With the NBA lottery already looming, an interesting and potentially NBA-shifting story has emerged in the past couple of days.
To everyone’s shock (or not), Kevin Love wants out of Minnesota. I’ll wait until you collect yourself. Take as long as you need.
Seriously though, is anyone surprised? The past two seasons for Minnesota have been terrible. In the 2012-13 season, the Timberwolves went 31-51 and finished 5th in the Northwest Division. In the 2013-14 season, the convince-Love-to-stay season, they went a depressing 40-42 and were a typical .500 team that couldn’t string together any wins. Yes, they have had injury issues, but really the management in Minnesota needs to stop whatever they are smoking. Let me back up before I start ranting.
First off, Minnesota hasn’t helped themselves become a team that is attractive for star players. In the 2009 NBA draft, Minnesota had two picks in the top six and someone managed to screw it up. They decided to pick two point guards. Ricky Rubio, who wouldn’t come over until the 2011-12 season and Jonny Flynn, who is struggling to even find a team in the NBA. Who did they miss out on? With the No. 7 pick, the Warriors selected Stephen Curry. Imagine that team if the Wolves had done their homework. Kevin Love and Stephen Curry would be lethal and would have attracted players. I predict that they would have already made the playoffs and maybe even made some noise considering how well Curry has been playing.
Secondly, the management in Minnesota is borderline delusional. That was never more evident than when the Wolves made their run for Nicolas Batum. Batum did agree to a deal on paper, but he was also a restricted free agent. Throughout the entire process, Neil Olshey was just standing there with a megaphone shouting “WE ARE MATCHING”. The president of basketball operations at the time, David Kahn, was deaf or didn’t want to believe it. He proceeded to drop a few of his players just to make room. One such player was Martell Webster who has since gone on and had a solid and respectable career in Washington. All the while, Olshey is still continuing to shout through his megaphone. In the end, Portland ended up matching (exactly like they said they would) and the Wolves were standing empty-handed.
To continue on this thought, the team tries to get a bunch of good solid players in the hopes of getting just into the playoffs to appease Love’s urge to finally play in the postseason. The problem is, the Wolves management doesn’t have a lot of guts and they tend to go for the “safe” moves. Kevin Martin is a prime example. Was a good player in Houston, but had a lackluster season in his one season in Oklahoma City. He averaged only 14.0 points coming off the bench. Minnesota thought it would be a good idea to give him a four-year deal and lock him up. Let’s put this into perspective. Minnesota went all out for a guy who came off the bench, was generally underwhelming for the Thunder and was 29 at the time. Martin was deserving of a two-year deal, but a four-year deal?! Again, this move just baffles me. Now, the Wolves are stuck with a Kevin Martin who is probably nearing the end of his prime and is not good enough. Sure, he averaged 19.1 points in his first season in Minnesota, but did that actually help?
Another player that Minnesota was unnecessarily aggressive towards was Jose Juan Barea who was just coming off a fantastic postseason with the Dallas Mavericks who had just won the Finals. Barea had sliced up defenses with his small stature and was a major annoyance. Andrew Bynum had enough of it apparently and elbowed him in the ribs as he was midair during the Mavericks-Lakers series that season. As good as he was, he was coming off the bench. I would have signed him to a two-year deal with an option for a third at the most. However, the Wolves, yet again, signed him to a whopping four-year $18m deal.
Again, it didn’t pay off for them and Barea has been a disappointment ever since.
Minnesota kills their flexibility by signing these players to big deals. They could trade these players, but what team is going to want a guy like Barea who has two or three years left on his deal. At the time of this blog posting, you could trade him because he only has one year remaining on his contract.
Probably the one thing they didn’t have control over were the injuries. I keep telling people, you continue to trade or cut deals with Portland and eventually the injury bug will transfer. In the 2012-13 season, Kevin Love only played 18 games thanks to a broken hand in the preseason and re-injuring that hand once he returned. Chase Budinger has not even played a full season’s worth of games in his two years at Minnesota. I’ll go on the record here and say that I think that getting Budinger was a good move for them, one of the few. However, they have just not been able to get him on the court consistently enough to affect any outcome of games. Nikola Pekovic, one of the few good draftees for the Wolves, played 62 games in the 12-13 season and 54 in the 13-14. The pitch to Love by the Wolves was to see if the trio of Love/Rubio/Pekovic could do some damage. Honestly, I think they could, but injuries got in the way.
Rubio has been great in terms of passing the ball and setting his teammates up, but his offense has been terrible. In the 2013-14 season, he shot 38% from the field and 33% from three. Furthermore, he shot 80% from the FT line. In his defense, Rubio got better offensively towards the end of the season, but there were times where he flat-out did not want to shoot the basketball and would cause some awkward situations.
To bring it back around to the Love situation, Love has every right to leave. Normally I am not a fan of big-time stars wanting to leave small markets to go play for the big cities, but in the case of Kevin Love, he gave the Wolves plenty of chances to build a team around him to compete and they came up empty. In fact, Love probably gave them an extra year because of the injury troubles in the 12-13 season. The 13-14 season was going to be “the year” that the Wolves were finally going to make a push and it sputtered out. Having Corey Brewer as your small forward and Kevin Martin at your shooting guard will do that.
Love had been constantly dropping hints over the years too. Every time he went to play for the USA basketball team, he saw guys younger than him talking about their postseason experiences and he had none to his name. You can’t argue his effort either. In the 2013-14 season, he averaged 26.1 points and 12.5 rebounds. He brought it every night.
The Wolves are finally starting to look at trading partners and teams that are supposedly in the mix are the Golden State Warriors, Chicago Bulls, Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks and the Boston Celtics. I think the Warriors and the Bulls would be the best fit for him and would give Minnesota some assets back for their rebuild. I laugh when teams say they are “interested” in Kevin Love. Of course teams are interested. He is the best power forward in the game.
As a Portland Trail Blazers fan, I also want to mention how lucky this team is to have two all-stars who want to stay in Portland. LaMarcus Aldridge had his moments in the last couple of seasons, but now seems to be completely comfortable in his situation. Damian Lillard has said from day one that he wants to stay as long as this team will have him.
Minnesota is in for some long, depressing days coming up. Obviously, talks and rumors will stall until the lottery is finished tomorrow, but the possibility that Kevin Love is moved by the draft is very high.
Can’t say I’m shocked, but Minnesota needs to stop messing around and realize that they can’t keep these stars forever. The same thing happened to another Minnesota power forward in Kevin Garnett. Garnett played there for twelve years and went to the postseason for eight. Seven of those trips ended in the first round. His final trip as a Timberwolf he played in 18 postseason games.
Minnesota has seen this script before and, honestly, I hope this wakes them up because they have yet again disappointed their fan base.