Update, Part 2
During my time away from this blog, several relevant storylines have arisen concerning our local sports machine. I will now opine.
The Minnesota Timberwolves
It's been beaten to death, but open tanking of the end of the season to ensure a lottery draft pick did actually happen. And for good reason: the Wolves currently have 12 guarranteed contracts for next season, thereby killing any chance they would have making a significant impact on the free-agent market. The only ways left for them to get better is via trade and the draft. While I don't agree with purposely trying to lose in order gain position for the lottery, I can't fault them for doing it. Who are the Wolves going to trade? McHale already said no about KG, so who else is there to shop? Ricky Davis? By saying that KG is not available for trade (with which I agree), and showing earlier this season that Randy Foye and Rashad McCants also are not available, there's no one to move. This year's draft is being ballyhooed as one of the deepest ever. So even if the Wolves don't move from the number 7 spot, a quality player will still be available to them. Whether or not McHale picks appropriately remains to be seen. If I had the seventh pick, I try Al Horford from Florida, Roy Hibbert from Georgetown, or Yi Jianlian from China. If they're not available, and you don't take Acie Law IV (which wouldn't make sense on a team with at least 6 guards, but whom I love to death), then trade the pick for some size.
It will be interesting to see how the Randy Wittman saga is handled next year. Garnett loves him, Taylor loves him, and McHale loves him. But he's a terrible head coach, based on the merit of his career coaching record. Should they fall in the tubes again, and he gets fired, does that prompt a mid-season Kevin Garnett trade? Probably, and probably not for enough.
The Minnesota Vikings
Who will they take? Who's the quarterback? Who cares? The Vikings just registered their sixth player-arrest in the past 12 months, putting them in a rare league with the Cincinatti Bengals. Christ, as if this team isn't hard enough to watch on the field, now they're daily police blotter material.
Here's the list of safties currently rostered for the 2007 season: Darren Sharper, Tank Williams, Dwight Smith, and Greg Blue. They've made one free agent signing this off-season: Mike Doss. Guess what? Another safety! And, at the time of the signing, they were rumored to be interested with LaRon Landry from LSU with the 7th pick, also a safety. I don't even have a joke for this.
The Minnesota Wild
What a fun regular-season they gave us. Lots of scoring, decent defense, and new reason for everybody to rag on Manny Fernandez in Nikolas Backstrom. The final push for the 3-seed in the West was fun, but ultimately everybody set their sights on Anaheim, the 2-seed with whom they drew in the first round.
Now, Ducks hockey is something I treated much like Pac-10 basketball--they don't exist. I only learned that they had dropped the "Mighty" from their name when the playoffs started. Here's what I learned: they are a bunch of douchebags, from top to bottom. Yeah, they're talented, and they wholly outplayed the Wild (game 4 aside). But this is a team that employs a hair-puller (Chris Kunitz), a former tough-guy-turned cheap shot artist (Brad May), and a double-teamer (Shawn Thornton). It was laughable enough to watch Kuniz pull Brent Burns' hair (and the ensuing mop-job done by Burns), but to watch Thornton tag-team Adam Hall, and May punch a non-fighter in Kim Johnsson in the face, you realize that this is a team full of losers. Even the coach, Randy Carslyle, is a rod. The new-ish rule in the NHL about fighting in the last five minutes of a game is a joke. May doesn't throw that punch if he doesn't know that there was only 1:48 to play and that Boogaard can't come out on the next shift and end his career. If I'm May or Thornton, I retire after the season's over because Boogaard will ruin them both. Just ask Todd Fedoruk. I'm openly rooting for whoever gets the Ducks in round 2, and I hope that team is stacked full of goons to take out an entire hockey team.
My assesment of the season, however, is positive. They just need a little more size defensively.
The Minnesota Twins
Well, we knew that there wasn't Gil Meche-type money laying around for free-agency, and in one of two cases, we got what we paid for. Sidney Ponson continues to get murdered, and we should be seeing him gone by mid-May, replaced by any combination of Matt Garza, Kevin Slowey, or Glenn Perkins.
Ramon Ortiz, however, is a bright spot. How long this lasts remains to be seen, but he is fun to watch. I don't think there's a bigger fan of the Twins defense than Ortiz himself. He's like a 6-year-old on Pixie Stix watching them play.
That's all for now, more to come soon.
The Minnesota Timberwolves
It's been beaten to death, but open tanking of the end of the season to ensure a lottery draft pick did actually happen. And for good reason: the Wolves currently have 12 guarranteed contracts for next season, thereby killing any chance they would have making a significant impact on the free-agent market. The only ways left for them to get better is via trade and the draft. While I don't agree with purposely trying to lose in order gain position for the lottery, I can't fault them for doing it. Who are the Wolves going to trade? McHale already said no about KG, so who else is there to shop? Ricky Davis? By saying that KG is not available for trade (with which I agree), and showing earlier this season that Randy Foye and Rashad McCants also are not available, there's no one to move. This year's draft is being ballyhooed as one of the deepest ever. So even if the Wolves don't move from the number 7 spot, a quality player will still be available to them. Whether or not McHale picks appropriately remains to be seen. If I had the seventh pick, I try Al Horford from Florida, Roy Hibbert from Georgetown, or Yi Jianlian from China. If they're not available, and you don't take Acie Law IV (which wouldn't make sense on a team with at least 6 guards, but whom I love to death), then trade the pick for some size.
It will be interesting to see how the Randy Wittman saga is handled next year. Garnett loves him, Taylor loves him, and McHale loves him. But he's a terrible head coach, based on the merit of his career coaching record. Should they fall in the tubes again, and he gets fired, does that prompt a mid-season Kevin Garnett trade? Probably, and probably not for enough.
The Minnesota Vikings
Who will they take? Who's the quarterback? Who cares? The Vikings just registered their sixth player-arrest in the past 12 months, putting them in a rare league with the Cincinatti Bengals. Christ, as if this team isn't hard enough to watch on the field, now they're daily police blotter material.
Here's the list of safties currently rostered for the 2007 season: Darren Sharper, Tank Williams, Dwight Smith, and Greg Blue. They've made one free agent signing this off-season: Mike Doss. Guess what? Another safety! And, at the time of the signing, they were rumored to be interested with LaRon Landry from LSU with the 7th pick, also a safety. I don't even have a joke for this.
The Minnesota Wild
What a fun regular-season they gave us. Lots of scoring, decent defense, and new reason for everybody to rag on Manny Fernandez in Nikolas Backstrom. The final push for the 3-seed in the West was fun, but ultimately everybody set their sights on Anaheim, the 2-seed with whom they drew in the first round.
Now, Ducks hockey is something I treated much like Pac-10 basketball--they don't exist. I only learned that they had dropped the "Mighty" from their name when the playoffs started. Here's what I learned: they are a bunch of douchebags, from top to bottom. Yeah, they're talented, and they wholly outplayed the Wild (game 4 aside). But this is a team that employs a hair-puller (Chris Kunitz), a former tough-guy-turned cheap shot artist (Brad May), and a double-teamer (Shawn Thornton). It was laughable enough to watch Kuniz pull Brent Burns' hair (and the ensuing mop-job done by Burns), but to watch Thornton tag-team Adam Hall, and May punch a non-fighter in Kim Johnsson in the face, you realize that this is a team full of losers. Even the coach, Randy Carslyle, is a rod. The new-ish rule in the NHL about fighting in the last five minutes of a game is a joke. May doesn't throw that punch if he doesn't know that there was only 1:48 to play and that Boogaard can't come out on the next shift and end his career. If I'm May or Thornton, I retire after the season's over because Boogaard will ruin them both. Just ask Todd Fedoruk. I'm openly rooting for whoever gets the Ducks in round 2, and I hope that team is stacked full of goons to take out an entire hockey team.
My assesment of the season, however, is positive. They just need a little more size defensively.
The Minnesota Twins
Well, we knew that there wasn't Gil Meche-type money laying around for free-agency, and in one of two cases, we got what we paid for. Sidney Ponson continues to get murdered, and we should be seeing him gone by mid-May, replaced by any combination of Matt Garza, Kevin Slowey, or Glenn Perkins.
Ramon Ortiz, however, is a bright spot. How long this lasts remains to be seen, but he is fun to watch. I don't think there's a bigger fan of the Twins defense than Ortiz himself. He's like a 6-year-old on Pixie Stix watching them play.
That's all for now, more to come soon.
posted by Zach Brown at 2:01 PM
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