Inside the Box: Wolves 87 Clippers 91

Watchable Wolves games will not be televised. The Wolves won't win them either, because at this point they're bound to be pretty comfortable with losing.

Jonny Flynn had his best game of the season, with his first 2+ assist:turnover ratio. It had been a tough stretch for the young guard, when he stopped performing his greatest strength: scoring. Defenses were definitely keying in on his dribble-drives because he would look nowhere but the cup. He not only found his scoring touch again, he dished out five assists. You never know with assists, as official scorers tend to give them out for things as dumb as feeding Al in the low post.

Speaking of Al, he sucked in this game. Eight turnovers, six traveling violations, three in the fourth quarter. The Wolves had closed the score to 87-89 with under thirty seconds to go, and got the stop they needed. So needing just a deuce to tie the game, they fed Al in the post. Then Al took a different kind of deuce, traveling yet again to kill whatever momentum the Wolves gained from Ryan Gomes' huge three (which would be the Wolves' last of the night). Nice one, Al.

Hopefully there will be other opportunities to win a close game. Hopefully Big Al won't choke again, but nobody has ever called him or any of the other Wolves winners.

Look, They're on TV

The Wolves were going to be bad this year. There's no getting around it. David Kahn tries to tell us that he will not accept the lack of effort and wins, but what can he do? Only three competent players returned from last year's bottom-feeder squad, and even they have never played a prominent role on a winning NBA squad.

Jonny Flynn started hot, but has cooled since and never really played like a point-guard should. Hopefully he'll learn that you can and should pass it when three defenders follow you to the rim. His strength is driving to the hoop, but the league has caught on to that, sending plenty of help to prevent easy lay-ups. Jonny makes some low-percentage shots, but that doesn't mean he should keep taking them. All of Bill Belicheck's non-sense has one great defense: the right decision doesn't always create the best outcome, and the best outcome doesn't always follow the right decision. Flynn will learn, as more and more of his minutes go to the much more polished Ramon Sessions. Though Flynn is not the only Wolf in need of some schooling.

If Kurt Rambis wants to come out and say that he's designing his offense to take mid-to-long-range jumpers, then I'll figuratively table my complaint, but for the moment the Timberwolves, one of the worst shooting teams in the NBA, are taking too many long two-point shots. The long two has all the difficulty of the three without any of the reward. It's the most inefficient shot in basketball (besides the desperation-heave), and most teams design their defense to force an offense into that kind of look. It's only open because the defense is inviting you to take a low-percentage, inefficient shot, keep looking. Not that the Wolves should start jacking up threes either. The only way the Wolves will break this losing streak is through the lay-up, which all of that ball-movement should create. I'm not enough of a strategist to see any easy passing lanes into the paint, but Kurt Rambis should be, and hopefully he'll pass that along to every big that's taking a 15-footer and every guard who's choosing the 18-foot stepback instead of driving the ball. In that respect, Jonny Flynn is doing something right: most of his jumpers are three-point attempts, and everything else happens near the basket, triple-teamed or not.

All in all, the Wolves are just playing too tight. NBA players have been making lay-ups all their life, yet several fast-break attempts turned into games of Tip-In as the first, second, and sometimes third player would miss the easiest shot in basketball. Fangraphs had an article today about the nature of choking. In short: consciously controlling an action that relies on muscle memory (such as shooting a lay-up) messes with the way the brain normally processes that action. So Corey Brewer and Pesch says to himself, "I have to make this lay-up," instead of just letting his muscle memory do what it's meant to do. How does that stop? Who knows. Maybe making lay-ups is a talent the Wolves lack, just like most other conceivable basketball talents.

Inside the Box: Two without Al

So I thought that without Al Jefferson's insistence on taking every shot, the Wolves would get into a better flow on offense. On defense a complete lack of his complete lack of physicality, length and athleticism would allow the Wolves to put Ryan Hollins in the middle for some actual NBA-caliber defense from the pivot. The rebounds would start flowing in with an all-natural right ACL launching for the ball.

Both results were similar, but neither differed much from the pattern's that's developed: When teams go slow, the Wolves get stops. When teams run, the Wolves give up easy shots. In both circumstances, the Wolves don't make as many shots. They don't make shots, period.

The season is starting to snowball, just like last year. Their only win came against the only winless team in the NBA. Memphis was a game they could have taken in a battle of one-win teams. The Wolves lack talent, the Grizzlies lack any sort of organizational cohesion, with a club full of shoot-first headcases, topped off with Allen Iverson's night life, which needs some personal time. Yet the Grizzlies have more talent than the Wolves, and sometimes talent trumps everything else (just look at Shaq's career).

Talent will come eventually, but it seems like our cubs aren't quitting anymore. At least the box score says they've stopped.

Consistently Inconsistent

It's never a good sign when you get excited that your team managed to pull within fifteen. The Wolves are a bad team, and no matter how hard they work, their lack of talent will eventually bring them down.

The Blazers' much slower pace helped the Wolves on defense, as they seem much more comfortable defending in the half-court as opposed to transition. Their defensive energy was especially impressive at the beginning of the game, as they got the stops they needed to compensate for their still inconsistent offense. Some of those stops came from the gift of wide-open misses by the Blazers, but the rotations seemed quick, and the guards stayed busy on the ball. It was encouraging to see the Wolves try and cleanse the stink from their very unwarrior-like performance against the Warriors. As per usual though, the Wolves did not maintain the effort that gave them a lead after the first quarter.

The Blazers started making those shots that they missed, and the Wolves compounded the problem by rotating too slowly on the Blazers' big men. Al Jefferson in particular seems to leave his man unguarded in order to help on dribble-penetration by guards. An extra pass leads to all the dunks we're seeing on a nightly basis. Al just isn't that good of a defender, even if he didn't give up fifty pounds to most starting NBA centers.

Rambis tried to make for Al's defensive inefficiencies by giving Ryan Hollins his first start as a Wolf, but Ryan Hollins is not very good. He has length, athleticism, a fifteen-foot jumper, and six fouls per game that he insists on using. Maybe some day he'll guard the rim with some skill, but for now he's a project, just like Nathan Jawai and every other Wolf big besides Al Jefferson and Kevin Love. Neither of them will ever have the length or bulk to defend players like Greg Oden. Long-term, I don't see both of them remaining with the team. Lucky for the Wolves they're both young, talented, and tradeable. We'll have to wait and see which one can get the Wolves a real franchise center.

The Wolves can't keep up with small teams like Golden State, and they get pushed around by bigger teams like Portland. Talent is an issue, yes, but it just seems like the Wolves don't have the versatility in their roster to even pretend to match up with any but the worst teams. Another draft and a few more trades will fix that hopefully. Until that happens, the Wolves are not going to win a lot of games. I'll keep watching, but I don't blame you if you've stopped.

That really sucked.

The Wolves are starting to return to their roots. Dumb turnovers, a stagnant and repetitive offense, and zero defense. The Warriors were able to gain the lane with great ease, dribbling or passing. No physicality from the guards, no help from the bigs, and a bunch of inactivity. The Wolves defenders only watched as Golden State's kick-outs led to wide-open threes. Nobody seemed willing or able to run in transition, and when they did keep up with their men, they lost their positioning. Which meant (guess what?) more open shots. Wolves Wolves Wolves, ugly ugly ugly. The Warriors shot 57.1% from the floor and 52.2% from three. That's absolutely abysmal. The Wolves gave up a team record 146 points.

The game got out of hand in the second quarter, when the Wolves started making turnovers instead of shots. The Warriors took advantage of every one, and didn't stop scoring for the rest of the game. It's becoming harder and harder for the cubs to stay watchable. Three blow-out losses in a row does not progress make. They're regressing, and it's not pretty. Of course, we could almost see this coming. New coach, new system, new and mostly bad players. It's almost a good thing that they're losing all these games. A high-lottery pick for a star-caliber prospect could be the next step. After the season of course. As far as the season goes, every win is a step away from winning the lottery, but another step towards being actually watchable. After tonight's game, I'd almost have the latter.

Playing Against Grown-Ups

Just a few years ago the Trail Blazers were in a similar situation. They only won 21 games, less than the 24 the Wolves won last year. So as the surprisingly pro-Portland announcers said, it gives you hope that our cubs can grow up to a real pack of wolves. What the Wolves need to do first though is make the kind of savvy trades that land you Brandon Roy and Lamarcus Aldridge for Randy Foye and some basketball players. Hopefully Kahn will play the Kevin Pritchard of Minnesota, instead of the Kevin McHale benefactor of another team's future.

Sometimes reading the box score is more fun, but at least Friday's game remained competitive until the third quarter. No doubt in tonight's match. The Blazers hit just about every shot they took... and we already know the Wolves couldn't hit Unicron with a basketball. Here's a stat for you: the Blazers racked up 35 assists on their way to 41 field goals. That's an assist on 85% of their makes. The official scorer judges the assist in varying ways, but a percentage that high is not a hometown gift. They looked good doing it, whether the passes were bullets inside or drive-and-dishes to the perimeter. It's the kind of teamwork the Wolves might show someday, will need to show someday in order to contend.

Our lil' cubs can't make up their mind. Some possessions they pass on open shots, while on others they don't make the extra pass that would guarantee the easy lay-ups they need. Jonny Flynn and Al Jefferson are the only fearless shooters on the roster. You could include Corey Brewer in that category, though his complete lack of balance on his jumper doesn't exactly spell "fearless." The bench is especially brutal, though Wayne Ellington and Sasha Pavlovic seemed to find their strokes during garbage time. Garbage time counts for fantasy, but sometimes a few meaningless shots can help a player make headway towards some meaning.

Inside the Box: Bucks @ Wolves

The Wolves showed a lot of heart in pushing the Celtics to a crappy last-second call, and the optimists among us thought they could ride that moral victory into some actual W's against weaker teams. So last night's game against the Bucks tested that theory, and proved that there's no such thing as a "moral victory" for the Wolves or any other team, only defeats.

The Bucks outshot the T-Cubs, but not by much. All of the news outlets made Andrew Bogut (pretty good) vs Al Jefferson (pretty darn bad) the story, but the Aussie's numerous dunks and blocks don't reflect the real reason the Wolves lost: rebounds.

It stands out among the other stats like a giant pimple, ready to pop and infect the surrounding area. Milwaukee out-rebounded the cubs 51-38. That's thirteen more possessions, which meant eight more shots for the clusterbucks. The offensive rebounds shot the Wolves right between the eyes. Seventeen off the offensive glass has another name: inside domination. It wasn't just Bogut either. Every Milwaukee starter grabbed an offensive board, and only Brandon Jennings snagged less than two. That's where the Wolves have really missed Kevin Love, who is one of the best rebounders in the league. He's gone for at least three more weeks. Until then, the cubs gotta grow up and grab the ball.

The good news is that Jennings' hot start cooled when he faced Jonny Flynn, who not only shut down his draft classmate's shot but also took him to town for twenty points. So no, David Kahn did not screw up by taking Flynn over the other point guard from Europe. Flynn's already the Wolves' best guard, and he's only going to get better. He'll learn more of the offense, and his teammates may learn to hit shots eventually.

It's not pretty now, and thankfully the powers that be chose not to broadcast the game. Sometimes the box score is more fun to watch. It won't be for long.