Wolves 2012-13: The Future Isn't What It Used to Be

Second alternate logo (2008-present) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Minnesota Timberwolves ended their NBA season with a 31-51 record, defeating the San Antonio Spurs 108-95 for the first time at their arena since 2004.  That's the best record they've had in years for such a pitiful franchise, but it still doesn't get them to the playoffs.

The injuries this team has suffered throughout the season have been well documented.  Even if every player were healthy, the Wolves still would not have had the horses to compete in the highly-competitive Western Conference with the likes of the Spurs, Oklahoma City Thunder and Los Angeles Lakers.  Or should that be the Clippers?

So it's time to look to the future, and that future is looking cloudy.  Let's start with Kevin Love, who was lost for most of the season with a hand injury.  He's also made news for mouthing off about his unhappiness with Wolves management and making noises about going someplace else.  Gee, if he really feels that way . . . Maybe the Wolves should give Love what he seems to want, even though he doesn't become a free agent until 2015.

Other Wolves you may or may not see in uniform in November:  Nikola Pekovic, Andrei Kirelenko, Derrick Williams, Brandon Roy.  They will either be traded or allowed to leave via free agency.

Who will be around to make the decisions?  David Kahn's time appears to be up as the Wolves' general manager, as Flip Saunders--who once coached this team, and recently turned down the chance to coach the Gophers--waits in the wings.

Will Rick Adelman return to coach the Wolves next season?  He now has more than 1,000 coaching victories in his NBA career.  But his wife's medical problems caused him to miss several games, and has thrown into doubt how much longer he can continue.  If Adelman can't, enter Saunders.  Unless, as general manager, he wants to pick his own coach.

How long will Glen Taylor continue to own the Wolves?  He ended up with the team after the NBA shot down an attempt by the previous owners to sell to a group that would have moved the Wolves to New Orleans.  Now Taylor is looking for a minority partner who will commit to keeping the team in Minnesota once he decides to step down.  But he hasn't found that person yet.  No one seems to want a franchise that depreciates in value every season. 

So many questions.  The Wolves need a Magic 8 Ball more than they need a healthy Ricky Rubio.

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Of the teams that are actually competing in the NBA playoffs,  here's who we think will be in the finals:
Miami Heat vs. San Antonio Spurs.

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UPDATE:  One of those questions has been answered.  It's been reported that the Timberwolves have bid adios to David Kahn, and Flip Saunders is their new general manager.  Now all he has to do is find better players and convince Rick Adelman to stay as coach.  Or maybe he'll take the job himself.

Louisville, Connecticut Rule College Basketball

Louisville Cardinals athletic logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Louisville Cardinals won the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship, and the Connecticut Huskies won the women's tournament.  What's news here is that the two schools' head basketball coaches reached important milestones with their victories.  Thus, this:

Louisville 82, Michigan 76

At the Georgia Dome in Atlanta Monday night, Rick Pitino became the first man to coach two different college programs to national titles (the other being Kentucky in 1996).  It was relatively close for most of the game before Louisville pulled away for the school's third championship, the last being in 1986.  Luke Hancock was the high scorer for the Cardinals with 22 points, while teammate Peyton Siva scored most of his 18 points in the second half.

Kevin Ware shares something in common with Minnesota high school hockey player Jack Jablonski.  Both became overexposed media celebrities because of horrific injuries suffered on the court or on the ice.  Both were reduced to sideline mascots cheering on their teams.  Both their teams went on to win championships.  Coincidence?

Unlike Jablonski's injury, Ware's was nationally televised as a bone protruded outside his leg.  Judging from the reaction, you'd have thought someone just died on the basketball court.  CBS showed the replay a couple of times, but then never again.  And neither did any other network or website.  You might argue that such a gruesome injury need not be endlessly shown.  But you should have the right to decide that, not some TV network who thinks its viewers are babies who can't handle the truth.

Rick Pitino, in addition to winning another college basketball championship, was just named to the sport's Hall of Fame.  His son, Richard, is the new University of Minnesota men's basketball coach.  He has a horse that's going to the Kentucky Derby.  And he has promised to get a tattoo.  So yeah, it's been a good week.

Connecticut 93, Louisville 60

The Cardinals had a chance to do what one other school had done before, and that is be title holder to both the men's and women's basketball crowns.  That other school was Connecticut in 2004.

Instead, the Huskies' blowout win at New Orleans Tuesday night gave coach Geno Auriemma his eighth national title, tying him with Pat Summitt and Tennessee.

Freshman Breanna Stewart led the Huskies with 23 points.  Unlike the great Huskies players of the past--Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, Rebecca Lobo, Maya Moore--Stewart kind of snuck up on us.  All we've been hearing about were Brittney Griner of Baylor and Skylar Diggins of Notre Dame, but neither of them made the championship game.

Both of these schools were members of the Big East Conference, until everybody started going their separate ways.  Next season, the Big East becomes strictly a basketball conference dominated by Catholic colleges.  The remainder (including Connecticut) will go into the American Athletic Conference.  Louisville will be in the AAC for one season before heading for the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Leagues may come and players may go, but there is one constant in college sports.  It's all about the coaches, as Pitino and Auriemma have just demonstrated.

KTWN: Can Music and Baseball Mix?

In the months since KTWN (96.3 FM) made headlines by taking over the Minnesota Twins' radio broadcasts, much has been made of the station's having a poor signal, the lack of a consistent format, and the fact that both the team and the station are owned by the Pohlad family.  They've never made a bad investment, have they?

Having changed from hip hop (as B96) to pop hits (as 96.3 Now) to its current Hot Adult Contemporary in only a couple of years, people have a right to be skeptical.  KTWN's tagline is "Radio For Us.  Community, Sports and Music", which makes them sound like a small town radio station, or recalling the glory days of WCCO-AM in the 1960s and 70s.

Instead of Boone & Erickson, Howard Viken and Steve Cannon, you're getting "Cain and Company" .  That's a DJ named Cain bantering with Rena Sargianopolous and Eric Perkins of KARE (Channel 11) in morning drive.  The other high-profile hire KTWN made is getting Brian (B.T.) Turner to move over from KTCZ (Cities 97).

To hedge their bets, KTWN has added former Twin Ron Coomer and former KSTP (Channel 5) sports guy Rod Simons to its baseball coverage before and after the games, and in-between the music.

With the addition of baseball, KTWN is swimming against the tide by being one of the few flagship stations in Major League Baseball not to have a news, talk or sports format.  By sticking to music, KTWN risks alienating the few listeners they already have.  Music and sports audiences have been known to be mutually exclusive.

Granted, the sound quality on Twins games have improved greatly with the move to FM, after all the complaints about not being able to hear games on previous flagship KSTP (1500 AM).  Having said that, there's still parts of the Twin Cities that aren't able to pick up 96.3.

(If you go on twinsbaseball.com, you can see a map of radio affiliates for the Twins baseball network that covers the Upper Midwest.  What you won't get are the call letters to those stations, just the frequencies.  Someone on the Twins staff must have been too lazy to do the research.)

Most radio observers see KTWN, a station with a low-rated music format broadcasting games of a last-place baseball team, as a disaster waiting to happen.  It's not too late to change to a format that's more compatible with baseball.  The NBC Sports Radio network, which just started on the air, is still available now that CBS Sports Radio has been taken by the three stations at 105 FM.  Or the Pohlads can make some sort of deal to let Hubbard Broadcasting simulcast 1500 ESPN on FM.  It couldn't be any worse than what they've got now.

It'll be an interesting experiment, to say the least.  KTWN is gambling that the same folks who like Pink, Mumford and Sons, and the rest of the artists they play are also baseball fans, and vice versa.  If they don't, they'll have as much trouble as the Twins in getting out of the ratings cellar.

Sports Conquers "Love" On FM

Corporate logo of Cumulus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cumulus Media chose the start of the baseball season--which also happened to be April Fool's Day--to convert the Love 105 stations (WGVY 105.1, WRXP 105.3 and WGVZ 105.7) to Sports Radio 105 FM The Ticket.  Some listeners and radio observers are probably wishing this was a joke.

The Ticket, the third sports talk station in the Twin Cities and the second on FM, replaces Love 105's adult contemporary sound that had been in place for about a year since WLTE (now KMNB 102.9) went country and forced its listeners to go elsewhere.  Now the only time you'll hear the word "love" on this station is in reference to tennis.

Programming for The Ticket consists of talk shows from the CBS Sports Radio network, a joint venture of Cumulus and CBS Radio that's a few months old.  Its top draws are John Feinstein and Jim Rome, who's hosted shows before on various networks and syndicators.  If this were any other sports radio station, most of this stuff would be running overnights and on weekends.

The Ticket starts out from behind the eight-ball.  There are no local hosts (yet), no local rights to major pro sports teams (if there were, Cumulus would have given them to KQRS 92.5), and they need three low-powered FM signals just to cover the Twin Cities area.  That has been a problem since the Rev 105 days of the 1990s.

The Ticket sounds like it's intended for "jock around the clock"--no politics or pop culture, just sports.  But politics and pop culture are what's working for Dan "Common Man" Cole and Dan Barreiro on KFXN (100.3), and Joe Soucheray and Patrick Reusse on KSTP (1500 ESPN AM).  The Twin Cities aren't a heavy-duty sports area like New York or Philadelphia, unless you count the Vikings.

Atlanta-based Cumulus, who's in business to wring as much profit as they can from an increasing amount of stations they own to attract a decreasing amount of listeners, is typical of what passes for today's radio.  They have little sense of localism, having sent many personnel to the unemployment line in favor of DJs broadcasting from the (insert sponsor's name here) studios somewhere else, while making life miserable for those that remain.  They're into "branding", such as the deal with CBS for sports stations, "Nash FM" for country formats, and filling the rest with nothing but syndicated product.

So let's recap.  A radio behemoth changes one of its Twin Cities stations from Light Rock to Jock Talk, fires its local staff in favor of a national lineup, then expects to compete with well-established sports stations with a weak signal.  Yeah, that's The Ticket, all right.

Twins 2013: Once More Into The Cellar

Gulf Coast League Twins (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After two years of nearly triple-digit losses, is there anything the Minnesota Twins can do in the 2013 Major League Baseball season that might cause their fans to cancel their vacations and their Netflix subscriptions to come and spend their hard-earned money at Target Field?

The short answer is no.  General Manager Terry Ryan is in the midst of a makeover with this team, with the aim of making them more competitive by 2015.  Until then, he has to deal with an untried pitching staff, the questionable futures of two of his biggest stars, and how long he can stick with a manager who's gone stale.

Want more than that?  OK. 

With the Twins declining once again to participate in the off-season free agent market, the reputation of the Pohlad family for being cheapskates continues into a second generation.  Denard Span and Ben Revere were traded to the Washington Nationals and Philadelphia Phillies (in that order) for pitching prospects, none of whom will be ready for years--if ever.  The best (if most erratic) pitcher they're had in the last few years, Francisco Liriano, now toils for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The pitching now?  Let's just say it's a work in progress.  Vance Worley, Cole DeVries, Mike Pelfrey and Kevin Correia will try their best to keep the Twins (and themselves) in the game for as long as possible.  If not, there's always the Rochester Red Wings.

Hitting won't be a problem as long as Justin Morneau and Josh Willingham keep producing.  But their futures here might depend on whether the Twins can make a deal with a contending team for more pitching help later this season.  As for Joe Mauer, will he be a better player now that he's a married man, and will soon be the father of (what else) twins?  Or will his legs give out as the years of crouching down behind the plate with all that catcher's equipment on takes its toll?

The big rookie sensation is centerfielder Aaron Hicks, so the Twins must have felt comfortable in unloading Span and Revere, who used to play that position.  Is Hicks worth it?

Ryan must be the most loyal person in the world to have kept manager Ron Gardenhire on for so long, even after two dreadful seasons.  That will be tested this season if the overhaul in coaches doesn't translate into an improvement on the field.

The Twins will once again bring up the rear in the American League Central division.  There is one silver lining, though.  Thanks to the Houston Astros, who are switching from the National League to the American League West, the Twins won't be the worst team in their own league.

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Our division and wild card picks, for what it's worth.

AMERICAN LEAGUE

EAST  Tampa Bay Rays
CENTRAL  Detroit Tigers
WEST  Los Angeles Angels
WILD CARD  Texas Rangers and Toronto Blue Jays

NATIONAL LEAGUE

EAST Washington Nationals
CENTRAL  Cincinnati Reds
WEST  San Francisco Giants
WILD CARD  Atlanta Braves and Pittsburgh Pirates

The Tubby Smith Principle

Tubby Smith (Photo credit: rburtzel)

Maybe you've heard of the Peter Principle, where in business the farther you go in your profession, the higher your level of incompetency becomes.  Or something like that.  Which is why so many CEO's who ran their corporations into the ground got nice, fat paychecks on their way out the door.

Tubby Smith, the University of Minnesota men's basketball coach, is working on a similar philosophy.  Having once coached a national championship team at Kentucky, Smith was hired to turn around a moribund program mired in scandal.  Since then, he's been running on the fumes of his past reputation.  In his six years of sideline pacing at Williams Arena, the Gophers have made two NCAA tournament appearances and almost as many in the National Invitation Tournament.

This season, Smith and the Gophers will make their third appearance into what the NCAA (and CBS) calls "March Madness".  They will play UCLA Friday night in the South regionals at Austin, Texas.  (It will be televised on a cable channel called truTV, the home of "Hardcore Pawn", "Lizard Lick Towing" and "Full Throttle Saloon".   They're one of the networks involved in the NCAA's current TV deal with CBS and Turner Sports.)

It's an amazing feat, given that the Gophers have lost 11 of their last 16 games, mostly in Big Ten conference play.  They have a 20-12 overall record, with their league record at 8-10.  But the committee that decides which teams get in the tournament figured that the Gophers, with their stellar non-conference wins against teams like Northwest Podunk State and "quality wins" over the likes of Indiana and Wisconsin at home was good enough to get in, even if nobody else believes that.

During their long Big Ten tailspin, the Gophers played uninspired basketball--blowing leads, losing by double digits to teams they should have beaten, etc.  Fans and local hoops pundits, seeing that their coach is losing his ability to lead his players, have been calling for Smith to resign or get fired.

Presumably, this is not the way seniors Rodney Williams and Trevor Mbakwe envisioned the end of their college basketball careers.

Seven Big Ten teams, including Minnesota, have been invited to play in the NCAA tournament.  This is either a comment on the strength of the conference this season, or the weakness of the rest of the field, or both.  Defending champion Kentucky, whose five starters last year left en masse for the NBA, isn't here this year.

Meanwhile, Tubby Smith has done his part.  He's gotten the Gophers into another post-season tournament, and has earned $100,000 just for showing up.  Unless the team makes it past the first round, the university bigwigs will no doubt be under pressure to release Smith from his contract, which could be much costlier than keeping him.  That means Smith will have reached his level of incompetency--and would be paid handsomely for it.  Just like any corporate CEO.

UPDATE:  Let the buyout begin.  Smith was let go Monday after going 1-1 in the NCAA tournament, beating UCLA and losing to Florida.  We can't say we're surprised, because we're not.   Smith leaves behind a 124-81 overall record over a six-year period, but 46-62 in the Big Ten.  He's still a respected coach nationally, but now he'll have to earn that someplace else if he wants to.  Virginia Commonwealth coach Shaka Smart and former Gopher player and Wolves coach Flip Saunders are considered the early favorites to replace Smith.

UPDATE#2:  After Smart, Saunders and others turned down the Gophers, the best they could come up with was Richard Pitino, who last coached at Florida International.  That's Richard, not Rick.  He's the son of the Louisville coach whose team is in the NCAA Final Four.  Obviously, the U of M thinks the old Pitino magic could rub off on their struggling basketball program.  Next thing you know, ESPN and CBS will want to schedule a father-son matchup between the Pitinos.  As for Tubby Smith, he's landed on his feet as the new coach at Texas Tech.

Wild 2013: Not Ready for Prime Time

Alternate logo since 2003. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On January 6, 1980, the Minnesota North Stars slammed the brakes on the Philadelphia Flyers' NHL-record 35-game unbeaten streak with a 7-1 blowout win.

On March 5, 2013, the Minnesota Wild tried to do the same thing to the Chicago Blackhawks, who have yet to lose a game in regulation time in a lockout-shortened regular season.  Instead, the Wild got blitzed for four goals in the first period before the Blackhawks ultimately won 5-3 to extend their streak.  As of March 7, they are now 21-0-3 through the first 24 games of the season.  Thirty straight if you go back to last season, not counting the playoffs.

The differences?  (1) The Flyers' streak-breaking loss was played in Minnesota.  The Hawks continued theirs at home in the United Center.  (2) The Wild are not the North Stars, who have been residents of Dallas, Texas for the last two decades.

In a season where much has been made about the improvements the Wild have made, they currently stand at 11-9-2, equaling 24 points.  That's good for a three-way tie with the Dallas Stars and St. Louis Blues for the eighth and last playoff spot in the Western Conference.

Behind the mediocrity is their inability to put the puck in the net.  With high-priced talent like Ryan Suter and Zach Parise, along with holdovers Pierre-Marc Bouchard, Devin Setoguchi and Dany Heatley, the Wild have managed to scare up 56 goals--which is among the fewest in the NHL.  The goaltending is hit-or-miss with Niklas Backstrom and Darcy Kuemper, a Houston callup who took over when Josh Harding was sidelined due to complications from multiple sclerosis.

Not surprisingly, this leads to the Wild's brain trust being looked upon with suspicion.  Coach Mike Yeo's job is in jeopardy because he's threatening to bring back the glory days of Jacques Lemaire, the team's original defensive-minded coach.  Chuck Fletcher, the general manager, is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to improving his team's talent.

The Wild, for most of their brief history, have blamed part of their problems on the division they're in--the Northwest.  The rivalries with the Vancouver Canucks, Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames have been intense over the years.  But they were also time-consuming, as the Wild bounced between three time zones and two countries.

The new realignment setup proposed by the NHL (and the players association just gave their blessing) would put the Wild in the same division with the Blackhawks, Blues, Stars, Winnipeg Jets, Nashville Predators and Colorado Avalanche starting next season.  That's great for local TV ratings and travel because most of these teams hail from the Central Time Zone.  But the competition would be much tougher than the Northwest is now.

Until then, in the remaining few weeks of the truncated regular season, the Wild need to find a way to increase the scoring and hold on to their leads.  If they don't, the division they'll be playing in isn't the only thing that's going to get realigned.