#-1: Twins (Last Week: 0). Swept the Padres in San Diego (even though it's only two games), got swept in San Francisco, which has the best record in Major League Baseball (I think), then began their home Memorial Weekend series with Texas with a loss followed by a win where Joakim Soria, the Rangers' closer, bobbled a nubber with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth.
I don't have anything else.
This week: They finish their series with the Rangers, then immediately go back on the road (they're home only for the four games with Texas) where they play their final series at the Yankees with Derek Jeter still wearing pinstripes, oh boo-hoo!, then begin a special four-game interleague series with Milwaukee by playing the first two in Miller Park Monday and Tuesday.
With all University of Minnesota sports done and the Lynx exempt this year because they're defending national champions, expect a lot of short surveys, thank Buddha.
#-2: Timberwolves (Re-Entry!). I forgot to put this team in last week's WMNSS, and it would have been more appropriate too, because I think I would have been able to put the Woofie Dogs in rock bottom. That is where they should be after they find themselves as the embarrassment of the National Basketball Association once again.
It was leaked through the media before the NBA Lottery that Kevin Love has made it known to General Manager Flip Saunders and the rest of the Woofs that he will opt out of his contract after next year and test free agency. When a superstar who has led his team to no playoff appearances for his entire career, you can bet he's not dipping his toe in the water. The most cynical views we have of Love are coming true: He doesn't want to play here, never did want to play here, and is going to get the fuck out of Dodge even if he has to play for the minimum.
First of all, let's look back and blame David Kahn for this. (And by the way, note that we were all up in arms that Kevin McHale, Kahn's predecessor, traded our third pick overall, O.J. Mayo, for Love in the dead of night. Even with all the bullshit surrounding K. Love now, we won that deal, and McHale was right for pulling the trigger.) He failed to find the right supporting cast to complement Love's preternatural rebounding and scoring skills with role players who would defend.
Beyond that Kahn made two fatal mistakes. First was the draft where the Timbewolves had back-to-back picks. Kahn did get Ricky Rubio, which was good. But he could have also drafted a Guard with out-of-this-world skills, Stephen Curry, and instead picked Jonny fucking Flynn, a Syracuse guy who blew up after one season and is not out of the league. Kahn was afraid that Rubio's and Curry's skills duplicated each other. I say that with two guys with this much unreplicatable (is that a word?) talent, you draft both and worry about that later. Curry now may be the sweetest shooter in NBA history. And he's leading the Golden State Warriors.
The other mistake was signing Rubio to the max contract extension and not Love. I don't totally blame Kahn for this. At their best, a Point Guard who can pass in ways no one else on the court can see is a much more unique and powerful X-power than rebounding the ball. Also, it is smarter these days to sign players to long-term contracts when they're young because they will be cheaper that way. Finally, no one saw that Rubio would have a short ceiling, let alone have a hell of a hard time scoring and being aggressive with the ball on offense, until he signed that contract.
But before Kahn signed Rubio to that max deal he gave Love only a four-year contract, not the maximum of five. That sent a clear, brutal message to him: Ricky Rubio is the Timberwolves' #1 guy, not you. And then he has played great (though he doesn't play defense) while Rubio has stumbled. And now that it's clear that the Woofie Dogs have hitched their wagon to the wrong horse, they now have to make the right choice as to which assets they'll acquire in order to get rid of Love -- all on top of the kind of embarrassing treatment at the hands of Love's representation. They were the ones who leaked this news, and without any outright denials from Love or his people, it sounds like the truth, and now the organization has to dance to his tune.
And don't forget the coaching situation. I'm starting to sour on Rick Adelman. He has been a very professional coach, but he never did take the team to the playoffs. With him gone, Saunders now has to find a replacement. Trouble is, no one wants to commit to the job because they don't know if they'll have Love or not.
This week they were the stooge for another debacle, this one being the courting of Memphis Grizzlies Head Coach Dave Joerger. He came out of nowhere to interview with the club, not once but twice. The Grizzlies front office has been in disarray mostly because their new owner is trying to become a dick just like Daniel Snyder. They don't have a CEO, and the Owner fired the General Manager, who has since come back, not on a full-time basis but just to help out with the Draft. The Wolves had one in with Joerger: He is One Of Us, a native of Staples, Minn. And it looked like the squad was going to get some good news.
But then Joerger came back and signed an extension with The Bastard Vancouver Grizzlies. Apparently the Owner and he patched things up. Yeah, right. What I believe instead happened was that Joerger came face-to-face with a team more dysfunctional than the Grizzlies, saw that the club was going to suck, and decided that the grass was not greener on the other side. So the Woofs are back to Square One, and have to decide between former Timberwolf and coach in Toronto, Sam Mitchell (which wouldn't be a bad choice, I don't think) and Saunders himself. And we really don't know if they're going to make a decision until they ship out Love, which, if I had my way, would happen at next season's trade deadline, so they can get maximum value out of him. In the meantime they continue to be a fucking laughingstock.
#-Infinity (tie): Gopher baseball and Gopher softball (Last Week: -1 and Positive Numbers, respectively). Maybe it's about time I lump these similar spring-played sports together. I don't know; I still don't know much about softball to regularly talk about it, but if the Gopher softball team can capitalize on their momentous run with another good season next year, I might have no choice but to cover it.
But let's start with the U. baseball team, because I just put them down first and I don't want to edit what I just typed. These Goofs, who finished fourth in the Big Ten, went meekly in the tournament, losing 3-2 to Michigan Wednesday on one three-run home run, then on the next day was eliminated by Iowa 2-1. And since this is the B1G and not some Southern school, they had no slack when it came to at-large consideration and was therefore shut out of the NCAA baseball tournament when it was announced Memorial Day.
When Head Coach John Anderson made comments in the newspaper and on the radio of the difficulty of playing your first 20 games on the road, I thought he was setting fans up to lowered expectations. Well, they certainly met those. Therefore, we aren't too bent out of shape that they missed the NCAAs for another year. There probably were two series that put their season in the coffin: The sweep at home to tournament-bound Nebraska in mid-April, and the Hail Mary sweep the first weekend in May at overall tournament #2 seed Florida St., a game where they lost two of them by just a run. Win, say, three of them and they may have a chance? How about two? Hypotheticals, to be sure.
As for the softball team, well ... they were facing the #1 overall seed in Oregon in Eugene, Ore. And they did play to seed, meaning they were ranked in their Regional and managed to win it (and in dramatic fashion, no less), so it was a success in that respect. But they lost Game to the Ducks 10-2 in six innings. In case you don't know, there is a thing called the "run rule" where, after five innings, if one team leads the other by eight runs or more, you stop the game. It used to be known as the "mercy" rule ... and to be honest, I think that's what it should be called again. But euphemisms and hard feeling dictate that you use the term "run rule." Whatever: The Gophers were mercied in Game 1. They managed to go the whole distance (which in softball is seven innings, not nine) but got swept out of the Super Regional with a 6-2 defeat in Game 2. I guess I can't be too mad, but as I always say, a season short of winning a championship is a failed season, so by that mark, this is a season of failure.
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