#-1: Timberwolves (Last Week: -2). Now this is the Woofie Dogs team of our wildest dreams. In an ultra-competitive week where most of the teams went undefeated, this team won all three games this week -- the only team to play more than one game this week, to be totally honeset -- and four in a row.
Plus, Ricky-Ricky's back! Albeit one game later than I thought he would. He came back to play limited minutes last (Saturday) night against Dallas, but he already made his presence felt. And the virtuosity is already back, as evidenced by this stupid nasty between-the-legs pass to Greg Stiemsma:
Rubio certainly helped the Wolves best the Mavericks, but the best part about this team right now is that they won well without him. They have finally turned the corner when it comes to playing when the top two players are out. If the role players win this well without The Spanish Heartthrob and Kevin Love, how good could this squad be with them?
Enjoy that duo while you can, however. The other big news came off the court, where Love bitched to the Yahoo! Sports about his contract and, in particular, the way General Manager David Kahn presented it to him while he was in the training room. He does have some right to complain; this franchise has never demonstrated a competence to compete regularly at a contender level, and as an awesome player and a cornerstone, he has not just the right but the duty to speak up about the direction of the organization. But he walks on thin ice. There have always been nagging doubts that he really likes it in Minnesota and wants to spend the rest of his career playing here. He has not refined his inside scoring game to the point where he's a threat on the down-low as well as popping from three. And notice that he had to sit out last (Saturday) night's game. He has not been an Ironman, let's put it that way. Now, is he going to be constantly hobbled by injuries year after year? If that's the case, Kahn and Timberwolves management did its due diligence in refusing to give Love a fifth year, and Love falls through the thin ice by threatening that he has a long memory.
He did not get a max contract, many speculate with common sense, because the Wolves are going to give Rubio the max contract. He hasn't proved he can survive a whole season either, but ... did you look at that fucking pass? Not only is he a fan draw for all his magician passes, he makes the other players on the team that much better and dangerous. Love is the best rebounder in the NBA, but if you only get one player to max out on (and I think NBA salary rules actually require that), who do you give it to? The jury is still out, but shit, it'd be Rubio.
So if Love still doesn't really believe he's getting the respect he deserves, this now becomes Kevin Garnett-Stephon Marbury, the White Version. Have you ever heard of gospel shows? When I worked as an usher, we sometimes hosted these religion-themed musicals that catered to an African-American, church-going audience. (Tyler Perry rose to fame writing and producing his own gospel shows.) There are overly dramatic, featuring deus ex machina seemingly sent from God as an answer to the main character's praise to deliver them for the evil that manifests as the bad guys in the shows. What I'm saying is that the "Starbury" years had as much drama as a gospel show, and if Love and Rubio assumed the same roles, it'd be the same thing, only Caucasian.
Oh, the team! They'd be in the playoffs if they started today. But they have a tough trio this week: In Orlando Monday, at Miami Tuesday, then home to host The Bastard Seattle SuperSonics in the first nationally televised game Minnesota will be in Thursday.
#-2: Vikings (Last Week: -5). Well, I sure as shit didn't see this coming -- the Vikings winning over Chicago??? How they won was so simplistic it really shouldn't have worked if the Bears had more of their shit together. Everybody and their moms knew the ViQueens were going to rely on Adrian Peterson, and yet, on the first play, Peterson busts one for 50+ yards. Although he was bottled up after gaining more than 100 yards in the first quarter, he scored two touchdowns. And then all of us felt the team was just hanging on for dear life to preserve the lead. With the help of two Jay Cutler interceptions (one of them returned all the way for a touchdown), they did. A victory that the club had to have in order to have even barely serious hopes of reaching the playoffs. Because of the surprise of the win, I put this team above the two others who won their single game this week.
Adrian Peterson is without equal; I bow down. Christian Ponder, on the other hand ... well, I'll say this: The Vikings didn't win despite him, just without him. I think the difference is crucial, though it is sad. I was compiling this while working the game: The Vikes' D had more interception return yards than Ponder had passing yards. I think that's an extraordinary statistic that tells a lot about the soon-to-be Mr. Samantha Steele, and it ain't good. Are you kidding me with that fucking stat?
They really can't afford to lose today (Sunday) to the Bastard Los Angeles/Cleveland Rams. But it's going to be difficult; they have a great defense, especially against stopping the run, and the Vikes are horrible on the road.
#-3: Gopher women's basketball (Last Week: -3). They finished the creampuff portion of their non-conference schedule by pasting Robert Morris Sunday 82-60. They go into their Winter Break at 9-3. However, their break is more abbreviated than I thought, and the back end of their non-con sched gets decisively steeper. It begins with a game at Williams Arena (the fourth of five straight) Friday against Northern Iowa. Say, maybe I'll go that game.
#-4: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: 0). These guys are placed behind the U. women's basketball team because their victory was by a smaller margin; the penis ballers defeated North Dakota St. Tuesday 70-57. But please don't misconstrue my expectations for this team: These Gophers are now 11-1 and still ranked 13th, and I still believe this team can make some noise come tournament time. Like their vagina analogues, they have one game right smack dab in the middle of what should be a long break for the end of the semester: They will end their non-conference schedule by playing Louisiana-Lafayette Saturday evening at the Barn, the second of four straight games there.
#-5: Twins (Re-Entry!). Could have, should have done this way before now, when that flurry of trades happened, but I was tired and I didn't care then. I'll put it here, this week.
This team needed to get better, but they also need to point their way into the future because the present will just outright suck. Their pitching is as barren as I've ever seen it, all throughout the organization. And Denard Span has been the subject of trade speculation for the whole calendar year. So him getting traded to The Bastard Montreal Expos for a pitcher named Alex Meyer was the inevitable finally happening. He seemed to be a good guy, although he had a tendency to look up towards his eyelids when talking, which is kind of strange. It's particularly sad to see a product that came up through the system being shipped out.
Let's see if General Manager Terry Ryan shipped him out for good reasons. This Meyer kid has butane power; he has been clocked with a 100-mph fastball. This already is a huge relief from those of us tired of pitchers "pitching to contact," because we've had a bevy of those and that shit don't work. Moreover, Meyer projects to be a staff ace. If he develops -- and it looks like he won't ripen in the bigs till 2014 at the earliest -- this is definitely worth trading Span.
Ben Revere was supposed to be the next player to take the center field mantle started by Kirby Puckett; the lineage goes Puckett-Torii Hunter-Span-Revere. But then Ryan traded that next player during last week's Winter Meetings in Nashville to Philadelphia in exchange for two gentlemen named Vance Worley and Trevor May.
Revere fit many of the characteristics of a centerfielder and the first man in your starting lineup: He had speed to burn around the basepaths, he could hit for average, and his defense is excellent. (That catch while running towards the CF wall, where he finally catches it and stops his momentum by sticking out his leg, was considered by many pundits to be the best play in Major League Baseball in the 2011 season.) But his toolbox was missing hitting for power and arm strength. I don't think he would be a no-doubt Hall of Famer, but some people believe he's poised to be a star.
In return, the Twinks both got, once again, pitching, both for now and for later -- although both have large question marks looming overhead. The guy for now is Vance Worley, a guy who was in the Phillies' starting rotation (albeit as a #3 man) for much of the year, but was shut down in September to have a bone spur cleared out of his elbow. Not to say that such an injury portends something bad, but hey, these are elbow issues on a pitcher. The pitcher that might be excellent in the future is Trevor May, who, like Worley and Meyer, is cooking with gas and will not need the defense behind him to get outs because he'll just fucking do it himself by blowing a fastball by the batter -- well, that's if it doesn't sail over Joe Mayer's catching helmet and embeds itself in the safety net at the backstop. Like Meyer, this youngster has control issues that need to be ironed out before he's called up to The Big Show. A bad sign is his regression this year. He was promoted to Double A, considered the level at which you figure out if a prospect can or cannot cut it in the majors, and May's ERA and walks allowed swelled.
Also, who replaces Span and Revere in center? Right now the most season guy is Darrin Mastroianni, who has better power at the plate but is a much greater liability in the field. It looks like it's supposed to be, then, Aaron Hicks, whom the Twins are high on and will get some polish in Triple A Rochester to begin next season. Lying deep in wait, by the way, is Joe Benson, a man who I think has seniority on Hicks but is seeing his career cut short because of his constant injuries.
The future is fraught with peril and uncertainty. But all these trades and speculation over what happens now does prove that Terry Ryan believes that such a future is better than having a pedestrian, nothing present. That's a viewpoint that needs tremendous foresight and maturity. I'm just scared shitless that these moves plain won't work out, that both Span and Revere blow up in their new towns and the pitching continues to fall apart like it has the past two year. You don't know until you try, but I'll listen to the devils of my worse nature, thank you very much.
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