That’s 4-14 after 113-84 loss at New Jersey
Posted on December 5th, 2008 – 11:32 PMBy Jerry Zgoda
OK, so no Mike Miller, no Corey Brewer…
But how long can this go on without something happening?
The 29-point loss was by 12 points the Wolves biggest of the season. It was lopsided and they look so disinterested and frustrated. They had, after all, three technical fouls: Randy Wittman, Craig Smith, Sebastian Telfair.
The Nets made a season-high 14 threes (and took a season-high 28 of them) and outscored the Wolves 63-43 in the second half.
Something’s got to give Saturday, when it’s the 4-14 Wolves and 3-16 Clippers at Target Center. Be there!
36 Responses to "That’s 4-14 after 113-84 loss at New Jersey"
Jerry, how much longer can Wittman last? Could Mitchell be a possible replacement? Also, have you heard anything new on the McCants trade rumors?
Wittman is done. Somebody’s gotta go and usually the coach is the first one to get canned, just look at the Raptors.
They wont trade McCants. He’s not playing worth a damn right now so they wouldn’t get anything back in return.
The only problem with firing Wittman is that McHale will be his replacement.
Jerry, thank you so much for saying something should or has got to happen, too many media members seem ok with how things are going and are too afraid to stand up and say this is ridiculous and we have had enough. I have been hard on your writing and predictions in the past but thank you.
P.S. McCants needs to be traded no matter what you can get for him.
Oh, and record wise McHale is 19-12 as a head coach, someone correct me if I am wrong, we would kill for that record now. There is no doubt he knows basketball on the court but, trades and drafting he really struggles in.
Sam Mitchell? Good idea, but I don’t see it because he has a ton of money and more than two years left on his contract due him by the Raptors and you almost never see a guy take another job while another team is obligated to pay him millions to do nothing.
The fans in Toronto say that while Mitchell is fantastic at developing young talent, he has almost no playbook to speak of….very weak on the x’s and o’s.
And, as someone else mentioned, firing Wittman fixes maybe 10% of our problems. The overriding issue is the roster as far as I’m concerned. A new coach, unless his name is Mike D’Antoni, won’t do much better than Wittman is now. We might see more effort, but I doubt it will dramatically increase the number of wins we get. We’re just too unathletic, too slow, too poor defensively, to be competitive in today’s NBA. In the end, the new coach will still have to deal with McHale’s constant bad decisions. If we want to change, let’s start all the way at the top. We’ve tried to start in the middle before and we keep getting worse.
Anyway, since we’re all throwing out ideas on what to do, I’d like to put out there a trade opportunity I came up with that’s half stupidity and half brilliance in my own opinion.
Miami gets:
Carlos Boozer
Randy Foye
Calvin Booth
Utah gets:
Kevin Love
Rashad McCants
Udonis Haslem
Memphis gets:
Shawn Marion
Morris Almond
Craig Smith
Minnesota gets:
Mike Conley
Hakim Warrick
Darko Milicic
Paul Millsap
So here’s the logic for each team…
Boozer has made no secret that he’s interested in playing for the Heat, and has hinted he might opt out of his contract with the Jazz this summer to sign there. With this trade, not only do the Jazz get a guy who is practically custom built for their system and can do everything Bozzer can plus more (Love), they also get added defense and strength in the post in Haslem, another shooter in McCants to go with Korver (who made a world of difference for them last year), and they unload Morris Almond, who they’re trying to trade now anyway (albeit not urgently).
The Heat get the guy they want in Boozer, plus a ballhandler to stick next to Wade in Foye (we all remember how close Pat Riley was to outright drafting Mayo), and unload Haslem, who’s already losing his spot to Beasley, and Marion, who they want to trade already.
The Grizzlies trade Conley (which they already tried to do) and Warrick and get rid of Milicic, for a guy custom built for THEIR system in Marion (remember that Coach Ivaroni was once D’Antoni’s assistant) who can either be resigned for less over the summer (unlikely) or let go of for a boatload of cap space. They also get a low post scorer in Smith, and another athletic wing in Almond.
We get basically everything we need, or at leas the start of it. A potential all star point guard in Conley, size and defense in Milicic (who’s contract conveniently expires just in time for the 2010 free agency rush) and Millsap, and an athletic wing in Warrick to replace what we lost in Brewer. And we unload McCants.
So that’s my proposal. What do you guys think?
Also, yes, the Grizzlies are actively shopping Conley (they nearly sent him to the Blazers, but balked when Portland refused to send Steve Blake back). So even if we don’t make a huge trade like the one I came up with, I definitely think we need to look at acquiring Conley if we can.
And as a side note….I get the same pained feelings watching Paul Millsap that I do watching Brandon Roy. We could have drafted him, but instead we drafted Smith. Who’s a scoring beast, but slow and unathletic (our trademark now) and a liability on defense.
Millsap on the other hand is being talked about as replacing Boozer in Utah’s starting 5 permanently if Carlos walks, and there are a lot of scouts that think the Jazz are better with Millsap anyway…he’s a vertical player, can dunk and block shots, and the consensus around the league is the Jazz are much better defensively with him versus Boozer.
4 team trade?? and the wolves get screwed on the deal. millsap is basically the same player as rhino. darko and warrick are not good. and conley is overrated.
[…] On the Wolves – […]
Millsap is averaging 13-7 (as opposed to Craig’s 8-4), and can actually jump. He dropped 17-11-7 and 3 blocks on the Raptors tonight. I know Craig won’t get us 3 blocks, if nothing else.
They’re really not all that similar…same size is about it. Otherwise, they’re about as similar as KG and Duncan.
Anyway, Milicic isn’t great, but he has averaged 8 points, 6 rebounds and 2 blocks the past two seasons. And again, he expires in 2010.
Warrick averages 9-4 in roughly 20 minutes….so basically he’s equivalent to Gomes. Except unlike Gomes, Warrick can jump through the ceiling. If there’s one thing this team desperately needs, it’s athleticism. I think that’s obvious.
Also, I forgot to mention that in my scenario, Jason Collins goes to the Heat too. So they get a big center they desperately need, and although Collins won’t put up big numbers, I think we can all agree he’ll do more than Mark Blount.
Oh, and ya, COnley hasn’t been doing great, but I think it’s a problem with the system he’s in. Thad Mata ran a halfcourt system at Ohio State with Conley being more similar to Deron Williams in style. Now Conley’s in a D’Antoni lite system, and Ivaroni is trying to get him to be Steve Nash, which isn’t his game.
I think like Foye and Love, Conley is a guy who will flourish with a different team. The kind of team we had is similar to the one he led at Ohio State, and he was very good that year.
Bryan - truly an amazing trade (I wish McHale put in half as much time as you did on this)
I have a couple issues with the trade one is that you said yourself that Milsapp would replace Boozer when he walks; why would they trade BOTH Boozer and Milsap? Although they are getting Love and Haslem, wouldn’t they rather stick with one of their guys?
Also, we trade BOTH our legit centers (yes they are just tall guys, but they are the only 2 we have) and we only get one in return (Darko) that has not proven himself to be a legit starter in this league. I suppose if he got more minutes in Memphis he’d do better, but still I am a bit wary. But like you said he has decent stats and his contract expires in 2010, so I’ll take your word for it.
Then we get a guy in Warrick who is essentially Gomes but can jump higher. He can score a bit which is nice, but once Brewer comes back you’ll have a lot of guys that do very similar things
(Brewer, Gomes, Carney if we keep him, Warrick…) Granted they are all a bit different, but we had an issue with too many wing players a couple years ago, and look where we are.
Conley is going to be very good in this league, but to be the headliner of this trade where we give up Love, Foye, McCants, Booth, Smith AND Collins?
Essentially we get a starting PG, a wingman who is solid (does he play Defense? we need that…), a decent to good (by no means great) PF, and an OK C (Like I said I’ll take your word for him).
We give up a TON for this deal though and here’s my problem with it - whose going to SCORE for us? Love (double double), Foye (seems good now for 15-20/night), Smith (he’s the Rhyno for crying out loud), McCants (yes he pisses me off, but he is still a decent scorer) and Collins/Booth (yah no points there but size matters sometimes) and you are replacing them with a bunch of guys who MAYBE get you 10-15 points a game (Darko ~8, Warrick ~9, Milsap ~13, Conley ~8). Your starting lineup would be something like Conley, Miller, Gomes/Warrick/Brewer (when hes healthy), Jefferson, Darko which is decent (I’ll give you that) but your bench is something like Milsap, Telfair, Ollie, Carney, Gomes/Warrick/Brewer (when he gets back NEXT YEAR), Madsen (i love him but I cringe when I said that), Cardinal (ugh)…and thats it.
We get slighty (and I do mean slightly) stronger in the starting 5, but have NO ONE on the bench, and we get absurdly small (essentially 4 PFs and one C with 2 PF’s that pretend to be C, and a SF that pretends - and badly - to be PF in Gomes). We’ll need to get another player back in this deal, otherwise there won’t be enough players on this team, and one injury (ie Miller the other day) would end them. Our scorers will be Miller and Jefferson, maybe getting a decent night out of one of the guys we get in this trade, with some decent scoring off the bench with Milsap - who yes can put up decent numbers, but he’d need significant minutes. The team does get worse but gets more focused. In my opinion they’d need to do this with at least one more player to hold a spot on the roster in case of injuries, and then fill up the roster with the 1st rounders next year (or dare I say trade one and get a decent player out of the deal).
Keep the ideas coming Bryan, McHale might learn a thing or to.
How about a 2 team deal…This could work.
To the Bobcats:
* Rashad McCants
* Jason Collins
* Corey Brewer
* Calvin Booth
* conditional 1st rounder
To the Wolves:
* Raymond Felton
* Gerald Wallace
* Alexis Ajinca
who would go for that garbage heap? get rid of either Wallace or Felton and the Bobcats might agree to that, but it would rip us off something fierce…
we have a lot of problems that probably won’t get solved via trade this year, because we don’t have a lot of tradeable value. yeah, we could maybe package McCants and a 1st rounder for some sort of bench upgrade, but beyond that we’d have to give away something significant like Foye to get anything that might come close to helping us. and we shouldn’t give away Foye, because even though his defense is not where it should be this year, he is one of 3 people on this team who would still start if they were playing with a lot of other NBA teams.
bring on the lottery next year. bring on that Euro center we drafted last year. bring on some cap room. I’ll spend the next 4 months much like I spent the pre-Garnett years- still following, and laughing at the comedy.
I don’t want to hear about any trade ideas until we trade in our coach and GM.
I wouldn’t trust Kevin McHale and Randy Wittman to dig up my grandmother and assess her as dead let alone who is a talented NBA ball player! (my grandmother died in 1991)
I predicted 4-17 before the start of the season when Wittman would resign.
It’s time for Taylor to let McHale walk away now, so we can have a real network in by the time all the draft picks are here for us to actually draft and use instead of screw up, waste, or trade away.
Tony,
Not sure we can trade players that are injured in the NBA can we?
Well…yes. We obviously give up a lot more talent that we get back. I was thinking more in terms of addressing needs than just equaling out talent. I tried to see how a lot of other scenarios would have worked, but I couldn’t find any other teams that I knew were shopping guys around. It’s a lot of addition by subtraction and moving guys because they don’t fit on the team rather than them being bad players. Love will be a good player, but he’s a 4, and we already have a 4, and we can’t use him as a 5. Foye will be a good player, but he’s a 2, and we already have a 2, and he’s not working out as a 1. McCants is a clown, and the one guy who we actually have a place for, but he doesn’t want to play there (meaning off the bench).
Mostly what I was going for was athletes….Conley, Warrick and Millsap are all top flight athletes, which we’re definitely missing this year. Warrick and Millsap both have expiring contracts, so we wouldn’t have to keep them if we don’t like them (although I don’t see why, if this deal were to happen, we wouldn’t keep Millsap). We could make the deal without including Smith, but having both Millsap and Smith, although they are different, would be difficult as they’d compete with each other for playing time and we wouldn’t be able to maximize eithers’ talent.
The big sticking point in terms of logistics, which is why I had us giving up so much in my scenario, is that Marion’s contract is enormous: over $17 mil this year. It’s hard to equal that out with a bunch of guys still on their rookie deals. Also, I’m a little skeptical about how much player value Foye and McCants would have in a trade considering both are off to pretty poor starts this season.
But yes, I’m obviously putting a lot on the hope that Conley develops into an all star caliber player. Obviously at face value, Miami gets the best in the deal….an all star in Boozer and a pretty solid player in Foye. If the deal does happen, we’d have to fill in the gaps with draft picks. Thabeet would be logical…another athlete, 7′3″, very good defensively…and he’d probably be ready for the spotlight by the time Milicic’s deal expires. I’d also target Nick Calathes to replace McCants’ scoring, Robert Dozier to replace Warrick’s athleticism if he isn’t brought back. Probably a point guard like Stephon Curry, Ty Lawson or AJ price to be insurance behind Conley and Telfair. So the deal would be a first step (I think it would need to be), not a full circle.
Granted, McHale would probably squander our draft picks. But the again, if this trade were to happen, McHale probably wouldn’t be in office anymore anyway. But eh…it’s all theoretical and for fun.
A lot of the problem is Taylor. He refuses to get rid of McHale. He has NEVER hired an expensive, high-profile coach from outside the organization. Sure, Saunders was paid a lot of money eventually, but even he was friends with McHale. Where is the evidence that Taylor will go outside this organization to hire a proven coach like Van Gundy or any type of GM with sufficient experience ? If Wittman is fired, Sichting will replace him. If McHale steps down, Hoiberg will replace him, and Babcock, Stack and company that have helped to make the bad GM moves will still be here. This organization needs an overhaul. But, it won’t happen with Taylor in place.
I’ve been a longtime T-Wolves fan, but last night’s game and this season are really testing that loyalty.
While Wittman will be the first to go, this is obviously McHale’s fault. The player personnel decisions have been awful the last five years and the Mayo/Love trade should be the last straw.
My great concern is that we’re going to waste Big Al’s prime years like we did KG’s. This team needs to be blown-up (again). Big Al is the only untouchable player. Although I do like Gomes, Smith and Telfair as role players/backups. I’d probably also give Foye and Brewer one more shot unless they’re needed in a trade.
Jerry…is there any chance T-Wolves can get Pekovic over here next year? Some analysts thought he would have been the first center taken in last year’s draft if not for the big contract buyout it would have required to get him over here.
Ehhh, I agree Taylor has not made smart decisions with his front office staff, but I’m a little hesitant to call for new ownership on the chance that the new guy will try to move the team to a different city. As tough as it is to stomach the undeserved tolerance Glen has of the team, at least we know he’s 100% committed to keeping them here.
Also, even if we don’t make a spectacular trade, I do think we need to aggressively explore options for smaller ones. We know Conley is being shopped by the Grizz. Channing Frye and Travis Outlaw are being shopped by the Blazers. Ramon Sessions is probably out of the long term picture in Milwaukee and I would imagine any of the Thunder except for Green, Westbrook and Durant are available. So there’s a lot of little deals we could make that would make a world of difference for the team.
Another factor in this is that no high(er) profile coaching candidate would even consider coming here without big money up front, and prolly the GM title. Plus I just don’t see Taylor paying Casey, Wittman, McHale, plus whoever the new guy would be. I can’t imagine he’d do a full coaching/management change mid-season. More likely they’ll limp along as is until it becomes untenable, and either McHale will take over, or Sichting will. Our best hope is that Wittman gets fired, soon, and Sichting or whoever (not McHale) gets a mandate to audition the young guys. Then at least we can find what, if any, ballers we have.
ALSO
I want to draw attention to Paul Millsap as another guy that sells my trade for me and helps equal out the talent gap a bit.
Here’s his lines for the past 7 games he’s played, all starting in place of Boozer:
vs Chicago: 21 points, 10 rebounds
vs Memphis: 24 points, 16 rebounds
vs Sacramento: 11 points, 11 rebounds
vs New Jersey: 20 points, 10 rebounds
vs Sacramento: 13 points, 11 rebounds, 5 assists
vs Miami: 20 points, 13 rebounds, 3 assists
vs Toronto: 17 points, 11 rebounds, 7 assists, 3 blocks
So in 7 consecutive starts, he’s pilied up 7 consecutive double-doubles, averaging 3 assists per game and nearly a full block during that time.
I like Craig, but the bottom line is Millsap is better.
I like the trade idea Bryan. It makes sense, and therefore it won’t happen. I’d say the smart bet is they stand pat. Crappy as that may be.
Milsap does look quite impressive. If he could put up those kind of numbers here, we’d be fine then. Miller would need to stay healthy, and Al would need to continue his pace. Conley would need to show me more though, and from what you’ve said I agree he has lots of talent.
Darko could give us a tiny bit of scoring punch and size, and Warrick will jump out of the building like you said. Dare I say, if such a trade were to happen, we could shop a 2nd rounder and a late 1st rounder (I’d hope it wouldn’t take more) for someone who could score like a Channing Frye or Outlaw.
We’ll have to wait and see. From what I’ve seen, the draft this year looks pretty deep, and if we could land some of the guys you mentioned I think we’d be fine.
My only issue is Love - i think he could do some good things, and while he’s not as athletic as Milsap, he could definitely put up similar numbers and learn to play within himself. He’s already shown flashes, and has lots of energy. I would miss Foye and somewhat miss the Rhyno, but could live without them for the right price.
Here’s hoping.
Bryan,
That is a decent looking 4 team trade, but I am not sure that Utah would give up Milsap for taking Love and Haslem. The one problem for the Wolves is that ideally Milsap and Al play the 4. At this point the Wolves can’t get much worse so I am game for ANYTHING.
It looks like our only hope is riding on our lottery pick for next year, but we have a lot of competition for the top spots in the draft.
i vote bryan for new gm of the timberwolves. i guarantee that no other front office employee has done as much home work as bryan has.
I have a trade:
McHale for a six pack, lol. Just kidding.
I would start all over, Trade everybody, even Jefferson and then get a new front offiice and let them rebuild for real.
We know that Avery is out there for a head coach if we wanted to shell out the cash.
What else is out there, and what/who could we bring in to the front office to actually call it a front office and not the toilet that it really is right now?
I almost think that if we brought in a team of complete NON BASKETBALL EXECS… just business leaders from outside of basketball that they could do a ten times better job than the so called basketball experts we have here.
So I don’t mind if someone throws out an idea outside the box as long as it’s backed up with a real idea.
Charles Barkley has said several times the last few years he’s looking to run a team. Dunno how good he’d be at it, but he can’t possibly be worse than McHale. His analysis on TNT at least shows he’s in touch with the state of the league.
And yes, a big big part of anyone trying to get Millsap will be expedience. If he keeps up at the pace he’s going at, pretty quick the Jazz will decide he’s the future of their power forward spot and then they won’t trade him to anyone.
Al Jefferson to the Bulls, Luol Deng, Joakim Noah, and Tyrus Thomas or Sefelosha to the Wolves. Wolves get longer and more athletic. Love starts at PF. Bulls, with no post scoring and no cap flexibility, would do this.
You can gush on Jefferson’s offensive ability all you want, but he does not play a lick of defense. He is slow as an ox, and never seems to see guys streaking into the lane to help. Love will maybe not have the post moves and soft hands Jefferson has, but he is a smarter player and will be better and cheaper than Jefferson.
The experiment is over…Love and Jefferson and too slow and undersized to be a front line. You can only keep one of them. Long term Jefferson is the weaker link. Deng has a slightly better contract than Jefferson, and more upside.
deng cant be moved for a little while and he has a trade kicker in his contract that im sure the bulls wont pay.
just wondering what the mchale man hug means. is this something he does on a regular basis or was it a good bye hug? never has a man hug excited me this much!
