OK, it’s late, even here in California tonight, but does that song Adam Sandler’s character sang in The Wedding Singer — the one after he had listened to The Cure too much — resonate with anyone else who watched the Wolves’ historic loss at Golden State?

That 146-105 loss tied franchise records for most points allowed — the Warriors had 74 by halftime, 111 by the end of three quarters — and largest margin of defeat.

The only other time the Wolves surrendered 146 points was  April 1, 1994 (no April’s Fools joke) right there at Golden State as well. New Wolves assistant coach Darrick Martin was  a rookie on that team that included J.R. Rider, Christian Laettner, Doug West, Sean Rooks, Winston Garland and too many other famous players to mention.

The only other time a Wolves team lost by 41 points was a March 1996 game at Miami, which was a 113-72 winner that night late in Kevin Garnett’s rookie season.

The Wolves committed 28 turnovers to 12 by the Warriors, who, btw, had only beaten Memphis in their first five games.

They gave up 66 points in the paint and trailed by as many 45 points in the fourth quarter.

The bare facts speak for themselves, so I’ll let what Kurt Rambis and a couple players in the locker room said afterward carry tonight’s posting for me.

Ryan Gomes: “I don’t think any of us have been beat this bad in any of our days of playing basketball. So it’s got to become personal. You have to do something about this individually and challenge ourselves individually, then the team ultimately will become better. We cannot let this happen again.”

This is what he said when someone asked how they put this one behind them: “Get on the plane and go back to Minnesota. Play Portland (Wednesday).”

Al Jefferson: “It’s an embarrassment. We just got embarrassed.”

I asked him if the players’ body language, particularly in the second half, said more than those 28 turnovers or point in the paint number ever could. He said, “Pretty much out of reach by then. We, thank God, tried to play hard for the most part throughout the whole game but every little mistake we made they took advantage of.”

Rambis on the big picture: “This is not something that’s not going to turn around in the first 10 games. We still don’t know who we are as a ballgame until Al Jefferson is back 100 percent, until Kevin Love is back, until we have an idea of a nice starting unit and a set rotation where guys can feel comfortable. Until then, we’ll probably continue to play up and down and be inconsistent.”

Rambis on the game: “They lost their fight. I don’t feel our guys competed in an aggressive manner, a nasty manner that they have to compete with. That’s one of the areas we have to significantly improve upon as a ballclub. They haven’t developed that.”

Rambis when I told him the loss tied franchise records for points allowed and margin of defeat: “Thank you for bringing that up. That’s excellent that you spent that time during the ball game to assess that.”

That’s all from Oakland/San Francisco tonight. The Wolves fly home in the morning and play Portland Wednesday night. Doesn’t this seem just like last season, when the Wolves eked out an opening-night victory over Sacramento and then lost eight consecutive games?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 4:47 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.