Grade the season

[Krapinsky]

I would actually give us a B. With the players we had on the court, I think we actually over achieved since Wittman was dismissed.

[Twizman]

The best things from this season were the management changes and the play of Love. The acquisition of Miller was good too.

The team played hard and won some games despite significant injury losses.

B

[Worm Guts]

Ask yourself, before the season started, what would be the biggest improvements the Wolves could make, 12 months later? We weren't winning a ring this year. I thought most of you would be happy.

1. Kevin McHale out of the front office. An in depth search for a new GM is underway.

2. Wittman out as coach. The team showed a new spark with McHale, but he may leave.

3. OJ Mayo and Beasley have sputtered, and are arguably worse than Kevin Love. We also managed to clear more $7.5 mil more raw cap space for the 2010 free agency, and avoided the temptation to add more in later trades. Mike Miller is not as bad as you guys make him.

4. We retained our lottery pick from LAC. We got to defer the UTA pick, increasing its value.

5. We demonstrated a reason for optimism in January.

Now I understand its no fun to watch a rebuilding team lose, but we ARE a rebuilding team. Our future looks brighter.

I think most people hoped for a bigger jump in wins. Obviously injuries were part of that, but even with everyone healthy there was a 4-23 stretch to start the season. The only major positive from this season was the play of Kevin Love.

[cpfsf]

Ask yourself, before the season started, what would be the biggest improvements the Wolves could make, 12 months later? We weren't winning a ring this year. I thought most of you would be happy.

1. Kevin McHale out of the front office. An in depth search for a new GM is underway.

2. Wittman out as coach. The team showed a new spark with McHale, but he may leave.

3. OJ Mayo and Beasley have sputtered, and are arguably worse than Kevin Love. We also managed to clear more $7.5 mil more raw cap space for the 2010 free agency, and avoided the temptation to add more in later trades. Mike Miller is not as bad as you guys make him.

4. We retained our lottery pick from LAC. We got to defer the UTA pick, increasing its value.

5. We demonstrated a reason for optimism in January.

Now I understand its no fun to watch a rebuilding team lose, but we ARE a rebuilding team. Our future looks brighter.

Just wanted to add to the list

Did anyone expect us to begin compete this year when we had Howard and Hudson on the books? This season we acquired expiring contracts for next year and we have plenty of 2009/2010 draft picks. This should be the last season of our rebuilding process because next year we will have all the pieces for trading season.

6. Managed to grab a lottery talent in Pekovic

7. Better record than last year despite injuries.

8. Good odds with our draft pick (and we didn’t need Mark Madsen shooting three pointers)

9. I think most would agree that the Love move was the best move we could have made that day (and I think even more would agree that he’s more talented than Beasley). Can you imagine the what if we didn't get the second pick and draft Beasley threads?

[TMo519]

I say C-, borderline D+.

* If you would have told me that Al Jefferson would miss 32 games and we would still improve our record from last year, I'm not going to lie, I would have doubted that lol. But 22 to 24, still improvement even though minute.

* Corey Brewer was actually starting to look quite good before his injury, who knows what could have developed there, but then Carney emerged later on in the season to kind of provide a kick there, so I'll call that a wash.

* Kevin Love has definitely proven himself to be worthy of his 5th overall pick status IMO. And I think him and Al Jefferson can be a frontcourt together. The key is getting the right pieces around them.

* Randy Wittman wasted the first quarter of the season, so I'm mad about that. I think we could have started off quite nicely if they woulda just had the grapefruits to fire him in the first place.

* Randy Foye showed glimpses of what he's capable of, and I think he could be a starter on a very good team if paired with the right point. Otherwise, he'd be excellent in that 6th man, combo role at the very least. I want him on the team in the future for sure.

* Rashad McCants is now gone, he was a locker room and on court disease I think, and without him, this team would have won more games early on IMO.

* Kevin McHale is no longer the general manager. For that reason alone, that boosts the grade from an F to a C lol. Don't get me wrong, he's made some decent moves of late, but I'm ready for a change there and look forward to seeing what someone else can do with this young team that now has some room for making some moves to get back into the playoff mix.

[Worm Guts]

* Randy Foye showed glimpses of what he's capable of, and I think he could be a starter on a very good team if paired with the right point. Otherwise, he'd be excellent in that 6th man, combo role at the very least. I want him on the team in the future for sure.

I think what Randy showed was a negative. He didn't really step up like I would have hoped after AJ got hurt.

[shrink]

Ask yourself, before the season started, what would be the biggest improvements the Wolves could make, 12 months later? We weren't winning a ring this year. I thought most of you would be happy.

1. Kevin McHale out of the front office. An in depth search for a new GM is underway.

2. Wittman out as coach. The team showed a new spark with McHale, but he may leave.

3. OJ Mayo and Beasley have sputtered, and are arguably worse than Kevin Love. We also managed to clear more $7.5 mil more raw cap space for the 2010 free agency, and avoided the temptation to add more in later trades. Mike Miller is not as bad as you guys make him.

4. We retained our lottery pick from LAC. We got to defer the UTA pick, increasing its value.

5. We demonstrated a reason for optimism in January.

Now I understand its no fun to watch a rebuilding team lose, but we ARE a rebuilding team. Our future looks brighter.

I think most people hoped for a bigger jump in wins. Obviously injuries were part of that, but even with everyone healthy there was a 4-23 stretch to start the season. The only major positive from this season was the play of Kevin Love.

So you're going on record that Kevin McHale out of the front office is not a major positive?

[Worm Guts]

I'll wait until I see who replaces him before I declare it a "major" positive. It's a positive that Taylor was willing to shake things up, I guess.

[deeney0]

What did I expect, besides more wins? Improvements in passing and D from Al, which never materialized. Consistantly from Foye and McCants. Better team D. More getting to the line all around. Better shooting and finishing for Bassy. Didn't see any of it.

[Biff Cooper]

What did I expect, besides more wins? Improvements in passing and D from Al, which never materialized. Consistantly from Foye and McCants. Better team D. More getting to the line all around. Better shooting and finishing for Bassy. Didn't see any of it.

I also gave them a D for these same reasons.
Al verified that he is a very consistant performer, and he suffered a very serious injury, that hopefully doesn't have long term ramifications. Love was able to prove that he has some solid potential.
Entering the season, I had expectations that at least three of McCants, Foye, Gomes, Smith, Telfair, Brewer, Carney, and Miller would develop and prove themselves to be top 100 level NBA talent, and it just hasn't happened. Foye had a 1.5-2 month stretch where he was probably a top 100 player. Miller might currently be playing close to that level. Brewer got hurt before he really could show anything. The rest of them have confirmed that they are solid NBA talent, and guys you want to have on your team - just not core guys that you can rely on game in - game out to be consistant two way NBA players. Wittman proved himself incapable of coaching these guys at this level, and McHale proved himself incapable of removing Wittman without Taylor stepping in. All in all it's been a very disappointing season.
There is still plenty of hope for the future, but chances of being a playoff team by next year (without mortgaging our future) now seem remote, where at the beginning of the season it seemed realistic.

[shrink]

Personally, I think your expectations are unrealistic. "I didn't expect the team to win, but I expected four of their players to produce like winners?"

With 30 teams in the league, a typical team should have three Top 100 teams if everything was equal. Well, its not equal. We are a rebuilding team. We tossed all our old, veteran players for youth. Our average age is what? 24?

So how about we look at value? Yeah, Micheal Redd may be a Top 50 player, but for our rebuilding team, I wouldn't swap Kevin Love for him.

Al Jefferson is a Top 20 value player in the NBA.
Kevin Love is obviously in the Top 100.
Mike Miller is probably a Top 100 value, with his all-around production and expiring contract
Randy Foye floats around there too, particularly with his youth and small contract.

Anyway, my point is that inside the Top 100 players, you'd have to dump a lot of players because they are Bottom 100 Values. MIN has NO bottom 100 values, and even players like Telfair, Gomes, and Craig Smith are better than average because of their low cost in a financially tightening league.

If we don't have four Top 100 players, its because we shouldn't have four top 100 players at this stage.

[TMo519]

You gotta look at the West though and realize, playoffs are VERY unlikely even with incredible improvement. It took 48 wins to get to the playoffs in the West this year. It only took 39 in the East. I mean, we're 11th in the conference right now, but worlds away from a playoff spot. I think even if we had won 33 games, playoffs would still be hard to imagine next year unless there's some major drop off of some teams in this conference.

[Biff Cooper]

Personally, I think your expectations are unrealistic. "I didn't expect the team to win, but I expected four of their players to produce like winners?"

With 30 teams in the league, a typical team should have three Top 100 teams if everything was equal. Well, its not equal. We are a rebuilding team. We tossed all our old, veteran players for youth. Our average age is what? 24?

So how about we look at value? Yeah, Micheal Redd may be a Top 50 player, but for our rebuilding team, I wouldn't swap Kevin Love for him.

Al Jefferson is a Top 20 value player in the NBA.
Kevin Love is obviously in the Top 100.
Mike Miller is probably a Top 100 value, with his all-around production and expiring contract
Randy Foye floats around there too, particularly with his youth and small contract.

Anyway, my point is that inside the Top 100 players, you'd have to dump a lot of players because they are Bottom 100 Values. MIN has NO bottom 100 values, and even players like Telfair, Gomes, and Craig Smith are better than average because of their low cost in a financially tightening league.

If we don't have four Top 100 players, its because we shouldn't have four top 100 players at this stage.

I interpretted this topic solely on the court - rather than combination moves + on the court. I also misspoke my intentions entering the season. I was hoping to see development and improvement out of McCants, Foye, Gomes, Smith, Telfair, Brewer, Carney, and Miller, towards three of them becoming top 100 level talent someday - rather than them becoming top 100 level talent this year. Through the year, I have seen some development and improvement out of most of them, but many of them have shown me a ceiling that is closer to top 200 rather than top 100. Maybe I had an unrealistic ceiling for a few of these guys, but I just expected a couple of them to really take more of a dramatic step forward this year.
Starting the season 4-23, quitting on the coach, and being out of the playoff running 25 games into the season was just unacceptable. Wittman was obviously not the right man for management to expect to coach and develop these guys.
I'm not going to say it was a successful season because all of our guys proved that they are average+ NBA level talent at a bargain price - and that we get to add another high draft pick or two.
I do think the Wolves still are sitting in a position to have a very bright future, but that doesn't change the fact in my mind that this year was a disappointment towards that goal.

[deeney0]

Personally, I think your expectations are unrealistic. "I didn't expect the team to win, but I expected four of their players to produce like winners?"

I want tangible improvements. Youth is nice, but only if its improving. I didn't expect them to produce like winner, but show that they are on the road to producing like winners. I didn't see that.