Timberwolves – Page 58 – David Shama's Minnesota Sports Headliners

Kirk Cousins Gets Run Help He Needs

Posted on September 10, 2019September 10, 2019 by David Shama

With a $84 million contract Kirk Cousins is among the best compensated players in the NFL, but his on field performance during eight seasons says he deserves a middle of the pack ranking among pro quarterbacks. The Vikings learned that last year when their pass-heavy offense was part of the story why the team came up with a disappointing 8-7-1 record and missed the playoffs after almost qualifying for the Super Bowl the season prior with Case Keenum as quarterback.

Cousins, in his first season with the Vikings last fall, struggled against teams with winning records as he had done with the Redskins. Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer and general manager Rick Spielman vowed during the offseason to make the offense more balanced between the run and pass.

In the team’s first regular season game on Sunday, a 28-12 win over the Falcons, the plan was implemented more extremely than anyone anticipated. Cousins attempted a career low 10 passes and completed eight. “Never had a game like this,” Cousins said on KFAN Radio’s postgame show. “First time for me, but I would take every one like this. That’s just fine by me.”

The offensive line was impressive and running back Dalvin Cook was elusive, gaining 111 yards as part of the team rushing total of 172 (98 yards passing). “…Dalvin is special. When he gets the ball in his hands he can really go, and I think our offensive coaches did a great job scheming some of the runs they had today,” Zimmer said on the radio show.

Cousins even ran six times, including a quarterback sneak for a touchdown. The Vikings frequently used two and sometimes three tight ends as part of their commitment to the run and taking pressure off their quarterback who should be better in his second season in Minneapolis because he has more familiarity with his receivers.

It helps, too, having the opposing defense guessing how the Vikings will line up with their personnel and whether the pass or run is coming. “Once you have a running team, the (opposing) defensive line becomes less aggressive,” former Vikings defensive lineman Bob Lurtsema told Sports Headliners.

Cousins, who fumbled twice in the game to increase his total to 42 fumbles dating back to 2015, can’t carry a team but his skills and experience are solid enough to give the Vikings a passing game that complements the run. The Vikings won’t have the success against every opponent like they did with the Falcons, but expect them to stay committed to at least something like a 50-50 run-pass ratio.

Speaking of a quarterback who can carry a franchise, the Vikings are at Green Bay next Sunday. Aaron Rodgers is a Houdini who is particularly adept at performing late game magic. With the Packers 1-0 after a road win in Chicago, they play five of their next six games at home. The Vikings have three of their next five away from Minneapolis.

Minnesota Wild & More

The Wild opens training camp Friday, plays its first preseason game September 17, and the regular season opener is October 3. Team owner Craig Leipold is upbeat, despite his club missing the playoffs last spring for the first time in seven years. “I am more excited about this year coming up than I have been in a number of years,” he told Sports Headliners.

The roster won’t be dramatically different but Leipold expects the leadership from newly hired general manager Bill Guerin to be impactful. Guerin comes from a winning background as an NHL player and front office decision maker. Already Leipold sees how his players relate differently to Guerin than they did to former GM Paul Fenton. “These guys listen to Billy,” Leipold said.

Leipold, who has owned the franchise since 2008, made it clear during a telephone interview that the word rebuilding is not one he will use to label his team. “Do we think we need to get better? Yes. Are we going to chop the tree down and replant it? The answer is absolutely no.”

Providing Leipold with confidence about the roster’s personnel was the feedback he received this summer while interviewing general manager candidates. “We think we have really good pieces (on the roster), and particularly after going through the process that we just did and asking all of our candidates to grade our players. Yeah, you could say, well, they wanted to grade them high, but if we thought they missed the target, then that wasn’t going to help them. Virtually every candidate who came in said that, hey, we’re a playoff team.”

Leipold acknowledged the frustration of fans with last season’s team, and that the absence from the playoffs has an “affect” on season tickets for 2019-2020. That affect can also impact single game sales.

“We’re down a little bit (season tickets) from where we have historically been, but we’re still in a position that probably 20 or 25 other (NHL) teams would love to be in,” Leipold said. “….This year will be more of a challenge (for selling tickets). We hope to get off to a good start, and if we do we’re gonna be fine.”

Leipold didn’t say how many season tickets the club sold last year but was asked if the total this fall could be 12,000. “We will be well north of 12,000,” he said. “Oh, yeah. Way north of 12,000.”

The Front Office Sports newsletter of September 6 reported this: “More than 38 million Americans, or 15% of the U.S. population, are planning to bet on NFL games this season, according to the American Gaming Association.”

Glen Taylor, the 78-year-old billionaire whose companies include the Minnesota Timberwolves and Minnesota Lynx, likes to garden at his Mankato home. “…It’s just different from my other job, so I just need some of that time,” he told Sports Headliners.

Taylor has flower and vegetable gardens, plus fruit trees on the grounds of his property. He and his wife Becky do late summer canning. “I love the food that comes out of a garden,” he said.

The Saturday announcement of Michael Pineda’s 60-day suspension for a violation of MLB’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment program is among the most upsetting news the Twins could experience as they try to win the Central Division and qualify for the postseason. He was closing the season impressively, and his recent productivity has been more efficient than Jose Berrios, considered the staff ace earlier in the year.

Pineda pitched six innings, allowed just one run and stuck out a season high 10 batters in Friday night’s game against the Indians. He now has 13 quality starts, second best in his career to 19 in 2011, his rookie season. He made a recent argument out of whether he or Jake Odorizzi is the staff’s No. 1 starter.

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Lynx’s Reeve May Draw NBA Interest

Posted on July 25, 2019July 25, 2019 by David Shama

The hiring of a female head coach in the NBA has gone from possible to likely in recent years.

In 2014 Becky Hammon became the first full-time paid assistant female coach in the league when she joined the Spurs staff. During the last few months there has been a trend in hiring females with the 76ers, Cavs, Celtics and Kings placing women on their staffs. There are now nine female assistants in the NBA.

Major League Baseball, the NBA, NFL and NHL have no female head coaches, but the NBA has been a pioneer in its hiring of women as assistants and referees. Is the league ready for its first female head coach?

“Well, I think as a league we’ve been about as flexible as any league, and so probably if it’s going to be done, it’s probably going to happen in the NBA,” said Glen Taylor who owns both the NBA Timberwolves and WNBA Lynx.

The NBA has long been known for its diversity and openness to change. NBA commissioner Adam Silver is an advocate for more females in his league. He wants about half “of new officials (referees) entering the league” to be women, per a May 9 story on Nba.com from the Associated Press. Speaking at an event in Washington, D.C., Silver also said: “There’s no reason why women shouldn’t be coaching men’s basketball.”

Taylor told Sports Headliners the first female to become a head coach in the NBA will face “a lot of pressure,” but he thinks it’s just a matter of when—not if—that a woman is leading a club in the league. That person might be promoted from an assistant’s position in the NBA, but certainly Cheryl’s Reeve’s resume could some day put her in the conversation for a head job in the league, or perhaps a No. 1 assistant’s role.

Reeve, 52, is both the Lynx’s general manager and head coach. She is also an assistant coach on the USA Women’s National team that will compete in the 2020 Olympic Games. Since becoming head coach of the Lynx in 2010, she has coached Minnesota to four WNBA titles. Taylor has consistently been impressed with her work. “I am a great fan of her,” he said.

Going into this season Reeve worked with a reshuffled roster including the absence of star players Lindsay Whalen (retired) and Maya Moore (sabbatical for 2019). Yet the Lynx has surprised followers by being a competitive team. Although on a losing streak recently, the club has a 10-10 record is and only 3.5 games out of first place in the WNBA Western Conference.

“I just gotta admire her, how she has changed her defensive strategy and offensive strategy to fit the new players,” Taylor said last week. “It’s been just terrific.”

Worth Noting

The Twins, who hold a two game lead in the American League Central Division over Cleveland, will see the Indians in Minneapolis for a four-game series starting August 8. Prior to that series the Twins will compete against three teams playing less than .500 baseball (White Sox, 45-54; Marlins, 38-62; Royals, 39-64), plus the National League East Division leading Braves, 60-43. The Indians, though, will have a more difficult schedule facing three of four opponents who are at or above .500, including the AL West Division leading Astros, 66-38.

The Twins and Indians will also play two series in September, one in Minneapolis and the other in Cleveland. This season the Twins are 5-4 against the Indians.

Aaron Hicks, the Yankees outfielder who the Twins gave up on and traded to New York, beat Minnesota with a two-run home run on Tuesday night and is hitting .329 in his last 19 games. In that stretch he has seven home runs, 16 RBI and 16 runs scored.

The Twins, who lost two out of three to the Yankees this week in their series at Target Field, attracted a sellout crowd last night of 40,127. It was the club’s eighth sellout of the season.

The Vikings, valued at $2.4 billion, rank No. 35 on the Forbes list released this week of the 50 most valuable sports franchises in the world. The NFL Cowboys ranked No. 1 at $5 billion, with MLB’s Yankees second at $4.6 billion.

Sports Illustrated ranks Golden Gophers senior wide receiver Tyler Johnson No. 62 among its top 100 college football players going into the 2019 season.

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Wolves Owner Sees ‘Building Year’ Ahead

Posted on July 18, 2019July 18, 2019 by David Shama

With a new president of basketball operations, revised coaching staff and roster shakeup since last spring, Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor expressed optimism about his franchise during an interview Tuesday with Sports Headliners, but he said it will be a challenge to make the playoffs.

“It’s going to be difficult, but that’s our goal (the playoffs),” said Taylor, who also thinks it’s unlikely his club will add an impact player in the coming months through free agency or trade.

The Timberwolves finished 36-46 last season and didn’t qualify for the playoffs after doing so a year earlier. It was a disappointing season for a franchise that has qualified for the postseason just once since 2004. Last summer the team was anticipating the season with Tom Thibodeau and Jimmy Butler being two centerpieces of the franchise but both are long gone.

Gersson Rosas replaced Thibodeau as president of basketball operations and Ryan Saunders took over Thibs’ coaching duties. The team’s perceived leader is no longer the outspoken Butler, with a mellower dude in Karl-Anthony Towns auditioning for the role much of last season and going into this one.

Gone are about half the players who were on the roster when the season opened last October, including personnel who were either starters or regular contributors off the bench. The roster now is shaping up as younger, less experienced and trending toward a more inexpensive payroll.

“I know that this is going to be a building year because we’re going to have young people, but I am optimistic just because I know that we have potentially a lot of young players who could play really a lot better,” Taylor said. “Now if we can just do that, (and) get confidence and not be injured, I think we could really have a fun year. I think they’re going to be a fun team to watch because (coach) Ryan (Saunders) is going to move that ball up and down the court really fast.”

Rosas and Saunders favor a fast pace offensively with the Timberwolves expected to emphasize more three-point shooting. Minnesota attempted 2,357 three-pointers last season, the fifth fewest in the NBA, per Basketballreference.com. Taylor said he expects the Timberwolves’ strategy will be to have players penetrate toward the basket and “kick” the ball out to open teammates for three-point attempts.

Towns, who some authorities consider one of the NBA’s top 10 talents, is 7-feet tall, and he is both a low-post scorer and three-point shooter. He is also a friend of D’Angelo Russell who the Wolves recently flirted with signing as a free agent. Russell averaged 21.1 points last season with the Brooklyn Nets before signing a new max contract for a reported $117 million four-year deal with the Golden State Warriors.

Both a point guard and shooting guard, the 23-year-old Russell would have given the Wolves a potential star player to join with Towns, also 23. With Derrick Rose and Tyus Jones moving on via free agency, the Wolves need backcourt help in both scoring and playmaking. And rumors persist the front office wants to trade veteran Jeff Teague, the team’s expected starting point guard who is overpaid at a reported $19 million salary this year.

Taylor said he came close to signing Russell, but when the Warriors offered the max money to the former Ohio State star, he didn’t get back to him or Rosas. Would Taylor have offered a max deal, too? “We never really got there, so I don’t know,” he said.

Asked about whether fans should anticipate one significant player acquisition before the season begins this fall, Taylor responded: “No, I don’t think so. We don’t have that person in mind. I mean we tried for Russell. That didn’t work out.

“…We don’t have anybody particular (targeting for acquisition) but we’re keeping our eyes open just in case that we find a team that wants to make some change. So I don’t know that it would be called significant. They’re looking (the Wolves front office) at some deals. but significant means probably somebody who can really break into the starting lineup and make a difference.”

Taylor said the organization is proceeding as if the present roster will be the team in the fall. The focus is to make the players on the roster better and bring them closer to reaching their potentials. “A lot of our goal is to improve within,” Taylor said.

When Timberwolves fans think about players changing for the better Andrew Wiggins leads most everyone’s list. The first overall pick in the 2014 NBA Draft, he has superb athleticism but too often appears and performs lackadaisically. Wiggins was the one individual Taylor mentioned when talking generally about the goal of players becoming better during the offseason: “…We gotta hope Andrew comes back with the improvements that we expect.”

What improvements does Taylor want to see from the 24-year-old forward-guard who he signed to a reported $147 million contract in 2017? Taylor specified getting better on defense, penetrating to the basket “like he did when he was a rookie,” and “concentrate on threes.”

Taylor said the players can’t do all the improving needed without help in multiple areas such as nutrition, conditioning and basketball skills. He believes the Timberwolves, including with new assistant coaches David Vanterpool and Pablo Prigioni, have talented instructors who can challenge the players and improve them.

Vanterpool was named associate head coach in June after seven previous seasons as an assistant with the Portland Trail Blazers. He is known for his defensive expertise.

Prigioni, an assistant last season with the Brooklyn Nets, has a resume of over 20 years of basketball experience in America and internationally as a player and coach. He is expected to make a significant impact in multiple areas including offensive play.

The Wolves find themselves in a challenging spot next season with not only a number of good teams in the Western Conference, but potentially four great clubs in the Warriors, Los Angeles Clippers, Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers. The affable Taylor, who has owned the Wolves for 25 years and saved the franchise from relocating, remains an NBA fan and said he looks forward to competing against the better teams on the schedule “to see if we can knock them off.”

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