Since joining the Timberwolves, David Kahn has had a mixed history with player personnel decisions.  Kahn's moves have been a lot like going to a hole in the wall deli in some out of state destination.  You never know what you're going to get, and that diner you found in Cincinnati with the kickass Chili has no positive affect on the crappy tuna sandwich you just choked down in Tulsa.  In other words, past performance seems to have little, if anything, to do with future results.

Let's take a look:

Foye and Mike Miller for #5 Draft Pick.  Pick unexpectedly turns out to be Rubio.  ...You sit down at a diner in the middle of rural Arkansas.  You ran out of gas and are starving and only have $11.47 to your name.  You order "The Special" not knowing what it is, because it costs $5.99- enough to tip and buy gas to get to civilization.  "The Special" turns out to be the most delicious pit barbecue pork sandwich you've ever had, and comes with bottomless sweet tea.  You have hit the jackpot at the most unexpected of times and the most unexpected of places, and you paid less than you should have.

Passing up Steph Curry and drafting Jonny Flynn right after Rubio.  ...You look at the deserts, see a very tasty-looking apple pie, but you decide to get cute and order the creme brulee, knowing full well that this is an apple pie joint.  Creme brulee is undercooked and you get food poisoning.  You find out that it was undercooked in the first bite, but you finish the whole thing out of stubbornness and sheer hubris.  The apple pie turns out to be award-winning and you missed a once-in-a-lifetime chance to have a really terrific combination in an out of the way spot.  The apple pie is subsequently featured on "Diners Drive-ins and Dives."

Big Al Jefferson to Utah for heavily protected picks.  ...You skipped breakfast and knew that you should not have done that.  Now you are in the middle of North Dakota and are famished.  You may drive your car into a bridge abutment if you don't get food.  There is nowhere nearby that looks like it serves safe food.  You stop at a gas station that smells like old cigarette butts and buy an egg salad sandwich that the clerk tells you was homemade that very day by none other than herself.  She smells like rotten cabbage.  The sandwich costs $8.49, and makes you vomit for two days.

2nd round draft picks for Mike Beasley.  ...You are working out of town, don't know the area, and just need a sandwich to fill you up.  You skipped breakfast and are starving once again.  You find a cheap local place and expect that the turkey sub will be disappointing even though it is billed as the best sandwich in town.  It tastes alright, but you can tell they're trying a little too hard and the sandwich just doesn't have enough substance to it.  As a snack it would be fine.  As your primary means of sustenance?  It barely holds you over.  Good thing it only cost $2.

Derrick Williams pick with #2 pick.  ...That last turkey sub still haunting you, you stop in a place that pretty much only sells roast beef and turkey subs.  They are all out of roast beef.  You order the turkey because getting cute has only made you sick in the past.  The turkey sub is actually pretty good and just the right amount.  Not overwhelming, but not disappointing either, and the sub roll is actually really good, surprisingly.

The Timberwolves host the San Antonio Spurs tonight at 7:00pm at Target Center.

Critical questions will need to be answered:

Can the Timberwolves end their 16-game losing streak against the Spurs?!?
Is this team for real?!?
Will grown men faint at the sight of a Ricky Rubio cross court pass!?!

Find out tonight! And be sure to discuss the game with us in the forums.

Also, be sure to check out the Q&A we did over at Project Spurs.

After last night's great showdown with the always entertaining OKC Thunder, the T-Wolves next home game could be another epic clash. We (already!) play the Miami cHeat, in what is shaping up to be a pretty brutal opening schedule in this compressed season.  Luckily we'll have a few days off after tonight's game, before having to take on LeBon, Wade, Bosh and company. Unfortunately for the Wolves, they are a completely different team with a healthy Haslem. Too bad Mike Miller won't be playing huge minutes, because as we all know, he sucks.

TWolves Blog's ticket partner TiqIQ has a special deal for fellow T-Wolves fans: Using the ScoreBig "make an offer" feature, fans can pick their price to see Kevin Love battle under the boards. A "2 star" ticket that usually sells for $145 (after shipping and handling fees) can be had for around $99 a ticket. But this deal expires on Wednesday, so y'all need to move fast to get this special deal. To make an offer today PLEASE CLICK HERE.

Santa Kahn. Kahnukkah. Kahnza. Las Kahnadas. Saint Kahn's Day. 

The Holidays are here in full force. Kahn is back and is oddly quiet as can be. Rubio is in town being escorted around in his mother's Tahoe. Kevin Love is looking like a bonafide, athletic NBA player. Beasley lowered his ears. Barea is running around wreaking havoc. Anthony Randolph is confused. Pekovic may have murdered someone. Adelman is grumpy. Darko is sensitive.

The Wolves and their plethora of humorous idiosyncrasies are back in town. And before we dive into this, let's all relish together in a merry thought we can all agree on: it feels great. 

So where does this team go from here? What is next? After a satisfying pre-season containing a fast-paced blowout followed a few days later by 46 minutes of disaster and 2 minutes of never-could-have-imagined-level Wolves basketball vs. Milwaukee, the only real answer is: I have no idea. This team is tough to predict. 

On a topline level, the Wolves have re-tooled nicely this offseason. Ousting one of the worst NBA coaches in the history of the league (who shall remain nameless) and replacing him with one of the best in legendary Rick Adelman, is a dramatic change previously unheard of throughout Timberwolves history. The team also added three promising rookies and free agent JJ Barea, former x-factor of the 2011 NBA Champion Dallas Mavericks. But where do we go from here?  Well, there is a lot of be excited about, and some not. We'll touch on both. More after the jump.

CLICK READ MORE TO CONTINUE

Check out the excellent site Hickory-High for a team-by-team breakdown of Holiday wishes here. A great read with contributions from several notable NBA bloggers and writers. 

The TWB submission:

For Christmas this year, I would love nothing more than Santa Kahn to deliver a freshly-wrapped, certified, high-quality NBA starter to the Wolves via trade.  The Wolves’ could assure themselves future success by taking the Celtics and Clippers approach to rebuilding: selling youth for experience. The team has acquired a set of nice, young players, but the roster and rotation is horribly imbalanced, mismatched, and built around nothing of skillsets and fit, but the principle of youth alone. It is time to trade a few young pieces for an established player such as Andre’ Iguodala, Pau Gasol, pre-scandal Monta Ellis, Kevin Martin, etc. Doing so would propel the Wolves forward to a +.500 record, and would turn Wolves fans over-attached to mystique, allure, and draft picks toward the only thing that matters: a winning team. Happy Kahnukkah!

 I brainstormed several different titles for this post. All of the following probably would've sufficed:

"Get Ready for One Heck of a Season"
"Ricky Rubio Made Me Cry. Four Separate Times."
"Watch as I Overreact to a Preseason Blowout"

But instead, I went with "Why This Team is Special" -- because the culture of losing we've become so accustomed to is finally over.

Last night the Timberwolves defeated the Bucks 117-96 in their first game of the preseason. Yes, it's the preseason, but it was an impressive showing nonetheless. 

I'm going to go out on a limb here. Call me a homer. Call me naive. Call me whatever you like. But this year's T-Wolves team is going to sneak into the playoffs with a 36-30 record. I'm calling it right now. BOOK IT.

Click here to read why I'm so optimistic!

The other day, the Wolves traded Lazar Hayward to Oklahoma City for two 2nd round picks and the cap relief from his modest contract. A common refrain heard after this trade was, "Great! The Wolves acquired two 2nd round picks for a player who had no spot on the roster. Great value." Or, "awesome! All Dallas was able to get for Rudy Fernandez and Corey Brewer was a single 2nd round pick!" Now, there is nothing untrue about the previous statements by any means, but to truly look at why this trade is bad, let's take a 2008 Kevin Love-sized step back and examine the forest.

Before delving too deep into a futile issue here (a freaking Lazar Hayward trade), let's spend some time chatting about a curse bestowed upon a sub-faction of Wolves fans ever since a fateful day that coincided with a major Minneapolis bridge collapsing into the Mississippi River: The Garnett trade on August 1st, 2007. I'm not sure whether it was former Wolves mastermind Kevin McHale's mindless inability to make good use of a first round pick, but ever since this day a certain chunk of Wolves fans have become, to use Woj-like hyperbole, blindly obsessed with draft picks and potential over proven NBA talent. Every first round pick, whether the Wolves own one or four, is a 'chance to add the next star.'

It is hard to really pinpoint the reason for this obsession, but it is there. As were a group of fans who, for various reasons, defended Kahn's decision to trade Al Jefferson to the Utah Jazz for two poorly positioned first round picks, Kosta Koufos and cap relief that was eventually used on Anthony Randolph. "First round picks! Potential! Kobe and Malone were drafted in the mid-first round! Randolph was once drafted higher than Jefferson and compared to Lamar Odom on a draft website! We needed to get rid of Al Jefferson to make room for Love!" (Gee, you coulda tested the market and traded him for a solid wing instead of Kosta Koufos' nose). Never-you-mind the Wolves had a coaching staff these past two years who couldn't develop a case of syphilis at a ASU sorority house, not to mention basketball talent; but the mystique and allure that these imaginary planets would align in some form of anti-apocalyptic, one in four-hundred trillion manner was too exciting for a fan-base used to the same repeatable, predictable 5.5-month run of disappointment, shaken and stirred with sub-zero temperatures and snowdrifts the size of Oliver Miller's annual Thanksgiving feast. 

MUCH MORE Below the Jump:

If there is one guarantee you can make in terms of how the Wolves handle their often confusing annual set of roster transactions, it is that the team will often do whatever makes the least sense. Armed with the cap space equivalent of the mid-level exception, the Wolves today have signed JJ Barea, the bench sparkplug for the defending champion Dallas Mavericks, to a contract believed to be 4 years and $19 million.  

JJ Barea is a nice player, but make no mistakes, he a prototype guy who benefited from a few magical playoff games and, due to said spotlight, received a larger-than-deserved long term contract.  This happens year after year.  He is a scrappy little guard, who, while being unable to throw a rock into the ocean, is very quick on his feet and can penetrate the lane with the best of them. But the big question one should be asking is: 'why?' Surely this means the Wolves will trade Ridnour in a package deal with some of our frontcourt characters in order to align the roster? Don't count on it. As always, this is a very Kahn-like, Kahnfusing move. I can't kahnprehend how this helps the Wolves kahnpounding rotation problem. How will this help the Wolves' position in the Western Kahnference? What does Barea bring to the Kahnversation? A team desperately in need of a high quality shooting guard who can dribble, goes out and signs its 3rd point guard, which does nothing but make an already mystifying rotation even more muddled?  

Color me Kahnfused.

As a positive, Barea does have a nice skillset that IS pretty void on the team as of today: ballhandling. The problem is, where does he play? Does Adelman dare play Barea at the 2 in hopes of adding some much, much needed dribble penetration from the wings? (Don't fool yourself into thinking Wes Johnson is going to become a ballhandler any time soon). Could be. I guess we will have to see what kahnfusing move Kahn has up his sleeve as free agency continues. Just count on one thing: he will probably do whatever makes the least sense. 

I know that what I'm about to say is going to be met with tons of criticism, but I applaud David Stern for blocking the Chris Paul trade to the Lakers.  I fully understand the disdain that Lakers, Hornets, and Rockets fans may be feeling, and I also understand the public outcry that is going on in the media.  The way this situation was handled reeks of underhandedness and ulterior motives. The move makes both David Stern and the NBA in general look ridiculous, especially with it coming on the heels of the NBA lockout. Some may say argue that the NBA owns the Hornets and so Stern should have the right to block any trade, just like any other owner.  However, all it takes is one quick glance at Dan Gilbert's leaked letter to realize that this trade was not blocked for the good of the New Orleans Hornets, but rather for the interest of the NBA owners, both financially and competitively. 

Truth be told, if enough dirt surfaces, this whole ordeal could become a debacle on the level of the Tim Donaghy scandal.  It will go down as a huge black mark on the legacy of David Stern, continue to taint the NBA's already shaky credibility, and drive a further chasm between the players and ownership. Yet despite all of those glaring negatives, I absolutely love this decision by Stern.

The lockout's over? No nuclear winter? ...RICKY RUBIO???

Thank you, Tebow!

Now let's talk about gambling... in a hypothetical, if-only-gambling-were-legal sort of way.

Bodog has posted its preliminary betting lines for regular season records and NBA Championship likelihoods for the 2011-12 season. As usual, there are some obvious sucker bets and some real bargains. You should check them out for yourself.

Please click "Read More" to cotinue on with my six favorite bets for the 2011-12 season...

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