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_{Photo copyright 2009 NBAE (Photo by Sam Forencich/NBAE via Getty Images)}

Game #61, Road Game #30: LA Lakers 110, Minnesota 90

Game #62, Road Game #31: Portland 95, Minnesota 93

Season Record: 18-44

1. The Future Isn't Now

Longtime readers know that I prefer to concentrate on the games being played on the court more than in the executive offices and rumor mills. And points two and three in this trey will get to that, because the rest is just sideshow anticipation.

But it is March, and longtime fans are aware that that is generally the time when Wolves' management launches its full court press on season ticket renewal, and when talk of blueprings and whatnot--otherwise known as the spin or sales pitch--is suddenly once again in vogue. It is a time when the profile of Glen Taylor suddenly becomes a lot larger, and I'm more okay with that than most people. My fondness for Taylor stems from two sources: In the past, he has been willing to expend serious amounts of money if he believes it will provide his team with a legitimate chance to contend for a divisional title, let alone a championship. Second, he has always been willing to speak his mind, which can result in refreshing truths, harmless gaffes, insight into team maneuvers in the future, or less-harmless gaffes that have him eating his foot clear back to the ankle. As a journalist, I enjoy and exploit all of these outcomes.  

Taylor was prominent on the television screen during this weekend's west coast road games, provoking, at least from me, both positive and negative reactions. Let's take them one at a time.

Slashing the prices for 95% of his 2009-10 season tickets, offering some as low as $5 per game, and offering to buy them back if the purchaser loses his or her job in 2009 is at this moment sound politics and fairly sound business in this soured economy. I don't know if it will generate as much gross income as holding the line on prices and re-upping just the diehards would produce, but three ancillary effects make it a shrewd gambit.

1--More fannies in the seats. This will often mean more kids, and more casual, intrigued ticket-buyers. Both subsets will yield future die-hards more reliably than the D-League will yield future NBA performers. In other words, it is a good way to recruit and indoctrinate people into the charms of the NBA team in general and, hopefully, the Wolves in particular.

2--An increased base number for advertisers. Just as magazines and newspaper practically give away yearly subscriptions in order to increase the eyeball-count for those whose products are advertised in their pages (thus upping their ad rates), the more folks Taylor can get signed on the dotted line for season ducats, the better hand he has when dealing with those buying signage, promotions, and all the other bells and whistles that go on during each home game at the Target Center.

3--Empathy as a marketing tool. Bush had compassionate conservatism and Clinton told folks, "I feel your pain." Glen Taylor was once a legislative leader at the state capitol in St. Paul, an experience he has said prepared him for NBA ownership more than his other dealings in the private sector. But even if he never spent a day in elective office, Taylor is savvy enough to know that at a time when many people are losing their jobs, and/or their homes and health care, it's not great public relations to be asking for ticket money to pay off the $6 million for Jason Collins or the $9 million for Mike Miller. Better to shift the emphasis to, "I know you have it rough, and to prove it, I'll cut my prices and give you a rebate if you really take it in the shorts this year."

So, all things considered, the new ticket packages amount to what the spinmeisters would call a win-win-win situation--and, for a change, they'd be right.

Now, about that basketball team...

Here is where the spin should be replaced by straight talk, and vision untinted by rose-colored glasses. It is where, from a strategic standpoint, Taylor and I part company.

We are once again hearing talk of the fabled blueprint, and, truth be told, it isn't a bad time to remind everyone of the first time the "blueprint" campaign was hatched. During halftime of the Lakers' game, Taylor pointed out that it was a year and a half ago, meaning that the team is "halfway through our three-year plan." A year and a half ago, the Wolves' roster was festooned with toxic trash like Mark Blount and Ricky Davis, and likeable but grossly overpaid folks like Marko Jaric and Trenton Hassell. Their collective subtraction amounted to a clearer, sunnier horizon, the blueprint-equivalent of razing condemned property on choice real estate. Okay, so far, so good.

Then Taylor starts talking about the current personnel and the decision to go with youth, He mentions that the KG trades reaped Jefferson, Gomes and Telfair, all enjoying their best seasons. He says the drafts have yielded three players, Foye, Brewer, and Love, with whom he is very satisfied. When straight man Tom Hanneman lobbed the softball rebuttal--What do you tell fans who are frustrated by the struggles?--Taylor says, well, there have been a couple of glitches, with an obvious one being injuries, to Jefferson, Brewer and others. Then he said that another hitch in the plan was the need to kick McHale downstairs to become coach. But here's the line that dropped my jaw: Making McHale coach has "solved so many of our problems." This, followed by the second jaw-dropper: "As a team, we are certainly playing better."  

As the time Taylor made these statements, the Wolves were halfway to losing their 13th game in the last 14 contests. After Sunday's loss in Portland, they are 1-14 since February 4. Boy, it is a good thing many problems have been solved and the team is playing better; otherwise the bottom could have really dropped out of this season.

I get what Taylor is saying, of course. After the psychological demolition derby that was Randy Wittman 19-game tenure this season, McHale stepped in and put together an eminently satisfying January for all concerned with the franchise, compiling a mark of 10-4 and being named Western Conference Coach of the Month. But January was over more than 5 weeks ago, and since then the Wolves are 2-15. Yes, I know Jefferson has been injured for most of that time...just as I know that January featured an incredibly weak schedule *and* Minnesota's freakish good fortune to be playing teams that were missing their top two or three players--against the Warriors and the Clippers and the Bucks and the Hornets, and the list goes on. Given the pitiful strength of schedule and slew of injuries that befell that already mediocre opposition, why is the Wolves' 10-4 January somehow more of a barometer of the future than the 2-11 February or the 0-4 March?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what kind of fools does Taylor think he's dealing with here? If McHale's coaching has solved so many problems, why are the Wolves 14-29 (below .333) during his current tenure? What about the problems of not having a legitimate center or a reliable all-around point guard on the roster? There was an aside made my Jim Petersen during the Lakers game that was pretty revealing: Minnesota gets its shot blocked more than any other team in the NBA. Here's another factoid: The Portland game was first time Minnesota had held its opponent below 45% shooting in 19 games--the Blazers shot 44.9%. Those of us who watch this team night in and night out can provide the owner with a fair, realistic, comprehensive list of problems that not only haven't been solved by McHale the coach but in many cases were created by McHale the VP of Personnel and de facto general manager. 

The reason why all of this can be frustrating to followers of the franchise is because Taylor is needlessly foreclosing options here. The owner has continually stated that McHale can come back and coach next season if he wishes. That sentiment has as much potential for sabotaging the Wolves' future as another knee injury to Jefferson. What Taylor *should* say is actually a no-brainer: "We don't know who is going to coach this team until we determine who will be the general manager, the person calling the shots on personnel decisions next season." 

This isn't complicated. If the Timberwolves are serious about searching outside the organization as well as within their own ranks for their next GM, the ability to have influence over the hiring and firing of the coach has to be in the portfolio. What self-respecting GM candidate is going to take the position knowing that the guy who ran the team for over a dozen years will have day-to-day control over the personnel he assembles? Inevitably, the new GM's personnel decisions will overturn McHale's previous manuevers and potentially rebut McHale's ongoing opinion. If the new person doesn't have the same kind of authority over McHale that McHale had over Flip Saunders and Dwane Casey and Randy Wittman the whole management structure is practically guaranteed to end up in a shambles.

Surely Taylor knows this. Doesn't he? Maybe McHale has already given his notice to leave the team and Taylor is setting up the situtation for the Iron Ranger's graceful exit at the end of the season. Or, more ominously, maybe he thinks the current configuration is the best way to prepare for a make-or-break draft and free agency year in which the Wolves have multiple picks and ample cap space on the horizon. Well, blueprint or no blueprint, if Taylor doesn't hire a person who, either by talent or reputation, commands respect and compels a pecking order that is every bit as important to establish in the front office as it is on the roster, then those $5 season tickets may not prove to be such a bargain after all.  

2. Shot Selection: Praise for Gomes, Scorn for Miller

Let's get back to hoops, eh?

The surprise wasn't that Ryan Gomes led the Wolves in scoring in each of the past two games, with 20 and a season-high 28 points, respectively; it was that his 37 field goal attempts dwarfed the totals of any of his teammates, with Love and Telfair tied for second with 25. That's because Gomes' shot selection is so sensible that we incorporate it into the flow of the action, registering the contextual circumstance of the shot as much as the individual finish. That Gomes nailed 20 of those 37 FTA, or 54.1%, at a time when his teammates were shooting a collective 45-127, or 35.4%, tells you about the relative wisdom of those attempts. It also helps that he buried the three that put the Wolves in position to steal the Portland game, had Randy Foye's last-second trey moved through the twine instead of striking back iron. In the past, Gomes hasn't necessarily been synonymous with big shots.

People expected Randy Foye to become the go-to guy when Jefferson went down a month ago, and Foye has stepped up to average 21.7 ppg in the 11 games he's played since the Jefferson injury (he missed Friday night's Lakers tilt with a minor hip ailment). But the Wolves' leading scoring in that time has been Gomes, at 22.1 ppg over the past dozen. This is the same player McHale has called upon to be his defensive stopper: He's opened up against Kobe Bryant and Brandon Roy the past two games. And yet if someone were to ask the typical fan who the Wolves' best and/or most valuable players are, the odds of Gomes landing among the top 3 are probably less than 50/50.

Then there is Mike Miller, whose season-long desire to be made over into a point guard reached an unfortnately predictable state of affairs on Friday when he dished for 9 assists (versus one mere turnover) while going scoreless on just 4 shots in 32:52 (second only to Kevin Love's 34:18) against the Lakers. With Jefferson injured and Foye sidelined with a bum hip, it might have been nice if Miller had looked around and realized that, just maybe, what was needed to beat the league's top-scoring team was a few more shots from the starter with the club's best shooting percentage, the one who didn't have to chase Kobe because Gomes was doing that dirty work. Early in the first, before either side had scored a point, color commentator Jim Petersen said, "This is a big game for Mike Miller--he's got to play well."

About six minutes later, with the score tied at 9, Miller came down in the half-court, and just by the wing dished it over to a wide open Jason Collins. Now it so happens that Collins was open because he is shooting less than 30% on the season, versus 49% for Miller, who is likewise shooting better from the three point arc 36.1%, than Collins is overall. Nevertheless, Collins received Miller's dish wide open about 14 feet from the hoop, and so put up the shot--an airball. Collins' only other FGA of the evening was a layup attempt blocked by Lamar Odom. He also missed the only two free throws he attempted. Which is all to say: In a game without Jefferson or Foye, is there any damn reason why Miller is dishing to Collins?

Remember Miller's cavalier dismissal of a Strib reporter who asked him about his disinclination to shoot;  that he was taking what the other team gave him, that it was called basketball, invented by James Naismith? Well, the Lakers "gave" Miller plenty of chances to shoot, but apparently shooting is so 2005-06 for the South Dakota Silencer, who can quell an offensive rally with a couple of nifty dribbles and then that patented, body-contorting backward pass against the flow to a teammate, Every smart looking pass to Collins (25.5 FG%), Carney (38.8%), Telfair (35.6%) and Foye (41.2%), is supposed to be Miller playing the game the right way. After all, when he racks up 9 dimes, it isn't his fault if the team shoots a putrid 33% from the floor (29-88 FG), right?

Then there was Saturday's game against Portland. Miller came out aggressively, scoring 7 first-quarter points on 3-4 FG. With 5:31 to play in the second, he took his 5th shot, a trey, and missed it. And that was the extent of Mike Miller's shooting for the evening. Over the final 26:18 he roamed the court, the Blazers apparently never gave him another shot opportunity. For the game, he led the team in minutes, assists, and turnovers, and finished a whisper behind Gomes in shooting % while ranking 6th in shot attempts.  The Wolves lost by 2.

3. A New Leader

Wolves stat guru Paul Swanson points out that after the Lakers' game, Bassy Telfair took over from Brian Cardinal as the team's leader in Net Plus/Minus, which compares the plus/minus team totals on when a player is and isn't on the court. Swanson shows that Telfair has played almost exactly half of the available minutes this year. In the 1491 minutes he has logged, the Wolves have outscored their opponents by plus +6. In the 1509 minutes he has sat, the Wolves are minus -310. While the raw FG% is still ugly, Bassy has been sticking the jumper with much more confidence the past few weeks. And when it comes to proactive ball movement that factors in the right players getting the ball at the right time, he's head and shoulders ahead of everyone else on the team. Add in the quickest penetration and you've got somebody who won't turn 24 until June and is owed just $5.2 million over the next two years (the second year is his option, however) who might just blossom into something more than a fine backup.