The Wolves need help at center. Right now they are starting one of the worst starting centers* in the league.

Their backup center* (who is probably has the strongest strengths of the three, if that makes sense) is a known foul machine.** But did you also know he's an complete turnover artist*** as well (which is related to the foul problem, admittedly)? Hope that Nikola Pekovic will reduce his errors, but not that he actually has a higher rate of fouls and turnovers this season versus last season. So we need someone effective who can take over the center for the game.

But what can the Wolves do? More after the jump...

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As the end of the lockout draws nears, people have begun discussing how the upcoming amnesty clause will be used. There have been a lot of mock clauses released, notably on ESPN and Grantland, and Canis even took a semi-serious discussion of what the Wolves could/would do (my vote: if it's allowable, trade for dead weight and cut it, with an impact player as your price (i.e. trade for and cut Nocioni in exchange of Iguadola)). But there's also the question of how the amnesty clause will work.

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Is there any chance that Kahn is fired and the coaching situation is pushed back a year?  Here's my thought process: Reading between the lines it seems like the big sticking point is Rambis having two years left.  So is it possible that they fire Kahn and bring in a new GM with the promise of a blank check for the coaching position when the 2012 offseason comes around?  Alternatively, is it possible they might fire both Kahn  and give the coaching position to an assistant (i.e. Lambeer) at a small raise for one season and do a serious look for a new coach? If that's feasible, would any quality GM come in under those conditions?

In writing my last post, I ran through some T-Wolves shooting/offensive numbers.  I thought people might be interested in seeing them in full.  They're after the jump

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The Wolves have started out 1-2.  They have a 20 point beating on their record already.   I thought it might be worthwhile to check out how they're doing against the rest of the league, and how they're doing overall.

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Willie Warren, once considered a top 10 pick in the draft, looks to now be a fringe first rounder.  For a refresher, here's his Draft Express page:

http://www.draftexpress.com/profile/Willie-Warren-5157/

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Since we don't have much to do these day but speculate on the draft, I thought I'd throw together a trade combining the two most persistent rumors, the GS trade and the Philly one:

http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=29wuvbh

Also relevant but not shown in this is that Minnesota gets the 2, and Philly gets the 6 and the 23.

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From Bill Simmon's Top 40 Trade Value Column:

Follow-up story: Another NBA team sent someone to Spain to watch Rubio play for FC Barcelona a few weeks ago. The individual ran into one of Rubio's advisers and asked him how many times someone from Minnesota had come to see Rubio this season. The answer? Zero.

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At work today I began a thought experiment: Is there any way the 76ers can trade their 2 biggest contracts (Dalembert and Brand) to contending teams that need big men while the Wolves also get Iguodala?  Here's what I came up with.:

http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=yftm9gd

Breakdown after the jump

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In lieu of trying to find good in blowout after blowout, I thought I might put together a reasonable trade for the Timberwolves to even things out.  Below is a Sacramento/Memphis/Minnesota trade.

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Mason won't return to Thunder

 

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I figured while we're all waiting for some news or another to break on Rubio, we might as well engage in our favorite pastime, speculation about possible trades.  Last week, Chad Ford mentioned in a chat that the Kings are also big fans of Johnny Flynn.  Based on that, here a Minnesota/Sacramento/Utah trade I came up with:

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First, in what is an utter non-shock, the players are already walking back their unconditional support of McHale:

"We have to put Mac out of our heads right now," Jefferson said. "I talked to some of the guys today. In a way, we're glad it's over with."

I'm sure will see more quotes like this soon.

Also, for those of you with ESPN Insider, there's a story about the Spurs' drafting abilities that relies heavily on quotes from Kahn.  They're very effusive; hopefully he'll use them as a guidepost for making a front office.

Considering the doldrums the Wolves are in right now, and how we can't do anything but wait for a the draft to come around, I figured we should play a game of Build A Better Timberwolves.  Here's how it works:  go onto ESPN's website and hit up the trade machine.  Then, try and work the best trades you can, as judged by the increase in wins per game that pops up at the successful trade screen.  Don't worry about having a full roster (if there are 5 guys left, that's fine), but the one rule is that you have to be able to field a reasonable team (so a Duncan/Jefferson/Garnett/Howard/Oden lineup won't cut it).  Then save the trade, and post it here so we can join in the fun.  My first attempt is after the jump

 

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First, the more I look at the draft, the less I like the Wolves choices with their first pick.  If they stay at the 5 they're in a complete and utter crapshoot.  With that in mind, I would like to discuss Tyreke Evans.  First, I think people should stop by Draft Express and compare Tyreke Evans and Derrick Rose.  They're very comprable players, right down to their listed strengths and weaknesses.  In fact, the only areas of noticable difference are:  1) Rose has better assist numbers than Evans.  That's pretty straight-forward though I'd note that Evans didn't play PG for the half (except for that half-season, Evans has always played PG, so the learning curve isn't as steep as, say, Randy Foye's);  2) Evans has much better steal and rebound numbers, and seems like a noticably better defender; and 3) Evans has SG height and length.

Now, think for a moment what the Wolves would be like if they had someone who could, potentially, be a stronger defender at the 1 and the 2.  Now, add him in with Brewer, so that Brewer guards the best shooters while Evans guards the PG and helps Foye (or hopefully Josh Childress, but probably Randy Foye) with Foye.  Doesn't that solve a lot of the perimeter defensive problems?  Wouldn't that give them a lot of flexibility on floor, and the chance to actually push advantageous matchups in the backcourt?  Hell, is it possible that Jefferson and Love would look a bit less foolish guarding the pivot if the perimeter didn't leak like a sieve?  Finally, I would like to point out that Evans' increase in production occurred when he took over at point.  Also, that's when Memphis went on it's strong end of year win-streak leading into the tournament.

As for DeMar DeRozan, take a look at Draft Express' best and worst case scenarios.  Make sure you have a garbage basket handy in case you feel ill.

Finally, I was wondering if someone could put John Bryant into the Hoopus score system and report the results?  I realize he comes out of a weaker conference, but looking at his numbers and size, I have to think he has second-round steal potential possibility.

Following up on a mentioned trade in the Phoenix thread, doesn't it make a ton of sense for the Timberwolves to trade for Tyson Chandler?  You get excellent young interior D with a price tag that doesn't preclude moving him if it becomes a necessity.  For the Hornets, it reduces their price tag quite considerably, and if I was the Wolves I would definitely throw in a pick of two to grease the wheels.  Allow me to offer something on behalf of the Wolves

To Minnesota:

• Tyson Chandler
• Ryan Bowen

To New Orleans:

• Jason Collins
• Calvin Booth
• Rashad McCants
• Boston's 1st round pick
• The best of the 3 second rounders we have this year

He's why the Wolves do it:  Tyson Chandler.  He's had injuries this year, but if comes back next season ready to go, the Wolves have an amazing 3-man front court in place for the next 5-7 years.  This lets you focus on finding a 3 and a point to fill out the team.

Here's why New Orleans does it:  It saves money this year, and wipes out the rest of Chandler's contract.  It nets you a look at McCants, a first rounder, a not bad second rounder, and some bodies for the front (if you're trading Chandler, you obviously want quantity over quality in the front).It also costs less this season, doesn't cost anything after that unless you want it to (except the first), and guarantees the Chandler won't haunt you in the playoffs this year.  If that's not enough, the Wolves should be able to swap in the Utah pick for the Boston one.

To finish, I'll add that I think this necessitates the Wolves trading off Mike Miller and Craig Smith for expiring contracts.  If they did that, then they'd have around $10 million in cap room this offseason, enough to bring in a solid 3 (*coughcoughJoshChildresscoughcough*).  In this situation, the Wolves just need to start praying that Rubio or Curry falls into their lap.  If it does, they're set.  If not, then they just need an upgrade at point and they're ready to roll.

What says the rest of Hoopus?

With the trade deadline approaching, I figure it would behoove us to look at moves the Wolves could conceivably make in order to improve this team.  Now, the caveat with these is that I don't think the Wolves should necessarily look at something for this season.  It would take a rather larger miracle for the Wolves to make the postseason, and they'd probably get waxed in the first round anyway.  But they could make some moves to get things set for the next seaon.

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Like a disturbance in the Force, I can sense the number Minnesota Flagellants about to explode.  So I thought I'd do a little to quell fears about the Wolves.  Now, when I was watching the Wolves get slaughtered by the Kings tonight, I realized something about them:  they're not doing that badly on offense.  Now at first that seems laughable, but hear me out.  They're above average at offensive rebounding (thanks to Kevin Love), above average on turnovers, and to the low end of middle of the pack on free throws per shot attempt (but that's the least important of the four factors, honestly).  So what's the problem? They can't shoot.  Right now the Wolves have an efg% of 45.5% good for dead last in the league.  And while that's before tonights laffer was added in, they were right at that mark for the night (Saccy shot 56.% efg tonight, which would put them tops in the league if they kept it up all season).  Right now the the league average is 49.2% efg.  Currently the Wolves have 4 players (Mike Miller, Craig Smith, Al Jefferson, and Ryan Gomes) who are shooting at or above that mark.  And that sad part of that is that it's not even close.  The worst of the four is Jefferson, who had a 48.9% mark prior to the Kings game, and probably put himself at or above average with his 11-20 night.  But the next BEST player is Randy Foye.  He's shooting 42.7% right now.  That's pretty disgusting.  Right now there are two other teams with so few average shooters.  The first is Chicago, which mitigates that situation by having their four good shooters take all the shots.  Second is Oklahoma.  Does anyone want to be compared with Oklahoma right now?  I thought not.
So why is this DON'T PANIC and not WE'RE DOOOOOOOOOOMED?  Because there are three and a half forces in play here.  The first is seasonal progression.  In the NBA, teams tend to shoot better as the season goes along.  So it wouldn't be shocking to see an increase in shooting effectiveness over the course of the season. The second is that the two worst offenders, Randy Foye and Rashad McCants, should be a lot better.  McCants was second best efg% player last year on the team (third if you count Mike Miller's season in Memphis), while Foye was just under average.  Their shooting woes are compounded by the fact that get the most touches on the team, behind Jefferson.  And while I don't expect them to have an average year, if they could get it together for the last two-thirds of the season, things will look a lot better in a hurry.  Now the three and a half is this a bit complicated.  First is a basketball stats rule.  It's called the Fluke Rule, and is one of John Hollinger's pet studies (incidentally, if you care about basketball at all you should go over and read Hollinger's stuff at Four Letter.  It's behind their pay wall, but his content alone is worth it).  There are several part to the rule, but one is relevant to our purpose.  It is this:  that a large, sudden dip (or spike) in a player's fg% that can't be explained by injury is almost certainly an abberration, and will correct itself the next year.  Which is a fancy way of saying that even if things don't turn around this year, they will next season (long parenthetical:  remember that no one expected this Wolves team to contend, or even make the playoffs this season.  And things like this happen.  Sometimes teams that are supposed to win 55 games win 45, and 45ers win 35.  And sometimes 30 win teams are on pace to win 15.  In the NBA, so it goes. End parentheses).  Now here's the half point comes in.  The Wolves are currently 4% behind the league average.  The last time a team came in worse than 3.3% behind was the 2002-2003 Nuggets.  The season after that, the Nuggets won 27 more games (from 17 to 44) and made the playoffs.  So there's always hope.  And this season was built on the hope the future.  It's still there, and that's a better reason than you need to not panic.

*Effective Field Goal Percentage, which is (2P + (3P *1.5))/FGA.

Over the past couple of weeks, Wolves fans have been hoping, not without cause, that the team would make a trade.  Specifically mentioned was getting one of Memphis' gazillion point guards, or pulling a heist and taking off with Gerald Wallace.  After the last 24 hours, both of those plans seem to be irrelevant.  With the Augustin and Richardson trades, it appears like these teams no long have need for the Wolves.

Personally, I'm wondering if all the FO turmoil knocked the Wolves out  of these discussions at a critical time.  Now, this isn't to suggest that the Wolves shouldn't have dumped McHale, but it would have been nice to have have Augustin or Wallace and a new GM.

What do you say?

They have a new coach, went through the second most disruptive event in Taylor's history with the team, and have to get the a new style with new plays in place within 48 hours.  Don't be surprised if the team plays the same style on Tuesday as they did in the first 19 games.  Don't be surprised if it takes up to 3 games for the team to get fully in sync with the new system.

Poll

Do you fire Randy Wittman or Kevin McHale?

24%

Randy Wittman

17 votes

75%

Kevin McHale

53 votes

70 votes | Poll has closed

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[Ed. Since SnP and I haven't been able to bring ourselves to optimism, I think we could all benefit from McCleak's offering.]

With all the doom and gloom surrounding the Wolves, I thought it would behoove someone to point out why the sky isn't falling.  Since the rest of the Wolves fanbase is tuned out, trading Mike Miller, trading Al Jefferson, imagining an owner savvy enough to fire McHale, or hoping that the Target Center burns down so that we can sow its ashes with salt, bury them at sea, and never again speak the word "basketball" in the Twin Cities again, I guess it has to be me.  So here's some observations/problems, and the solutions (or lack thereof).

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About six weeks ago I sat down and put together some stats on the Timberwolves to put out a small post.  That little post quickly snowballed and became this monstrosity.  What it is, in essence, is a statistical based (though not entirely) look at the 2008-2009 Timberwolves and what they we can expect from them.  This post looks at the Timberwolves by position, as a team, some of the ways they'll stack up against the league, and what we might even expect next off-season.  And for the record, put me down at 35 wins for the team.

This was originally intended to be one long post, but SB Nation freaked out when I tried to post it.  I'm going to split it into several parts, which can be found as follows:

Part 1, Intro And Point Guards

Part 2, Shooting Guards And Small Forwards

Part 3, Power Forwards, Centers, And Love

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About six weeks ago I sat down and put together some stats on the Timberwolves to put out a small post.  That little post quickly snowballed and became this monstrosity.  What it is, in essence, is a statistical based (though not entirely) look at the 2008-2009 Timberwolves and what they we can expect from them.  This post looks at the Timberwolves by position, as a team, some of the ways they'll stack up against the league, and what we might even expect next off-season.  And for the record, put me down at 35 wins for the team.

This was originally intended to be one long post, but SB Nation freaked out when I tried to post it.  I'm going to split it into several parts, which can be found as follows:

Part 1, Intro And Point Guards

Part 2, Shooting Guards And Small Forwards

Part 4, On-Court And Off-Season

Continue reading this post »

About six weeks ago I sat down and put together some stats on the Timberwolves to put out a small post.  That little post quickly snowballed and became this monstrosity.  What it is, in essence, is a statistical based (though not entirely) look at the 2008-2009 Timberwolves and what they we can expect from them.  This post looks at the Timberwolves by position, as a team, some of the ways they'll stack up against the league, and what we might even expect next off-season.  And for the record, put me down at 35 wins for the team.

This was originally intended to be one long post, but SB Nation freaked out when I tried to post it.  I'm going to split it into several parts, which can be found as follows:

Part 1, Intro And Point Guards

Part 3, Power Forwards, Centers, And Love

Part 4, On-Court And Off-Season

Continue reading this post »

About six weeks ago I sat down and put together some stats on the Timberwolves to put out a small post.  That little post quickly snowballed and became this monstrosity.  What it is, in essence, is a statistical based (though not entirely) look at the 2008-2009 Timberwolves and what they we can expect from them.  This post looks at the Timberwolves by position, as a team, some of the ways they'll stack up against the league, and what we might even expect next off-season.  And for the record, put me down at 35 wins for the team.

This was originally intended to be one long post, but SB Nation freaked out when I tried to post it.  I'm going to split it into several parts, which can be found as follows:

Part 2, Shooting Guards And Small Fowards

Part 3, Power Forwards, Centers, And Love

Part 4, On-Court And Off-Season

Continue reading this post »