Big news on this fine, humid Thursday evening. Just 24 hours after the Wild shocked the hockey world, Kahn dishes out $60 million to two superb potential free agent acquisitions in a double-move designed to remodel the Wolves destitute wing positions. 

According to several reports and allegedly first reported by Jason Quick of The Oregonian, the Wolves have come to an agreement with 3-time All-Star and recent retiree Brandon Roy on a 2-year contract reportedly worth just over $10 million. I mention Roy first because he is the only sure bet here to be in a Wolves uniform next season as Batum is only getting the offer sheet that Portland will likely match. Roy, as you know, was drafted by the Wolves in 2006 and quickly traded for Randy Foye in what was arguably the worst trade in franchise history. Roy had a terrific run in Portland as a multiple all-star and was forced into early retirement due to a degenerative knee condition. Now, after a year off and a series of high-profile, experimental knee treatments, Roy will give it a go again. My take: an absolute superb risk. Only the deeply cynical Wolves fans can dislike this as it involved a below average salary and a potential high return at the position the Wolves struggled mightily at. The contract will likely eat into cap space, but this is a good move to make. However, expectations must be tempered, as Roy will likely miss chunks of time over these two years. Regardless, this is a really solid signing and quality risk to take. TWB-approved.

Minutes later (and had you even attempted to run and grab something to drink you would have missed it) it was reported by the AP that the Wolves agreed to terms on an offer sheet with Nic Batum worth $45 million + bonuses and a well-reported desire for Batum to resume his career in Minnesota alongside Roy, Rubio and Darko Milicic. Just hours ago, fans were tying the noose after it was reported Portland would match any offer. Yours truly, your self-proclaimed resident Debbie Downer McWetblanket thought most hope was lost. How quickly things change. Portland is likely to match this offer, but at the very least it is a good, strong offer the Wolves shouldn't even flinch at giving. Kahn is calling Portland's bluff and bless him for doing so. Why not? What is nice about the new CBA is restricted free agent contract decisions must be made now 3-days after the offer sheet is signed vs. 7 in the previous CBA. This will help the Wolves pursue their contingency plans quicker if and when Portland decides to match the offer prior to July 14th (3 days after the moratorium period ends and Batum is likely signed). I am glad this was reported in tandem with the Roy signing. That makes the Batum offer sheet/match implications a brighter move in context. 

A bad day for the Wolves turned into a great day. Hats off to David Kahn for Roy, and 45 million hats off to Kahn if we get Batum out of this. 

It's about time. It feels weird writing something optimistic.

The pick has been traded, the dust has settled, and the Wolves are due for an underwhelming night given the lack of assets available to move around in the draft. Below the jump, let's go over a few various scenarios heading into tonight's draft on how events may transpire

 

We'll this would be a more inspired post if say the Wolves Front Office didn't feel that it's too hard to do any drafting outside of the top 10. It is too risky to chance a bust when you can get middling players (of the type that can be easily filled in during Free Agency). 

Things to watch for:

1. Will Jeremy Lamb or Austin Rivers fall to #18 and force us to slam our collective hands in the door?

2. Will Derrick Williams be part of a block buster

3. Will Derrick Williams be part of a weak sauce turd of a trade

4. Does Kahn have a wink wink deal with Houston to send us Kevin Martin after they sign Courtney Lee. If Houston had been trading for a team with a real GM like Indiana or Milwaukee the answer would be yes.

5. Who goes at the #10 pick that McHale gave away in an attempt to make the Wolves worse in the short and the long term?

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Tonight I will again be on Oregon Based Johnny Ballgame show at 6pm to talk Wolves, Brandon Roy, maybe Budinger, and perhaps even pretend I know a thing or two about the draft that I will quickly research this afternoon by watching YouTube highlights of breakaway dunks.

Tune in here at 6pm CST:

http://johnnyballgameshow.com/

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Swamp Donkeys in photo above not included in trade.

Without a source and before everyone explodes at Kahn, this is absolutely a Rick Adelman-driven move. Funny how that shifts the context here. A few brief thoughts:

1. Positives first: This is exactly why expectations can never be high. Last night we were treated to yet another sprinkling of rumors surrounding Kevin Martin and we woke up to Chase Budinger. In other words, we dreamt of Kevin Martin and woke up to Chase Budinger. Somewhere there is a spousal analogy here. The reason you, yes you, reader, might not like this trade is because your expectations were too high for the 18th pick.

2. Budinger fills a need and is a good, proven player who Adelman adores. There are positives here.

3. HOWEVER.... this is not enough. We are already headed towards the offseason every Wolves fan dreads: minimal, bit, cheap moves with relatively low impact results. Budinger will play a big role for the team next year and comes at a very modest salary, so there is room to add more. However, he will not have the type of impact required to really move this team forward. Kahn now has one less arrow in his quiver and for that reason I am terribly worried that this offseason is going to be a massive disappointment in aggregate. Over the next few days we will hear refrains such as, "the Wolves might not be done with moves," and disappointment will follow. This is a good move perhaps for later in the summer, but overall I am very disappointed if this is Kahn's draft day splash. Even if it was Adelman's idea. And I'm guessing Kevin Martin was Adelman's real idea.

4. An All-White starting lineup is a distinct, real possibility. David Kahn is obviously racist.

Source:

@DraftExpress

The Houston Rockets have traded Chase Budinger to Minnesota for the #18 pick. Confirmed.

@WojYahooNBA

Houston has also included the rights to Israeli Lior Eliyahu in the deal to Minnesota, a source said.

@DraftExpress

Lior Eliyahu will join the Timberwolves for Summer League in Las Vegas. Has a real chance to make their team it sounds.

I contributed over at the excellent NBA Draft Blog, which has been analyzing prospects and breaking down NBA team scenarios for the upcoming draft.  You can check out the full article for the T-Wolves picking at #18; which includes our recent draft history, returning players, team and positional needs, and some options that the Wolves have with their 18th overall pick. It's good stuff, and a nice primer for those of you that haven't yet thought much about the (quickly!) approaching draft (this Thursday!)

I also provided the guest commentary for the Wolves, which you can get a snippet of below. Otherwise, make sure to check out the full article for all my commentary, and the NBA Draft Blog analysis of the Wolves draft position for this year:

It's unfortunate that Kahn is still running our draft, as it's quickly becoming very apparent that he has no clue as to what the heck he's doing when it comes to judging actual NBA talent. Even though the #18 overall pick isn't historically a pick that one can expect to come in and turn around the fortunes of a franchise immediately, this is an extremely deep draft.  It's possibly the deepest draft in many years. So there is an abundance of talent to be found if one knows where to look (Kahn doesn't!)

With all that said, I personally think the Wolves should bundle the #18 pick with someone like Derrick Williams, in an attempt to move up to the top of the draft.  After Anthony Davis, I think the next tier of players #2-#5 all have about an equal chance of becoming future NBA stars, or at the very least, very good NBA core players for many years to come.

The NBA Finals are done and we're officially headed into draft season. I suppose this means I can come back out of my cocoon.

Over the past several seasons, I've been incredibly loyal to this team. I'm also overly optimistic. This brand of fandom borders on the delusional, but hey, it's how I roll. Remember the 15 game losing streak? (Which one?) I found myself clinging to plus/minus stats, double-double streaks, and moral victories. Remember the repeated fourth quarter collapses? I saw them as learning opportunities that would pay off in the future.

Frankly, I'm good at dealing with losing. I can handle it. After all, I'm a Timberwolves fan.

But I just could not deal with Ricky Rubio's season-ending ACL injury. Nope. That was the last straw.

And so, like so many other Timberwolves fans this season, I checked out. I'm not proud of it, but I just couldn't bare to watch a season filled with so much promise go down in flames. 

That being said, this season was truly an amazing one for both Timberwolves fans and NBA fans in general. Below are 8 reasons this season turned out to be amazing...

 

Since David Kahn was hired in May of 2009, each offseason has typically loosely followed a set pattern of events somewhat like the below:

1. Kahn ends the season with a couple of draft picks, some expiring contracts, and cap room as he enters the offseason.

2. Fans everywhere devise ludicrous trade scenarios and become so bloated with expectations that they start resembling the balloon blueberry kid from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

3. The Wolves make a series of preposterous draft-day moves that result in at least 100,000 bloody heads that have been scratched to a pulp.

4. An average-to-below average player is signed for 4-years and $16 million

5. A trade is made where Kahn sends out a little more than he needed to and got back a little less than he should have.

6. Team underperforms. Cycle Repeats. Fan-wide cornea sporking ensues.

When Williams was drafted last summer at #2 (the correct pick at the time for value reasons), it was widely assumed that Kahn was going to move him immediately for the best trade package available. Iguodala (although he allegedly could have been had for Martell Webster and...oh wait, NOTHING ELSE, AND KAHN %*&^ing TURNED IT DOWN. I JUST VOMITED ON MY DOG), Pau Gasol and Josh Smith were among the larger names floating around back then. Of course, nothing happened (plot twist.....not!), Williams had a tough rookie year and here we are collectively devising D-Will trade scenarios as if such a move is a prerequisite for starting the offseason.

For the record, I think Derrick Williams should only be moved for one of a handful of players in the league. It is not necessarily a specific player, but one who fits a certain set of criteria:

1. In the plainest, simplest terms, when discussing Derrick Williams trade targets, ask yourself, "if this (high-quality) player were a free agent and the Wolves had cap room, would we have even a slight chance of signing this player on the open market?" If your answer is "yes," then hold on to D Will. If your answer is "no way, Jose'," then we are on the right track. This is why you trade Williams. You see, there is a certain value/opportunity cost trade off with a player like Derrick. He is unlikely to be a superstar NBA forward, but next year will be better. Is trading a prospect of his potential (whatever you think it may be) worth the caliber of player one could easily sign in free agency in terms of production? Definitely not. The point is, we just don't know what Derrick could become. The reason you trade him is so you can acquire a player you wouldn't normally be able to acquire with an average set of trade chips.

I know this sounds overly simplistic and uninsightful, but when trade scenarios are lopped around for elite talent such as Jodie Meeks, Michael Pietrus and Gerald Henderson, I start to wonder if this fanbase is a little overenthusiastic about trading Williams for anything that moves or shoots above 40%. Kind of like 'that one guy' in college who would go through a several month dry spell with members of the female persuasion and would hop on the first thing that moved/rolled/waddled on a Saturday night. Look, trading Derrick isn't mandatory. There is value to keeping him, but there is potentially even more value to trading him if Kahn is willing to be picky and push for the right deal.

2. Unless it's a top 3, MAYBE 4 pick, trade him for an experienced player. No more bloody draft picks. Some Wolves fans over the years have become completely smitten with draft picks. I was poking around on a Wolves forum the other day and a poster had devised an offseason plan that resulted in four rookies on the roster  to start next season. Ridiculous. With a hall-of-fame coach on the sidelines who is highly unlikely to coach the team beyond his current contract (my opinion), and Love's ETO looming, this team just doesn't have time to play around with major player development any longer.

This is not to say I am against drafting a role player at #18 or perhaps fiddling around with our position in the middle of the first round, but it's time to cash in and get some winning talent on this roster. It has been time for about 8 years. Aside from this past season, the last time the Wolves contended for a playoff spot, flatscreen TV's were a thing of the future and Michael Jordan had just recently retired for the final time. The last thing we should do is upgrade our 2/3 spots with a prospect who may not reach his NBA stride until 2014. It's time to move forward. The window is extraordinarily short and the assets will be officially dried up after this summer.

3. Without getting into win shares, advanced stats, and other mumbo-jumbo, when you hear the name of the player can you honestly see this player helping the Wolves make the leap? Trevor Ariza and Emeka Okafor would have been nice upgrades, but were they enough? Probably not. 

4. The player ideally is a shooting guard or a small forward. Maybe a center. This player has a track record of NBA success and production. What the Wolves need at this point are solid players to eliminate some of the awful play we saw after D-Day, 2012 aka The Death of Ricky Rubio. However, point guard and power forwards need not apply. I could buy into getting a 3rd big/center who is a damn fine player.

So where does this leave us? Realistic or not, the players that seem to fit this criteria are: Andre Iguodala, Kevin Martin, Pau Gasol, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen (both are too old), Josh Smith, MAYBE Nic Batum (.0001% chance Portland doesn't match any offer sheet), Rudy Gay, Tyreke Evans, Danny Granger, Luol Deng, Joakim Noah and Brian Scalabrine. I may have forgotten one or two. While the trade targets are all big names, Kahn could offer to trade some cap friendly contracts, absorb additional salary and throw in a first rounder and/or a crack at someone like Wayne Ellington. The point is, if Kahn wants to get something done, the opportunity is right in front of him. It has been for years. But if not for his pathological tendency to attempt and fail to discover his own gems, Kahn may have acquired the personnel years prior. The man is all talk, no walk, and if he has proven one thing these past few years it's that he can't get much done in his job.

The perfect scenario would be to acquire one of the aforementioned without giving up Derrick (or Pek for that matter). Kevin Martin seems to be the player on the list who would take the least to pry away. This wouldn't be a bad place to start. Either way, I have a foreboding sense that the draft and offseason will yield disappointment for many Wolves fans. The problems are obvious and the opportunities are plentiful. Derrick Williams and cap room can get you deep into a lot of trade talks. 

Can Kahn pull something off, finally?

I'm bracing myself for Jamal Crawford and little else.

 

 

NBA Release

Well deserved, sir. Now recruit some new guards who can shoot better than 12%! 

If two years ago someone told you Love would make an All-NBA, how would you have reacted?

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The torch has been passed. GO THUNDER!!!

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