too many players. This most likely makes Rashad McCants our starting Shooting guard and moves Chris Richards up in the depth chart.

If I were McHale my first move would be to buy out Simien's contact, which is just a shade under a million. My second move would be to sign the shit out of Al Jefferson... Lock that kid up, but in a non franchise crippling way. My third move would be to trade that gimpy Mark Madsen back to the Lakers for a hot Cheerleader. I don't like when my cheerleaders are 6-9, 250 lbs and have a set of balls.
I'm so excited for basketball to begin. Seriously. The Wolves may suck, but there is finally a good reason for it. We'll get to see some really talented kids lose on an almost daily basis and all of that yummy cap space we've been piling up over the summer will allow us pick and choose who we want to keep on our team and who we want to try and lure into the snow.

If you want more literature on the trade go here, she finds it all.

Too many MCs not enough Mics

I know that Baseball is in full swing and we are now just getting to the entertaining part of NFL training camp but I just can't get over the Timberwolves. I'm probably the last person that should be trying to figure out the roster for next year, but this team has way too many players that play the same position (2 &3) and too many players in general. I'm going to try to go through the roster, make some hypothetical trades, balance veterans and newbies and get this team down to the 12 active players allowed by the NBA. This is going to be hard and I know the post is going to be long, but bear with me.

The easiest problem to solve is Chris Richards. The teams second round draft pick out of Florida is going to have to spend at least one year in the NBDL. Hopefully while there he will be turned into more of a center and will only have to wait until Theo Ratliff's big contract is up or he goes down for the season. Whichever comes first.

Theo Ratliff is going to spend the season as the backup center. Mark Blount will probably be the starter. I really don't care who starts, but I like the idea of this tandem. They are Yin and Yang. Blount is finesse and can come in when the team is down and in need of some points. Ratliff can come in when the D needs to keep the lead. He's gritty, a rebounder and a shot blocker. Granted I don't believe that he'll be 100% but if he is good enough to play he can bring the D that this team has been lacking. Between Ratliff and Jefferson they can equal or do better than one defensive KG not to mention the other power forwards I'll be keeping on this roster.

Al Jefferson is a no-brainer. McFail and Taylor better get a contract extension in front of him and soon, if not they had better find a spot in the witness protection program because every basketball-loving bastard in the state is going to be out for blood. You don't give up KG and let the best piece of the puzzle get away. He stays.

The backup to Jefferson is going to be Juwan Howard. I know he is old balls like Robert Horry, but I want him on the team to help Jefferson and Craig Smith and/or Ryan Gomes. He'll be a great teacher for the young guys and hopefully he'll have a calming demeanor and interject some veteran presence when it’s needed.

My major problem with this roster is that 5th big man. I want to see Smith and Gomes battle it out in training camp for the final spot, but I feel like I'm going to pair one of their cheaper salaries and upside with Marko Jaric or Mark Madsen in order to get a team to bite on a trade. Wikipedia claims that 6 of the 16 players currently on the roster are Power Forwards. We've already sent Richards to the NBDL and given 2 spots on the roster other 4s, plus Howard can play center when necessary. The two vying for my last spot are the same height and while Gomes had a better average over the season Smith averaged 21 pts and 10 rebs when he started the last 5 games. It comes down to intangibles when they are only going to be allotted so many minutes. I think I'll go with Smith seeing as he and Foye have meshed while Jefferson and Gomes share the same position and there won't be that same kind of connection on the court.

The ESPN Trade machine says that there are trade restrictions on all of the Boston players and Juwan, so I've decided to have Smith and Gomes duke it out in camp. If Smith loses he gets bunched with one of the players I'll try to trade. If Gomes loses I'll deal him for a draft pick and some cash if I can get it.

We're going to skip the Shooting guard and small forward for the moment because those positions are the others that give me problems.

As for Point Guard I'm going to stick with Randy Foye as the starter even though it's not his natural position. This hurts me, but there are so many interchangeable parts in the 2/3 positions and I see football players change positions when they are drafted all the time. Sebastian Telfair is going to stick around as my backup PG as long as he can keep his guns locked up in a cabinet somewhere far away from the team.

Now I've got 5 spots left and two positions to fill. Starting shooting guard is going to be Ricky Davis for the time being. I'd like to trade him later down the road because of the prima donna ways and what I've read about possible bad blood between him and Jefferson. His backup is going to be Rashad McCants. I want Shaddy's minutes to expand, but I want his micro fracture surgery fully healed. Plus I still feel like he's got some learning to do after all of that missed time.

I think I'd like to keep my 3 shooting forwards on the team. I feel like they've all got something to bring to the table. I have a good feeling about Gerald Green… not just because he is so young or because he won the Slam Dunk competition. Green had to sit behind Paul Pierce and Wally Szczerbiak. He'll be my scoring SF. Trenton Hassell will be my veteran presence. I love Trenton so I'm going to keep him around but he is going to be trade bait in a year. His job is to teach Corey Brewer everything he has learned about defense. Brewer is going to get the fewest minutes of the bunch, with Green and Hassell switching in and out in a similar fashion to our Center position; Green to get the lead, Trenton to keep it.

That leaves 3 men out not including our NBDL bound friend Mr. Richards: Marko Jaric, Mark Madson and most likely Gomes. Gomes is easy to get rid of, but like I said before I may have to part with Smith in order to rid myself of Mark and O. I heard a rumor that Detroit wanted Marko Jaric for Nazr Mouhammed, which I'm totally down with, and Madson and Smith for Lindsay Hunter worked, so I'd like to work out a deal with Detroit. If we got Hunter in here he could spend his final contract year teaching Foye how to play point and Bassy how to stop pointing guns.

I know I just spent far too much time rambling but I've come up with a team. Gomes gets traded for a pick. Mad dog and Smith end up in Detroit. (I know. I hate that I got rid of two young players, but being a GM is hard and you can't please everybody.) Three deep at PG Foye starts, Bassy plays second fiddle and Hunter teaches. Starting shooting guard is Ricky Buckets with McCants backing up. Marko Jaric clings to the end of the bench waiting for someone to injure himself while Jaric tells himself that he can play 1-3. The crowd sits and laughs knowing that he can't even properly shave the stubble off of his face. Small Forward is taught and started by Hassell with Mr. Green as our 6th or 7th man and Brewer slowly adapting to the higher level of play. Al Jefferson Starts at Power Forward backed up by Juwan Howard. Mark Blount Starts at Center and Theo Ratliff backs him up. If a smaller lineup is needed or one of the center/ Forwards gets hurt Brewer or Hassell can slide to the PF for a minute or two.

I know that's 13, but someone is going to get injured during camp and as soon as they get better someone else will get injured. This is basketball people! There are always injuries. That leaves us with Lindsay Hunter, Theo Ratliff and Ricky Buckets in their final years. Same goes for Foye, Green, Jefferson, McCants and Telfair but some if not all will be resigned using. The veteran contracts add up to almost 21 million to add to the 15.8 million worth of yummy cap space that we have already got stock piled and the almost 4 million in trade exceptions (Which I tried to fully understand). That 37 million is enough to handsomely reward Foye and Jefferson and still go after another big name. Right?

Written by the Muck-up (photo from I heart KG)

The Love We Lost.....

Well, I hope you all appreciated it while it lasted. The only true face of the Minnesota Timberwolves since their inception in 1989 is probably busy packing his bags and saying his good-byes. It appears what ADAMBEZ and many others reported earlier today has come true, as Kevin Garnett is apparently heading east to the Boston Celtics. The deal isn't official but I'm going out on a limb and saying its done. The Timberwolves would receive Al Jefferson, Sebastion Telfair, Ryan Gomes, Gerald Green, Theo Ratliff, and two first round picks in return. Go figure it would be with the only team that McDouschbag seems to trade with, mainly because himself and Celtics GM Danny Ainge are buddies. As a Timberwolves die hard for many a year, I can't help but shed a tear at this news. Kevin Garnett is the reason the Wolves have any fans left, and with the exception of one year, the only reason fans came out to games on a frequent basis. Before I break down how great of a trade this is for us, I have no choice but to reflect on everything that Kevin Garnett is. I think he deserves that much.

Drafted in 1995 straight out of Farragut Academy in Chicago, Garnett came into the NBA as the first High Schooler since Moses Malone to be drafted. The decision was not a popular one with many people. Too young, too skinny, too raw. Whether he used that for motivation was not clear, but ever since then he has been everything that Wolves fans had hoped for and more. For 12 wonderful years, Minnesota got to experience not only one of the best players in the NBA but also one of its hardest working as well. It was a joy to watch this lanky 6'11" man exude such raw joy playing the game of basketball. Some people who play the game treat it more like a job than anything else. Kevin treated it like it was the game he grew up loving, and acted like he was truly happy to be getting paid to play. Now, some people might say that he was vastly overpaid, but if you stepped back and thought about what Kevin brought to the table, that point loses a lot of its luster. Not only was good for 22 and 12 almost every game of his career, but he also averaged around 5 assists for most of it as well. He may have not hit as many big shots as everyone would have liked, but he made his teammates better in every way. He never got himself in any trouble and treated the people of Minnesota with respect, always saying that he loved to play here. To me, he was worth every penny of the 20+ million a year he got from the club.


Sadly though, that 20+ million dollar salary, coupled with many horrendous other contracts, completely handicapped the team into mediocrity. Even though many of us did not want to see it end this way, something had to be done. The team had to part ways and start this Biotch over. It appears they have done so.

They couldn't have asked for much more. If all is true and they receive who they are said to be receiving, the trade is the first one in a long time that you can say that we actually came out on top. Sure we give up Garnett, but we get a budding "star" in Al Jefferson and lots of yummy cap room. The other actual players aren't that great, with the exception of Gerald Green, who could bring some excitement to the Target Center. I'm not sure that Sebastion Telfair will be with us, or anyone else, for very much longer. The part of this deal that makes it so appealing is those two first round picks that we acquire. Sure, one of them would be our pick that we owe the Celtics already, but it helps undue some of the mess McHorrible GM made down his leg a couple years ago.





If, for some reason, you happen to be optimistic for this upcoming year, let me be the first one to burst your bubble. This team will be very, very bad next year. And by bad, I'm talking 20-25 wins at most. I'm hoping for 15-18 actually, which would probably guarantee ourselves a top 3 pick, if not (GASP!) the first overall pick. This might be the only way we get to keep our pick that belongs to the Clippers. If you couple that fact with all the yummy cap room I mentioned earlier, this could be a shorter rebuilding process then usually is the case. Taking a quick look at the notable free agents for next years class, names like Elton Brand, Dwight Howard, Ben Gordon, Shawn Marion, and Agent Zero quickly jump off the page. Those are some of the names that could make this pill a lot easier to swallow.

As the Kevin Garnett era nears its end, I want to be one of hopefully many to look back at his time here, not with disdain, but with fondness. I know that we didn't get to where most fans wanted to get, but we truly saw one of the good ones play for 12 years. He did his best to take Wolves fans to the promised land. It wasn't his fault that a couple idiots were driving the bus. I'm gonna keep cheering for Kevin in Bean Town, and I hope that he can finally find his way to more success. He deserves it as much as any player in the NBA. Maybe the people in Boston will embrace him the way Wolves fans have.



Good Luck, Ticket.





On a lighter note, I am currently watching the Twins-Royals game,(and no, I don't know why) and Dick Bremer just uttered the words "Lew Ford absolutely owns Jimmy Gobble."(Royals relief pitcher) Man, has it really gotten this bad?? If they are clinging to statements that absurd, then the answer just may be yes.