So in the game thread, there were some interesting comments about how much players should be shooting.

So, consider this. The Wolves have taken 1,578 shots in 18 games, which translates roughly to 88 shots per game. How should those shots be ideally divided?

Right now, the averages (rounded to the nearest integer) are as follows:

Beasley: 18

Love: 15

Darko: 10

Wes: 8

Brewer: 8

Telfair: 7

Luke: 9

Tolliver: 5

Ellington: 6

Pekovic: 5

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Is this distribution good, and how should/will it change when Flynn and Webster return?

The CH board seems to be teeming over with dissatisfaction of Kevin Love. The basis for this dislike, from an on the court standpoint, seems to come down to two points:

1. You can't win with Love as a starting PF

2. You can't win with Love starting, period. 

Of course, at face value, these are sort of ludicrous arguments. You wouldn't be sinning against nature by saying "you can't win with Derek Fisher as your starting PG", but the Lakers proved you can. This statement, of course, isn't a reflection of Fisher's abilities as much as it is the other players wearing purple and gold uniforms. Whether you can win with player X is a meaningless statement.

However, the real crux of these diatribes against Love originate from the fact that people on this board, in the local media and national media think he's a pretty good player, that Love haters don't agree. 

Love haters want to argue that he's not a franchise player, to which I think most people with a brain would say "no sh|t sherlock." Nobody with an ounce of common sense thinks he's a player who will end up on the same caliber in the annals of NBA history as Moses Malone, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, and other of the greatest PFs of all time. But just because he's not one of the greatest of NBA players to ever put on a uniform doesn't mean he's worthless and doesn't mean he can't play an important role and be a valuable contributor to a winning team. 

In an attempt to make a meaningful evaluation of love, here is a list of prominent NBA power forwards. While obviously totally subjective, let's say the Wolves swapped Love for one of these players. Would this player represent a clear unambiguous upgrade or downgrade?

For the purposed of argument, we're going to keep contract out of the discussion. For instance, it is highly debatable whether David Lee is worth the contract he got and that naturally factors into a player's worth. We're not going to evaluate the fact that Lee is overpaid or Love is underpaid.

We're also going to factor out age to an extent. For instance, Kevin Love is going to probably improve as a player while it is likely Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett is going to decline. But because we're leaving out contracts (we're just trying to say can Love start or can you win with him) we're going to evaluate a snapshot of today. 

Lastly, we're going to try to be somewhat liberal as far as positioning goes. For instance, as Antawn Jamison a PF? He could play it. Is Tim Duncan a PF? He could play it. Because of coaching systems and team needs, players often don't necessarily fit neatly into the 1-2-3-4-5 position holes. I'm going to try to keep this to players who could conceivably start at PF. 

Players Who Would Represent a Clear Upgrade From Love on 8/29
Amare Stoudemire, Carlos Boozer, Al Horford, Chris Bosh, Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, Dirk Nowitzki, David West, Tim Duncan, 

Players Who Would Represent a Clear Downgrade From Love on 8/29

Troy Murphy, Anthony Randolph, Elton Brand, Amir Johnson, Chris Wilcox, Tyler Hansborough, Drew Gooden, Tyrus Thomas, Andray Blatche, Brandan Wright, Hakim Warrick, Carl Landry, Luis Scola, Kenyon Martin, Nene Hilario, Nick Collison, Serge Ibaka, 

Players on the Bubble

Kevin Garnett, Antawn Jamison, Josh Smith, Blake Griffin, Zach Randolph, Al Jefferson, LaMarcus Aldridge, Paul Millsap, David Lee

Depending on how many bubble players you think are better than Love, Love is between the 9th and 18th best PF in the league. 

We'll assume that teams have either a 2.5 man PF rotation (some teams have 2, some teams have 3) - Meaning there are 75 PFs in the league.

This would put him in approximately the top 15-25th percentile of power forwards in the NBA. 

Bottom line, whether you can win with Love starting of course depends on a lot of factors not in his control. By any sort of conventional definition, however, dude's a starter caliber player, not a bench player. 

So I'm relatively new to the CH board and I've really enjoyed reading its Wolves coverage and commentary. It seems to be far more informed than most national media coverage.

That said, everybody is in such a lather to write the next "Kaaaaahn" post, both locally and nationally, that there are some fallacious arguments that are just flat out unfair when it comes to evaluating Kahn's performance, particularly in light of the recent Asset Maximization post.

The Cap Space Fallacy

One of the common criticisms of Kahn is that he trades for salary relief with no intention of using it. Given some of the contracts that were handed out this summer, is it fair to crucify him for having the good sense to not to sign cap crippling deals. Rank the following moves from best to worst:

• The Atlanta Hawks sign Joe Johnson to a $120+ million contract that takes him well into his thirties.
• The Memphis Grizzlies sign Rudy Gay and his zero all star appearances to a max deal.
• The Timberwolves do not sign Joe Johnson to a $120+ million contract that takes him well into his thirties.
• The Timberwolves do not sign Rudy Gay and his zero all star appearances to a max deal.

It's hardly debatable that the Timberwolves not signing Gay or Johnson to the deals they ultimately received constitute the best moves in this scenario. And this is before you factor in the total uncertainty as to what the NBA's economic landscape will look like following this season's labor battles.

Yet, Hawks management is berated for giving out Johnson's contract, Grizzlies management is berated for giving out Gay's contract, and the Timberwolves management is berated for not beating these contracts.And of course, Johnson and Gay are given implicit atta-boys for getting as much money as they can get. It's the Twilight Zone of fiscal judgment.

It is totally fair to criticize Kahn's free agent exploits if a signing that took place on another team would have made on-the-court and financial sense for the Timberwolves but there's not a lot of evidence that took place.

If you have $500 to spend on furniture and when you go to Ashley, little is on sale and what is isn't going to work in your living room, it's a reasonable decision to hold onto your $500 and shop another day. I don't understand why Kahn is held accountable for the basketball equivalent of this decision.

If Kahn was fired and a new GM took over the team, a new GM would find it very easy to execute his strategy because the Wolves are not crippled with terrible contracts. This is ultimately why Kahn doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as infamously bad GMs such as Isiah Thomas or Kevin McHale. Sportswriters and local fans seem to assume that a GMs performance only involves two outcomes. Did he improve the team or didn't he? In reality, there's a third option. Did he cripple the team?

Terrible free-agent contracts cripple teams. Donnie Walsh has been laboring for years to dig out of Isiah's hole much less improve the team. There is little to suggest any of Kahn's moves are going to hamstring the franchise long term, except for possibly draft picks, which brings me to my next point.

The Best Player Available Fallacy

A particular favorite drum beat of sportswriters is "you always draft the best player available." Chad Ford in particular loves to say you draft the best player available, and then you figure out how to make it work.

The quintessential example of this argument is the Blazers passing on Chris Paul because they had Sebastian Telfair.

However, the Paul/Telfair example is a poor one. If the Blazers had correctly ascertained Telfair's limited potential and Paul's unlimited potential, they would have assuredly drafted Paul. In fact the Utah Jazz ultimately judged Deron Williams to be the better pro, and drafted him. So the Paul scenario is a lesson in talent evaluation, not an endorsement of the best player available fallacy.

The Al Jefferson trade highlights the exact pitfalls of the best player available fallacy. McHale's choice of Kevin Love was based on taking the best player available, which history seems to have vindicated. The problem: Love plays the same position as Jefferson.

The Wolves moved Jefferson to center out of necessity. While functional, anybody who has followed the Wolves for the past two seasons became painfully aware that you're not winning when Jefferson starts at center and Love starts at PF. Because you can't start them at the same time one is not going to be "maximized" because he's coming off the bench and not playing starter minutes. See Kevin Love's 2009-2010 season.

So the Wolves are faced with four options. Start Love & Jefferson at the same time (shown not to work) - Start Jefferson and back up with Love (Not maximizing Love's talents and antagonizing our best player) - Start Love and back up with Jefferson (Not maximizing Jefferson's talents and antagonizing our 2nd best player) - Trade one of the two.

I don't think it's unreasonable to say that trading one of the two is best of those available options. You have to decide which one you want to trade and which one you want to keep (for me, keeping Love and trading Jefferson was the right call, but that's certainly debatable.)

Unfortunately, when you're in a position where you're pretty much forced to trade one, you're going to get low-ball offers. Pretend you're a GM from another team with an interest in acquiring Jefferson - a player who had major knee surgery and didn't exactly evoke Moses Malone last year. What would you have offered. Likely, not much more than the two first round picks the Wolves ended up receiving.

Flash forward to 2010. Not entirely convinced of the problems we're having playing Jefferson & Love together, Wolves fans are in a tizzy over not drafting DMC, a player whose best position in the NBA is going to be power forward.

Assuming a best case scenario - we draft DMC and he turns out to be awesome. However, if Al & Love couldn't start together, why is DMC going to be able to start with Al or Love? Statistically, he probably won't be able to, which means to get the most out of Love and Jefferson, we have to trade them. If you were mad about getting as little as we did for Al now, what do you think we would have gotten in return if we had to trade him AND Love to accommodate DMC.

The implication here is that the incrementally better performance we might have received out of a best-case scenario DMC is offset by the incrementally worse performance and worse asset utilization his arrival would have on Love and Al.

Or, in real life terms, if we had drafted DMC, the national media would have yelled "Great job drafting a PF when you're best 2 players are already PFs. Kaaaaaaahn!" and then "Great job getting nothing for trading Love and Al. Kaaaaaaaahn!"

This of course assumes that DMC is a sure-thing bona fide all-star......a super questionable assumption given that Philly and New Jersey passed on him too. He could certainly be the next Moses Malone, but for some reason, people don't seem to think he could be the next Derrick Coleman.

Like every good rule, these things are on a case by case scenario. The Vikings drafting Adrian Peterson when they had a good player in Chester Taylor turned out to be the correct decision. My entire point is that despite what sportswriters say, strictly adhering to a best player available philosophy entails consequences that have to be dealt with. That includes you Chad Ford when you say "just draft the best guy and figure it out later."

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Ultimately, the Kahn blasting is way out of hand. I think the biggest mistake the guy has made thus far has been drafting Flynn....not in the context that I think they should have drafted Curry instead (I need to see more than good numbers for Golden State before I jump on that bandwagon,) but it doesn't seem apparent that Flynn is going to be a starter on a good NBA team.

That said, the key to Kahn's entire tenure will be Rubio. Will he play for the Wolves and how good will he be? Until the answer to that question becomes more apparent, anything more than "incomplete" isn't at all a fair assessment of his job performance.