Category: Rick Adelman

 

Impressions of the Timberwolves with 28 games remaining in the strike-shortened NBA season:

This is the most entertaining pack of Wolves since Kevin Garnett, Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell were trying to put food on the table to feed their families in 2003-2004.  The 2012 Wolves, 19-19 so far after finishing 17-65 last year, are much improved with better personnel, team work and coaching.

You no longer have to risk being labeled the town idiot by predicting a playoff spot this spring.  The Wolves have pulled even with the average teams in the NBA and with 16 teams allowed to qualify for the playoffs Minnesota is a contender.

The club report card gives the best grades to All-Star forward Kevin Love, rookie point guard Ricky Rubio and coach Rick Adelman.  Love is so improved the last two seasons that the four-year player is included in any conversation about the league’s best power forwards.  Point guard, it’s often argued, is the most important position in basketball. The Wolves finally have a special talent playing the position in Rubio, a flashy talent with extraordinary vision and passing skills.  The NBA might be a players’ league but coaching still counts and first-year boss Adelman could be the best person ever directing the Wolves.

This team has an unexpected hero in center Nikola Pekovic.  After averaging 5.5 points during his rookie year last season, Pekovic has won the starting center job in 2012 with smarts, hustle, timely points and rebounds.  What he can’t do with his short arms and average height for a center (6-11) is become a defensive whiz in the lane.

Finding a shot-blocking, defensive center is what should be at the top of the front office’s to-do list.  A guy who can take the Wolves from being an okay defensive team to a better one (while helping Love with the rebounding) is needed to push Minnesota toward the elite group of NBA teams.

This Wolves team will improve a lot too if a shooting guard-forward like Wes Johnson or Martell Webster can fulfill their potential as outside shooters.  Johnson is only a second year player and youth is a huge part of the rationale why fans should be excited about this product.  Love is 23, Rubio, 21, Pekovic, 26, Johnson, 24, and rookie forward Derrick Williams, 20.

Better days are here…and ahead.

Comments Welcome

Kevin Love’s off-season surgery on his jaw and time spent with family were defining developments in his progression as a leader, according to Timberwolves president Chris Wright.

New coach Rick Adelman wants the fourth-year forward to emerge as a team leader.  It’s a role the 23-year-old Love has said he’s prepared for and Wright told Sports Headliners he agrees.

Love had surgery on his jaw to correct his bite.  The rehabilitation provided opportunity for quality time with his parents.

“Stan and Karen, Kevin’s mom and dad, they’re phenomenal people,” Wright said.  “Kevin did some growing up this summer.  He was wired up for awhile and he could only sort of drink his food rather than eat his food.  During that rehab he spent a lot of time with his parents, and I think they spent really good quality time.  Stan, I am sure, talked to him about leadership and what it means.

“We love his family and we love the kid.  He’s not a kid any more.  He’s growing up into a real man.  I believe Kevin Love will go down as one of the best young men and one of the best leaders we’ve ever had on this team.”

Love lost about 25 pounds during the off-season and he almost looks like a different person including because his jaw is set differently.  “He looks to be in absolutely fantastic shape,” Wright said.

Love said he improved his diet during the off-season that was longer than normal because of the NBA labor dispute.  He also conditioned himself playing beach volleyball during an eventful off-season.

Last Saturday night at Target Center he had 21 points and 15 rebounds in the Wolves’ opening preseason game, a 117-96 win over Milwaukee.  Wednesday night in Milwaukee he and the Wolves play their second and final preseason game.  Then come 66 regular season games to show Love’s leadership and build on the past months of emotional growth.

Comments Welcome

No time of year excites fans more than the eve of a favorite team taking the field or court.  By definition, fans live on hope and those who follow losing teams spend off-seasons convincing themselves and others that fortunes will improve.

The Timberwolves were 6-2 in exhibition games last year and then compiled a regular season 17-65 record.  Because of the NBA labor dispute and the strike-shortened season to come, the Wolves will play only two preseason games with the first coming tomorrow night at home against the Milwaukee Bucks.  The following advice is offered:

Don’t make judgments about the Wolves based on the opening preseason game or the next game on December 21, also against the Bucks but in Milwaukee.

The time to start sending opinions via emails, tweets and Facebook is after the first 10 games of the regular season.  By then the Wolves will have played seven home games, three on the road and seen four of the best teams in the NBA.

The Wolves will play six of their first seven games at home including against the NBA champion Mavericks and the team Dallas beat for the league title last June, Miami.  Also coming to Minneapolis is NBA title wannabe Oklahoma City and a fading but still exceptional San Antonio team.

Ten games will be enough to make solid judgments about the Wolves but not long enough to regard those opinions as anything but flexible.  For those who want to be optimists, though, there’s reason to be in good spirits about the team right now.

No offense to Flip Saunders, but new coach Rick Adelman may prove to be the franchise’s best coach ever.  The man has taken 16 teams in 20 seasons to the playoffs, and twice to the NBA Finals.  Sometimes he’s had to coach up teams lacking experience and talent.

If you pay any attention to the Wolves — a franchise that hasn’t been to the playoffs in seven years — you know that qualifies this man to coach the team.  And yet it’s not that his roster isn’t intriguing and doesn’t tease us with promise.

Comments Welcome