Wolves Press Clippings

Wolves Press Clippings

Date: 2/13/2016

Outlet: Pioneer Press

Author: Charley Walters
Glen Taylor satisfied with his 17-37 Timberwolves, for now

At the NBA all-star break this weekend, the Minnesota Timberwolves, with 28 games left in the season, have won 17 games, one more than they finished with last season (16-66). This season, the Wolves have 37 losses.

The Wolves aren’t going to lose 66 games again, and team owner Glen Taylor said he’s satisfied with this season … for now.

“As long as we keep improving, which we are,” Taylor said. “The team has been more competitive lately. I hope that sets the tone when we come out of the all-star break.”

As for Wolves coach Sam Mitchell, who became interim coach upon Flip Saunders’untimely death in October, Taylor said Mitchell is “doing what he said he would do, playing the young guys.”

That’s what Taylor wants, but he added “it makes it tough” in terms of wins and losses.

Taylor told Mitchell when he took the interim job that he could count on coaching the entire season.

“And that we wouldn’t evaluate him at one-fourth or one-half of the season,” Taylor said. “That way we gave him the freedom of exposing the young guys early.”

That, Taylor said, probably meant taking “some losses that we didn’t need to take.”

Taylor isn’t counting those losses against Mitchell.

“In fairness to him,” the owner said. “Everybody (in the front office) is watching, and when the season gets to an end, we’ll all have seen how it worked out. At this point, I don’t know what the answer’s going to be.”

The reigning WNBA champion Lynx don’t have their first pick until No. 14. Minnesota also has the Nos. 22 and 35 picks, but it’s unlikely they will try to move up to choose Banham.

Zach LaVine, who competed in the NBA all-star slam dunk contest, is fifth among Timberwolves in dunks this season. Andrew Wiggins is first. Kevin Garnett is tied for last.

Playing against each other in China last week, the Lynx’s Sylvia Fowles’ Beijing team defeated the Lynx’s Maya Moore’s team, 80-62, with Fowles scoring 30 points and Moore scoring 33.

Former Timberwolves assistant Eric Musselman, a two-time NBA head coach, has been named the Reno Gazette-Journal’s Mountain West midseason coach of the year in his first season at Nevada-Reno over San Diego State’s Steve Fisher.

DON’T PRINT THAT

Don’t think the Timberwolves haven’t tried to peddle Kevin Martin before Thursday’s deadline. Problem is there’s no market for the 33-year-old shooting guard whose salary this season is $7.1 million, fourth-highest on the team.

Ex-Apple Valley star Tyus Jones, 19, who is guaranteed $2.6 million through next season, has played in just 10 games for the Wolves this season.

There was some mild debate last June as to whether the Timberwolves, with the No. 1 pick, should take center Karl-Anthony Towns from Kentucky or center Jahlil Okaforfrom Duke.
The Wolves, of course, took Towns, 20, who is averaging 17.1 points, 10.1 rebounds and 30.1 minutes. Philadelphia, with the No. 3 pick, took Okafor, 20, who also is averaging 17.1 points, but 7.4 rebounds and 30.4 minutes.

By the way, Wolves center Gorgui Dieng has had six double-doubles in his last seven games and is averaging 16.9 points, 10.6 rebounds and 3.4 assists during eight consecutive starts.

Wolves Press Clippings

Date: 2/14/2016

Outlet: Pioneer Press

Author: Marino Eccher
Timberwolves trades: How fantasy deals could build a 74-8 team

LeBron James! Stephen Curry! Kevin Durant! All together in Minnesota to form a Timberwolves superpower that would make the U.S.S.R. blush.

For real? Not unless a number of general managers are struck with some very novel ideas about roster construction. Any actual Wolves moves ahead of the Feb. 18 trade deadline will almost certainly be of a much more pedestrian scale — perhaps unloading a veteran or taking calls on the likes of Shabazz Muhammad.

But this isn’t an exercise in reality: It’s an unhinged thought experiment on how much talent Minnesota could in theory amass, within NBA salary cap regulations and with the benefit of a bout of temporary insanity across the rest of the league. In the middle of the team’s 11th straight losing season, think of it as a tropical vacation for your imagination.

START AT ESPN.COM

To get there, we used ESPN’s NBA Trade Machine, which distills the league’s byzantine transaction rules into a sort of plug-and-play game.

The same expensive, struggling roster that has produced an unsightly real-life record makes the Wolves a prime contender to improve via fake deals. Few teams may want the injury-plagued Nikola Pekovic for two more years and $24 million, for instance — but his big contract matches up nicely with those of far more productive players who could take his place.

The trade machine weighs the production a team is shipping out against what it’s getting in return, and spits out the number of wins it expects the team to gain — or lose — as a result of the deal. It doesn’t give a baseline of how many wins it expects from the original roster; before the season, ESPN projected the Wolves to win 27 games.

Our first flight-of-fancy move was to swap the Wolves’ least productive player (as measured by Player Efficiency Rating) for the league’s most productive — Golden State guard and living basketball god Stephen Curry. Minnesota’s worst player who matches Curry’s $11.3 million salary is Pekovic.

That improves the Wolves by 14 wins, and knocks Golden State down by two, according to Trade Machine math. The first number seems conservative and the latter absurd, but we don’t make the rules.

TRADE THE KEVINS

After Curry, we’re going after Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant. He’ll cost the Wolves a pair of Kevins in return — Martin and Garnett. As much as it pains us to part with KG yet again, the deal nets the Wolves another 14 wins, for a total boost of 28.

We can bump that to 30 by keeping Garnett and remixing the deal with an assortment of role players and spare parts — Adriean Payne, Damjan Rudez, Tyus Jones and Nemanja Bjelica all get shipped out in this version.

KG’s reprieve is short-lived, because we’re going to use him to shore up the frontcourt. He and Rubio will fetch LeBron James from Cleveland, for a total of 34 extra wins.

Or he’ll be part of a torturous puzzle that involves just about everyone on Minnesota’s bench and lands San Antonio swingman Kawhi Leonard to get it to 35.

GET THE $1M PLAYER WHO DELIVERS

That leaves the Wolves with seven players on the roster. We like their chances — but we can still do better by eschewing star power for players who offer bang for the buck. Miami’s Hassan Whiteside, for instance, has the league’s ninth-best PER and is making less than $1 million.

Whether those stats actually translate to success is an open question, but throwing him in a trade along with Curry and Durant gives the Wolves a total of 38 extra wins, according to the trade machine’s math.

Swap Ricky Rubio for Durant’s teammate Russell Westbrook in the same deal and it’s 42.

Find a way to bring back Thunder center Enes Kanter in the same deal and it’s 47 wins, setting the Wolves up to win something in the neighborhood of 74 games. That’d be an NBA record, of course. Or the Wolves could simply swap rosters with Golden State, which is currently on pace to win 75.

At this point, we tried to squeeze out a few more wins and broke the trade machine — it wouldn’t process deals with that many players in the mix. But if you can do better and dream up a more spectacular, less plausible roster, we’d love to hear about it.