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Date: 2/14/2016
Outlet: 1500 ESPN
Author: Steve Mcpherson
Feelings Aren’t Numbers: Wolves Winning Hearts and Minds at All-Star Weekend
Somehow, the Minnesota Timberwolves are turning out to be All-Star Weekend’s biggest winners. In the middle of a season that brimmed with potential at the outset but has also brought heartache — both in the form of the loss of head coach and president of basketball operations Flip Saunders and the smaller form of what feels like underperformance by a talented roster — the midseason break has given us a chance to focus on some short-term results that can restore some of our faith in a long-term process.
The phrase “process over results” itself is deployed often and copiously by smart people who watch and work in the NBA. It smacks of patience, maturity, a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the game beyond the mewling cries of fans who just want to win now. But often it’s devilishly hard to pin down what is and isn’t working in the process before you have the results. The process netted the Oklahoma City Thunder three of the current best players in the NBA over the course of three drafts, but decisions that had to be made along the way also painted them into a corner where they had to relinquish one or face a potentially crippling financial situation with no guarantee of greater success. The Philadelphia Sixers are neck- and potentially eyeball-deep in the process but that’s cold comfort to fans and possibly management, given some of the recent shakeups in the front office there. Patience is a virtue that makes good things possible, but it also makes bad things possible and doesn’t in and of itself guarantee reward.
So the Wolves came into this All-Star weekend the winner of three of their last four games against some pretty solid competition and hopefully feeling pretty good about themselves. They will leave it having won a different kind of game that’s less concrete than the one on the court but no less important in its own way.
Andrew Wiggins came into the weekend’s Rising Stars Challenge as the reigning MVP, with both Zach LaVine and Karl-Anthony Towns joking about coming for his crown as their USA team squared off against Wiggins’ World team. And then one of them did! LaVine’s 30 points matched Kristaps Porzingis and Emmanuel Mudiay, but he did it for the winning team, so he walked away with MVP honor. Plus they won it largely on a late surge by Towns, who was the game’s leading scorer over its last seven minutes with 10 points. The game itself was a fever dream version of analytically-sound basketball, all dunks and 3-pointers. Sure, there was no defense, but as the clocked ticked down, what you saw were all the Wolves establishing themselves quickly at the top of their teams’ pecking orders.
LaVine, of course, entered All-Star Saturday Night as the favorite by a wide margin in the Slam Dunk Contest, but it was Towns who surprised early, taking home the Skills Challenge crown by besting big-man favorite Draymond Green and DeMarcus Cousins before defeating the diminutive Isaiah Thomas in the final round. It’s worth noting that he wasn’t just not favored, but was in fact the longest shot to win the competition according to Vegas. By far the best thing about it was the hogpile on Towns by all of his fellow bigs at the end:
With no Timberwolves in the 3-point Contest because, come on, let’s be real, the next event of real importance was the Slam Dunk Contest and at first, it looked like LaVine was going to walk away with it. But then things got interesting, fierce and eventually epic as the Orlando Magic’s Aaron Gordonput up a fight for the ages. Gordon’s best dunks were more fun and outrageously hard to comprehend than LaVine’s best efforts, but LaVine’s overall body of work, plus the pure grace and athleticism he displayed, made him a worthy back-to-back winner.
As tirelessly (exhaustingly?) pointed out by concern trolls on Twitter, all that hardware — LaVine’s Rising Stars MVP and second Dunk Contest trophy, Towns’ Skills Challenge trophy — don’t mean the Timberwolves get any more wins than they already have for the season. But consider the fact that during the Dunk Contest the camera of a national broadcast was constantly cutting to the reactions of Towns and Wiggins, sitting side by side, to each of LaVine’s dunks. Getting the optics and setting up a narrative isn’t going to net them Ws this season, but if the team actually does coalesce over the next season or two and starts winning, you can bet this stuff will matter a lot.
Consider the constantly simmering talk about how Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook couldn’t play together, or the ways that ego broke up the promising pairing of Stephon Marbury and Kevin Garnett and sunk the partnership between Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal. For their part, the young Wolves garnered a lot of attention from the national media this weekend — and I mean A LOT — and they did it while looking like the best of friends, good naturedly ribbing each other and horsing around.
It’s becoming apparent that Towns was a perfect choice as a counterweight to Wiggins and LaVine, not just as a player on the court, but as a personality. Where Wiggins is reserved sometimes to the point of being laconic, LaVine is voluble and cocky, albeit in a very charming way. Towns seems to draw from both these poles of self-expression. He’s a willing talker who’s confident, but in a measured, careful way.
People want to root for winners, yes, but they also want to feel like they can hang out with them, have a beer with them (OK in this case none of them can have a beer yet, but you know). So yes, the Wolves won some pretty hardware and no games this weekend, but they also definitely won some hearts and minds, and that’s part of the battle, too.
Wolves Press Clippings
Date: 2/14/2016
Outlet: 1500 ESPN
Author: Derek James
Gordon impressed, but no denying Zach LaVine deserved 2nd dunk title
Fortunately, LaVine didn’t do just that, thanks to Aaron Gordon of the Orlando Magic.
LaVine began by lobbing the ball to himself from the side and scooping in in midair with his left hand before swinging it behind-the-back to his right for the dunk. For his second dunk, LaVine sprintedfrom center court and leapt from the free throw line as the ball was lobbed to him.
As for Gordon, he made it a competition almost immediately. Gordon drove from the 3-point line and pulled off a 360 between-the-legs dunk.
It was Gordon’s second dunk of the round that will go down as one of the most memorable in the contest’s history. Using the Magic’s mascot — Stuff the Magic Dragon — to hold the ball in the air in the restricted area, Gordon leapt over Stuff, grabbing the ball for a between the legs dunk.
Gordon’s final round saw him tweak the one from the previous round. This time he hovered above Stuff in midair, and appeared to be seated in an invisible chair as he slid the ball between his legs for a dunk. The dunk became an instant classic. At that point, it seemed as if LaVine’s repeat was far from certain.
In LaVine’s final round, he pulled off one of the most difficult dunks in existence: the alley oop from the free throw line. With help from the perfect lob from Andre Miller, LaVine earned a 49 from the judges — just one-point shy of a perfect score. LaVine also added a nice free throw line windmill dunk as well.
This led to a tiebreaker round, in which Gordon reverse slammed a lob pass from teammate Elfrid Payton in his first attempt.
Starting off his first tiebreaker dunk, LaVine began in the same corner spot Gordon did with Payton, and caught his own lob for the dunk.
With LaVine’s corner dunk, we had yet another tie. This time, Gordon started in the opposite corner with an incredible tomahawk-to-reverse dunk.
However, LaVine closed things out with a between-the-legs dunk from the free throw line, which clinched his second consecutive slam dunk contest victory.
The talk on Twitter afterward centered around whether or not LaVine actually deserved to win. The answer is yes. Although each player just built their own compelling case in their own way.
For Gordon, it was the way he used a prop to effectively showcase his ability. In recent years, the dunk contest was criticized for leaning on props like The Dunk Wheel or Blake Griffin jumping over a Kia. Gordon succeeded with two original dunks over Stuff the mascot, and deserved consideration for the dunk title.
LaVine’s performance has seemed to sit with people a little differently. By that I mean some feel that Gordon was “robbed.” Yet, that doesn’t do justice to what LaVine accomplished on Saturday night. Dunking from the free throw line is not something every player can do. It’s an iconic to throw-down that pays homage to great dunkers of the past like Julius Erving and Michael Jordan.
LaVine built two separate dunks off of the same idea. Of course, the first is the alley-oop from the free throw line, which not only requires the hops, but the catch as well.
The most impressive was the between-the-legs dunk from the free throw line. Anyone who has ever tried to do a regular between-the-legs dunk (on a lowered rim) knows how difficult it is the get the right amount of air to pull it off, and LaVine not only had that, but enough distance to get from the free throw line to the rim. If that’s not a feat of athleticism, I don’t know what is.
Whether they’re reverse, between-the-legs, or free-throw-line dunks, we’re bound to have some overlap with what we’ve seen in the past. Both Gordon and LaVine took familiar concepts and expanded upon them by adding their own flare.
Some will debate who the real winner should have been. Regardless, one thing is for sure, and that is we all won on Saturday night for having seen this memorable duel.
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