SB Nation User Blog: Stop-n-Pop

Game Wrap Open Thread

Stop-n-Pop — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 02:32:52 -0000

More photos » by Michael Dwyer - AP

What do you say about a team that played like dogs against a squad that appeared to shut it down somewhere in the 2nd quarter? I've got nothing. I was tempted to turn the channel to a football game right around the time the camera pulled away to show KG joking around with Pierce on the bench with about 10 minutes to go in the 2nd. It was over at that point. The Wolves clawed their way back into the teens against the Boston scrubs, but the only reason this tilt wasn't a 50-point blowout was because Boston took their foot off the pedal...early.

I would like to point out two things. First, at no point during this game was Jonny Flynn ever in danger of setting up a teammate for an easy shot. Never before have I seen someone with more than 20 points get taken apart like he got taken apart by Rajon Rondo. Flynn spent the game about 10 feet off of Rondo begging him to shoot. Rondo did not take the bait and he still found ways to torch Flynn for 13 points (on .500 shooting), 15 rebounds, and 3 steals.

Second, I'd like to point out this fanpost from Rumblebee:

David Kahn about a month ago implied he may not make any significant moves (beyond the draft) to improve the team before next season (such as using cap space). I just saw another comment that gives me the same impression:

Sam Amick: Wolves content to wait for Rubio in the Sacramento Bee.

In the article about Rubio, Kahn mentioned he thinks the Wolves are three or four years away and will then explode as a contender (I'm paraphrasing). This is not the kind of comment someone would make if he were planning on using cap space to bring in a dynamic player this summer, or at the deadline in February. I am sure Kahn would pull the trigger if offered a ridiculous deal, but otherwise it appears the cap space will not be leveraged for at least another year.

That's my read on it too. I know the team will not turn up its nose at a target of opportunity, but this fan base isn't going to wait 2-3 more years with this type of product. It's not. There's not that many of us left. I'd like to think that they have the time to be patient but they don't. On a night where the Wolves played the team that turned itself around faster than any other team in the league, I think most fans are hoping for a Boston-esque approach rather than the Portland plan.

Oh well. It was a bad game and the late game "effort" was only brought about by playing a team that didn't give a rat's you-know-what and passed on beating them down by 30+.

What did you notice about the game?

In praise of the Big Piranha

Stop-n-Pop — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 03:23:01 -0000

Dear Wolves Marketing:

Please start selling Kevin Love. Please see the attached video for a suggestion about how local sports franchises actually feature their players in TV ads. The ad practically writes itself: Nick Punto and Michael Cuddyer are sitting in a ice shanty on a lake watching video of Kevin Love grabbing rebound after rebound after rebound. Cuddy looks over to Punto and says something along the line of "Winter piranhas, who knew?" Fade to black and a sign that says "Come see the Big Piranha." Show the ticket hot line and cut!

Thank you,

Stop-n-Pop

Moving on, last night's post game show contained something of a big moment for the FSN crew. During the game wrap, analyst (and fellow former Bloomington Kennedy Eagle) Mike McCallow said something that we here at Hoopus have been saying since the latter part of last season: Kevin Love is the best player on this team. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, and more yes.

I know we're in danger of getting repetitive on this point, but the reason why Kevin Love is the best player on the Wolves is simple: He does the most stuff. Last night he was 9-14 from the floor with 16 boards (5 offensive) and 20 points. He controlled the defensive glass, he started fast breaks, he sealed off defenders for easy angles to the bucket for the team's guards, and he even ran a successful 1-on-1 fast break against Tyreke Evans. Al Jefferson can be the best post scorer in the league but that's probably all he could ever be. Love's impact on the game won't be as deep in a single area, but it will be much, much, much wider. When this team gets good (and it will), Kevin Love is going to be its MVP. He will be a much larger-scaled version of what Ozzie Guillen talked about here:

"That's special stuff over there," Guillen said of the Twins club. "All those guys, they don't have big money or big stars, but the way they go about their business is awesome. That's why I call them the little piranhas, because they beat you to death. I would rather someone hit a home run with the bases loaded in the ninth rather then get murdered little by little. Those guys bite you little by little and, all of a sudden, you wake up and you are dead."

Instead of extra bases and hard slides, Love will bite the other teams with hard screens, impossible tips to teammates, and outlet passes. Each one won't seem like much all by itself, but at the end of the day, someone is going to wake up dead. And yes, that's one of the best sports quotes of the decade. Thank you Ozzie.

A few notes from the game:

Why on earth did the Kings not roll with their large front court lineup of Spencer Hawes and Jason Thompson? Did the Kings' coaching staff not see what they did to Love and Jefferson last weekend?
Tyreke Evans is a dominant physical presence but he's going to have to figure out what to do on nights when his shot isn't falling.
Sasha Pavlovic is not an NBA player right now. His worst play last night was when Kevin Love screened off a wide-open angle to the lane for Pavs and instead of going right up with the layup he went under the rim and was forced to pass it off. It's almost like he's forgotten the basic language of basketball...if that makes sense.
Another win, another solid wing performance. How much more evidence do we need that the Wolves need a solid (and consistent) wing player more than anything else?

That does it for tonight. Bottom line: Kevin Love + competent wing and point play = W.

Gotta run.

Here we go again

Stop-n-Pop — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:50:06 -0000

It's time for yet another match up against a team that was worse off than the Wolves last season but now...not so much. Will the 4 win Wolves be focused and give a solid effort throughout? Is anyone starting to get a bit tired of a 4 win club making excuses about effort? Will anyone watch this game?

Enjoy the tilt. Opposition blogging going on at Sactown Royalty.

Preposterous Statements

Stop-n-Pop — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 12:49:40 -0000

For those of you who are fans of the noon to three program on KFAN you are probably aware of the (in)famous preposterous statement contest where the host and the interim producer gather the silliest and most over-the-top statements from the world of sports and then run them off against each other in a winner-take-all tourney for preposterous statement champion of the world.

During yesterday's pro'grum they added the following statement (from a caller): "If [the Wolves] add a good shooting guard and a center, they'd be a .500 team."

There are two angles to this statement. On one hand, the idea the Wolves are two competent players away from being a .500 team isn't all that far out of an idea. In fact, we here at Hoopus have said over and over that the Wolves need to add a wing player like Rudy Gay and an athletic big like Joakim Noah or Jason Thompson in order to take the next step before hoping that the Sessions/Rubio/Flynn/(Wall?) battle can play itself out at the point.

On the other hand, the idea that the few remaining Wolves fans are in a position to talk excitedly about the addition of 2 more competent players in order to make it to an even split in their record is...well, that's kind of preposterous. It's really preposterous.

What is also preposterous is trying to draw any conclusions about this team from any single game of action. After performing like up-tempo gangbusters against the talented Utah Jazz, the Wolves came out an laid a preposterous egg against the Clips. This team is a whole lot of hit and (mostly) miss right now and if I had to pick one or two angles that would determine whether or not they will win, it would be the play of Jonny Flynn and the nondescript wings. Against Utah, Corey Brewer and Jonny Flynn went off and the team was able to compete. Against the Clips, not so much.

OK, that in mind, and with clear understanding that there are no grand themes you can take away from any of these games other than that Minny is out manned by a mile, let's get around to last night's tilt. It was notable for three reasons:

Effort. Last night the Wolves played like dogs. With OKC/Dallas and Sacramento/Washington on ESPN, there were plenty of other entertaining NBA viewing options last night and yours truly took full advantage of the remote in order to see them. Again, I don't think this effort is indicative of a larger trend (i.e. a team that quits); rather, it was simply a bad night in terms of effort and focus. Who should be blamed for this? Ultimately, the coaching staff but that doesn't really matter. What matters is that I found it pretty damn easy to flip the channel to watch the Thunder and Kings, two teams that were worse than the 2008/09 Wolves and who are now both hugely watchable, entertaining, and competitive. I think the Wolves are filled to the brim with a bunch of fine outstanding citizens who I really want to see succeed (for example: Brewer and Gomes) but ultimately there is a line that I'm not going to cross in terms of watching a bad product. Last night's game was a bad product. Too many blank stares and possessions with no ball movement. The Wolves had a chance to cut the lead below 10 with a few minutes to go in the 3rd. Instead of moving the ball around and attacking the paint like they were in the first quarter and a half of play, they ended the possession with two soul-sucking Al Jefferson 15 foot jump shots that book-ended an offensive rebound to keep the play alive. Each time he got the ball during this stretch, Big Al grinded the possession to a halt, faced his defender, and moseyed around a bit before jacking up a mid range jumper on a night where he wasn't shooting well. During the first quarter and a half, the ball was moving, players were driving and kicking, and the Wolves were scoring in transition. At somewhere during the middle of the 2nd quarter, it seemed like a switch went off and ball movement went out the window.
Shooting. A byproduct of bad ball movement and poor effort was a mountain of long and mid range jumpers from a squad that doesn't have any good shooters. The Wolves ended the game with an eFG of 39%. If you throw out Kevin Love's 7-12 effort, they only posted a 35% eFG while going 0-9 from beyond the arc. It's not just that the Wolves were taking long and mid range jumpers, it's that they were taking contested long and mid range jumpers without making attempts to turn their bad look into something better for a teammate. Again, effort contributed to the poor shooting and it led to many a click over to the Dallas/OKC game where I was almost blinded by the awful orange shoes of the Thunder.
Weak side defense. Ouch. I can't remember how many times during the game where I watched a Clipper player (usually Baron Davis) dribble to the corner, get doubled, and then kick the ball across the court for an open shot and/or drive. It wasn't just that the Wolves were doubling a guy they should have been begging to shoot, it was that the other three puppies on the court seemed hell-bent on drifting towards the double-team, further opening up the weak side of the court. I'm not the only person to notice this:

Minnesota has no orientation whatsoever to their defense. Like a lot of young units, the Wolves’ off-ball defenders overplay the strong side. There are moments when Baron is trapped in the right corner with two other defenders cheating that way (2nd, 3:50). Smart teams beg Baron to shoot from that distance, but for some reason the Wolves think they can beat the Clips by pressuring Davis. This dynamic is one reason Rasual Butler is able to find as many clean looks as he does against Wayne Ellington and Corey Brewer in the second quarter, and why the Clips are able to reverse the ball for easy shots at will.

It was also noticed by the coaching staff:

"Our weakside defense was awful. It was absolutely awful. We were unattentive, we didn't anticipate, we didn't read. Very poor," Rambis said. "We didn't root guys off the post, didn't try to deny post opportunities, and our double teams were sporadic. Getting to cutters, rotating to shooters, the whole thing collapsed. That was a disappointment."

It was atrocious. Aggressive double teaming is one thing, having the other guys on the floor getting locked in on the double team and drifting towards it is another. Again, this is another example of poor effort and a lack of concentration. The Wolves really blew it last night. They had a chance to put together their first winning streak of the season against a below average Clipper squad at home. Instead of taking advantage of an opportunity to (relatively) raise the roof and give their hometown fans something to be excited about, they laid an egg and made them turn the channel. Now that's preposterous.

GameFlow can be found here. Four Factors if you care:

	Pace	Eff	eFG	FT/FG	OREB%	TOr
LA Clippers	98.0	122.4	57.8%	17.8	31.0	10.2
Minnesota		96.9	39.0%	26.4	28.6	12.2

You may notice that today's post was led off with a picture of a Sacramento Monarch. That woman's name is Rebekkah Brunson. She is the 6'3" former All Star forward taken by the Lynx with the 2nd pick in the WNBA dispersal draft. She has a career 18.5 reb% and last year she put up a PER of 19.1. While the Wolves are busy putting up dud efforts on nights where they should be giving their equivalent of a playoff effort, the Lynx are busy putting together one of the best young rosters in all of professional basketball. Is it too late to put Roger Griffith in charge of the Wolves? if you are a fan of great basketball, the best basketball in town for the next few years will indeed be played in the Target Center...by the Lynx. They are putting together a championship caliber squad. Here's hoping David Kahn can follow suit with the guys in the men's locker room.

Congratulations Utah!!!

Stop-n-Pop — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 04:44:59 -0000

You are now responsible for 1/2 of the Wolves' victories. Well done. A zombie dance for you.

Game wrap in a bit.

UPDATE: Game wrap below the fold.

The Jazz are an interesting team. On one hand, they have some thoroughly non-enjoyable/unlikable talent. Carlos Boozer is a Dookie in preparation for leaving a 2nd team in his wake, Kyle Korver is a silly Iowegan, and Jerry Sloan will continue to coach as if the league were still in the midst of a coked-out pre-80s haze. On the other hand, they have the player I consider to be the best and most entertaining point guard in the game: Deron Williams. As much as I cannot stand to watch a backstabbing Dookie, Coach Cleaver, and the most annoying fellow Creighton Jayhawk in the world, there is no player I enjoy watching more when he is "on" than the former Illini point.

A couple of games ago the Wolves' TV crew ran a poll about who they thought was the best point guard in the game. I can't remember who they ended up picking, but for my money's worth, if I'm putting together a squad to win it all, here are my top 3 picks at the point: Williams, Rajon Rondo, and Tony Parker. Williams, to me, is the greatest surgeon in the game. He's not as flashy as Chris Paul or Steve Nash but he's physically dominant for his position with a balanced game that picks apart his opponent with precision and consistency. From the line, from mid-range, from beyond the arc, in transition, in 1/2 court...the guy does it all. He was playing out of the post of several key possessions in the 4th quarter and it baffles me that Sloan didn't ride that horse hard. Plus, when the game is on the line and time is running off the clock in a must-win playoff game, he can get his shot off in traffic, which is an amazingly important trait that some possess while others do not. Sorry CP3, I want D-Will for that possession.

Anywho, the first thing that should be pointed out about last night's tilt was that Williams was the best player on the court and it wasn't even close. He shot the lights out from the floor, got to the line a ton, dished out 13 assists, and...well, (robot voice on) Jerry Sloan is a fantastic coach and he knows exactly how to use Mr. Williams (robot voice off).

OK, now that we've talked about Utah's point guard, let's take a few minutes to gab about Jonny Flynn. Flynn undoubtedly shows flashes of brilliance. His quickness is world class and while he still needs to learn a thing or two about running a pro offense, his court vision is top shelf. His outside shot is surprisingly serviceable and should he ever develop an ability to dish off of the drive, he'll be damn near unguardable. That being said, the flashes of brilliance are accompanied by stretches of outright boobery. The CP3 inbounds boner in the NOLA game stands out over anything else but he is also guilty of overdribbling, going too much to his right, and inexcusably holding the ball when it is rotated his way on a nightly basis. Adding to our T-Wolves dictionary (first addition: Brewsist) is the Jonny Stop: The way in which a freely moving ball is stopped by an ultra-quick lead guard who uses the opportunity to survey the court and negate his greatest strength, his speed.

Watching Flynn play the point you can practically see his High School/AAU/Syracuse coaching play out in a motion picture thought bubble above his head. This kid has been the dominant lead guard for so long, and he has played for so long against such relatively inferior competition, that his first instinct in close games and/or highly leveraged situations is to do what he has always done: Be the be-all/end-all of ball movement and end the damn possession for his team. At Niagra Falls High, NY AAU, and Syracuse, his speed alone was enough to get the job done. No need for setting up teammates. No need for creating angles. No need for worrying about the shot clock. When the heat was on, it was Jonny, the ball, and his defender. This kind of nonsense will not fly in the NBA for a player like Flynn. He's not that quick. Maybe it will have its time and place in a few years when he gets the benefit of the whistle and learns how to better incorporate his teammates, but not now. While Flynn ended the contest with a career high in points while shooting the lights out from beyond the arc, he stunted several key possessions with the Jonny Stop. Also, while I'm very, very happy that he made the game winning shot, I think I suffered a Randy Foye flashback with the kamikaze drive down the right side of the lane. At least he didn't try and bank it off the shot clock.

Let's wrap this up with some bullet points.

Should the Wolves have lost, Kevin Love and Damien Wilkins would have been my choices for goats of the game. There is no dumber shot in all of basketballdom than the foot-on-the-line 3. There is no excuse for it. It has all the risk of a 3 pointer with none of the reward. Dumb, dumb, dumb, and more dumb. Love and Wilkins both made toe-on-the-line 2 pointers.
While Flynn took some heat earlier this season for an ill-conceived behind-the-back pass attempt, he and Love ran the behind-the-back pick-and-roll twice in the last two minutes of the game and it netted them two wide open three point attempts. It's really not a flashy play and it has the potential to be a nice addition to the offense. I want to see a lot more of the middle pick and roll with Love and Flynn.
The star of the game has to go to Corey Brewer. There were a few points in the game where Brewer reverted to the holy-crap-he's-everywhere kind of player that we got kind of excited about a few weeks ago. He was dunking, sticking shots, rebounding, and holding people up on defense all night long. It really is amazing how different this team looks with competent wing play. Imagine if they had some outside shooting to go along with the competent wing play. Paging Rudy Gay.
If the flash went to Flynn and the star went to Brewer, the workhorse award goes to Big Al Jefferson. The guy is really starting to return to form and he played the role of the bruising running back, grinding out short yardage situation after short yardage situation in order to keep drives alive and his team in the game. This site has been home to a long standing debate over the relative worth of Jefferson and Kevin Love for about 2 years now and my current thoughts on the duo are this: The problem with the Wolves is not Al Jefferson and Kevin Love. Neither has the advantage of playing with a consistently competent wing player or an outside shooter worth his salt. Neither has the advantage of playing with a group of properly-sized perimeter players. There is nothing wrong with having 1 or 2 undersized players in your rotation provided that you surround them with athleticism and length. Al and Love have complimentary skills and they are obscenely skilled on the offensive end of the court. My take on the pairing is that they are still in need of a Joakim Noah/Jason Thompson 3rd wheel and a pair of athletic slashers on the wing. I have been saying this since before Love came aboard. In the front court I want the aforementioned Noah/Thompson type and on the wing I have opined for, in order, Josh Smith, Trevor Ariza, and Rudy Gay. This team can put it together with some competent wing play and for either Flynn or Ricky Rubio to work out at the point...or for John Wall to land at the doorstep of 600 First Avenue. Wings, an athletic backup big, and hashing out the point guard situation, these are the things that need to be worried about before talking about whether or not Love and Jefferson can play together. Rudy Gay, Rudy Gay, Rudy Gay. Please, get 'r done. It has been obvious for over 2 years.

OK, that does it for tonight's wrap. We'll have a very cool announcement on the site tomorrow and then I'll follow that up with a post on the Lynx's choice in the supplemental draft, Rebekkah Brunson.

PS: If you really want to know why the Wolves won, it was because they collected a very large number of their misses:

	Pace	Eff	eFG	FT/FG	OREB%	TOr
Minnesota	98.0	112.2	52.4%	27.7	32.6	15.3
Utah		110.2	53.7%	25.9	17.1	12.2

When you have an eFG of over 50% and you are collecting a 1/3 of your misses, life is good. This is another reason why you don't want to monkey with the Love/Jefferson duo. If you surround them with competent perimeter players, they will destroy the boards. BTW: We need to come up with a Wolves Dictionary term for when Love grabs an offensive rebound in between 3-4 defenders.

The Jonny Pod

Stop-n-Pop — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:41:09 -0000

I know I promised a double game wrap so let's quickly deal with the Laker game before moving along to the tilt that, unfortunately, says the most about Our Beloved Puppies: The Lakers are the best team in the NBA and there is no shame in losing to a team that could end up as one of the all-time greats. The end. As for the Kings...

I'm a big Apple fan but one of the things I can't stand the most about the company is their willingness to spring new products on their consumers with little or no warning. My personal experience dates back to the little iPod you see above. I went out and bought that little doohicky about a week, maybe two, before the iPod video launched.

I enjoyed my iPod. It iPoded well and was able to hold nearly all of my music. Yet, it probably became irrelevant at just about the time I bought it.

And so begins the career of Jonny Flynn in a league with Tyreke Evans.

I'm not really sure what the correct word is for what Evans did to Flynn last night but here are several that I think should qualify for a chance at the title: eaten, mangled, transmorgified, cold-cocked, and stampled (I made this one up). Whatever it is, I'm sure we Wolves fans will have more than enough up-close opportunities to figure it out over the next however many years.

The most disappointing thing about last night's game wasn't the action on the court. The Wolves played well early on their 4th game in 5 nights spanning from Toronto to Minneapolis to LA to Sacramento and they lost Ryan Gomes to an ugly ankle injury. It was one of those games where you can probably talk yourself into chalking the loss up to a little bit of a lack of effort, a little bit of indifference, and a whole lot of "let's get out of here". What was most disappointing about the game is that for all the talk of two top draft picks, Ricky Rubio, and future assets, the Kings--a franchise that was below the crap-ass level of the 2008/09 Wolves--fell into a bit of luck (see Evans, Tyreke) and are now miles and miles and miles beyond the Wolves. A bad game is a bad game is a bad game is a bad game (believe me, I watch the Wolves) but last night's demolition was something more. It was a realization that the Kings have something that cannot be answered by Jonny Flynn or Ricky Rubio....to say nothing of what Jason Thompson and a legit 7 footer (Spencer Hawes) means for the Wolves' front line.

For 4 quarters Evans had his way with the Wolves' back court. From post ups to Manu-esque below-the-rim drives to the hoop the guy got what he wanted when he wanted it and he did so primarily because of his physicality. He physically dominated his position more than anyone else on the court. I know we talked about his physical upside in the lead up to the draft but....well, there it was on full display. The guy is LeBron James at the point, and yes, I went there. Maybe Manu with muscles is more like it. Congrats to the Kings for finding the bit of luck that all franchises need to make the big jump from level to level.

Who is that guy for the Wolves? Well, if there is one thing to hope for it is that John Calipari can go 3-3 with dominant lead guards in the NBA Draft. If Derrick Rose is the speedster and Tyreke Evans is the physical powerhouse, here's hoping that John Wall is a magical combination of the two and that the Wolves finally end up with the top pick.

Wrapping this up, last night's loss had more to do with roster management than anything else. The Wolves have fallen behind yet another young bad team that they were ostensibly ahead of last season. At least they didn't find themselves in this position because they passed on or traded Evans in the draft. Kahn's got that going for him.

Until later.

Double Wrap...

Stop-n-Pop — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 14:51:46 -0000

...will follow after the Sacramento game. Today is sledding and shopping time.

Preparing for the worst

Stop-n-Pop — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 03:23:23 -0000

Can ugly be fun? Without alcohol? We may find out tonight.

Enjoy the tilt.

Vote McGrady!

Stop-n-Pop — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:43:14 -0000

Vote McGrady!

Adding to the Wolves Dictionary

Stop-n-Pop — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:54:04 -0000

More photos » by Ann Heisenfelt - AP

Browse more photos »

Let's begin with the commenting call of the year:

Took away a Wolves basket?

We’re gonna lose by one now. Book it.

by LoveTo on Dec 9, 2009 9:15 PM CST reply actions 0 recs

And...

yup.

by LoveTo on Dec 9, 2009 9:28 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

(Hand claps.)

Interestingly enough this is exactly what my daughter said to me while watching the game and I'm pretty sure it was in the minds of the couple hundred or so people who decided to head on out into the snow and make their way to the Target Center.

For almost exactly 2 1/2 quarters the Wolves played some of their best ball of the season. Here, take a peak at the Game Flow (picture borrowed from our excellent sister site At The Hive)

The Wolves were humming in the late 2nd quarter. Their offense was a Midway Machine and Jonny Flynn and Ramon Sessions were bouncing off of everyone and everything like a pinball. While this game featured what is likely the best 1/2 from Flynn (7 points on 3-4 shooting with 7 assists and only 1 TO), the team really went apes%#t when Ramon Sessions was on the court, going +6, +6, 0 and -1 in his 4 stints on the court. In one of them, he racked up 4 assists in just over 2:30 of action. Sessions was also brought into the game at two critical junctures. First, he saw action at the very end of the 2nd quarter right after the Hornets tossed off a 7-2 run. Look up at the Popcorn GameFlow. See the 2nd 7-2 run in the 2nd quarter? See the 12-3 run that ended the quarter? The peak of the Hornets run is almost exactly where Sessions entered the game. To be fair, Flynn played pretty much the same role in the earlier 7-2 Hornets run followed by an 8-0 Wolves run but take a look at the Hornets peak in the late 3rd. Sessions came in right around that time, calmed the Wolves down and was subbed out and not to be seen again with just over 3 minutes gone in the 4th.

I get that Jonny Flynn is a first round pick and that this season is about giving young players exposure to highly leveraged situations. Young players on bad teams need a trial by fire. I completely get that. What I don't get is that Ramon Sessions is a young frickin' player who is better than Jonny Flynn. He's a better defender (which would have, you know, helped a bit on the key play of the game where Flynn was torched by Chris Paul just seconds after seeing pretty much the same play fail because Paul couldn't cleanly handle the catch), he's a superior facilitator at this point, and he's building a pretty solid sample size of evidence showing that the Wolves are better with him on the court rather than Jonny. I get the trial by fire but at some point targets of opportunity have to be taken advantage of (especially in close games) and there is no reason on god's green earth why the young, talented and superior defending Ramon Sessions shouldn't have been on the court with a 1 point lead against a squad with the best point guard in the game. Flynn deserves a lot of time as a highly drafted rookie on a losing team but you put your best players on the court in that situation. No exceptions. No worrying about fragile egos or confidence. You play to win and how you handle your rotations says a lot about your commitment to that basic fact.

My beef here is that I'm not sure whether this is questionable coaching rather than questionable philosophy. I view Flynn's selection in the first place to be somewhat philosophically questionable so right now I lean towards the latter rather than the former but at some point the previously-mentioned targets of opportunity add up to a couple of wins and then...well, here's hoping it doesn't get that far.

Getting around to the title of this post, this game featured a few key items that should be placed in the vocabulary of any Wolves fan, casual or not. First:

brewsist (br-sst)

n. brewsist

A pass that would otherwise be an assist were it not for the inability of the recipient to make the resulting shot.

A tasty dime unfulfilled by Corey Brewer

v. brewsisted

To make a pass to a person who will surely miss the shot

As in: Jonny Flynn and Ramon Sessions had several brewsists last night as Corey Brewer went 5-13 from the floor while missing 4 layups. Yes, layups.

It has to be a confidence thing right now, right? Just 2 weeks ago we were talking about how Brew was looking like a functional NBA rotation player and now it looks like he can't catch, dribble, shoot or make a layup. His defense isn't that good and there are only so many ways you can hide him on the offensive end of the court when the game is on the line. The problem last night was that time and time again the ball was swung to him and he was unable to do anything productive with it. He missed his first 4 free throws (ending up 1-6 from the line....game, set, match). He missed bunny layups. He lost the game for the Wolves on the wing. With just a modest amount of wing play the Wolves walk away with that game.

Since this post is kind of running on a bit and is going a bit negative (and there is still more snow to be shoveled) I'll save the second dictionary entry for another game post (as it will be sure to happen again: The Jonny Stop) and take a moment to give some praise to Big Al Jefferson.

The Wolves dominated the paint last night. Sometimes...wait for it...at both ends of the court. To Al's great credit, last night was the first time I can remember him being a completely complimentary part of the offense. Now, as the main catch in the KG trade this might seem like a bad thing, but it's not. Al passed the ball well and at half time he made what I first thought was an innocuous statement (and I'm paraphrasing): "Coach just tells me to pass it to the first open guy I see." He did and when he did the Wolves moved the ball like gangbusters and didn't get bogged down in a 1/2 court game that doesn't fit the rest of the personnel on the team. I'll go back to the question of basketball philosophy: Can Al Jefferson be the 2nd best player on a team being built as an up-tempo squad or do you build around his considerable 1/2 court post scoring talents? Can he improve his defense and passing to the point where he can fit in as something more of a complimentary player than a guy you build your entire team around? This, I think, is the main question surrounding David Kahn's approach to the roster. He himself has said that Al could be the 2nd best player on a championship team. The Wolves are still in search of their A1 option but how do you deal with your Big Dog until the arrival of Basketball Jesus? Is this a risky approach? Is it a flawed philosophy that hangs its hat more on luck than anything else? We'll just have to wait and see.

Until later.