From my understanding, plays like that happened all the time back then and I think Bynum's play was "dirtier".

However, during the actual game I think it was *very* hard to tell that it was an intentional elbow, which is one reason why the Lakers fans were booing and stuff and also why Rambis at the time didn't think it was necessarily a type 2. However, as the coach that's irrelevant, whatever his player says it was, that's what he has to support.

That quote is a bit out of context b/c I Rambis agrees with the ruling I think but simply doesn't think Bynum is a bad guy or a dirty player. Which I'd generally agree with. I don't think it's necessary to just cry wolf like every other coach. I mean, Bynum got what I think is a fair punishment (I saw the play on TV and a bunch of replays - only from 1 angle can you really tell how bad it was) and Rambis is just saying that's a subjective thing (which it is).

The refs did a good job managing the situation in the game and the league did a good job and Rambis needs to get better at backing his team during games and in the locker room but we've known that about him all season. This isn't the reason to fire him, it's just a symptom of his philosophy which is a very poor fit for this team (and I'd imagine every young team).

I was at the game yesterday and it was the most embarrassing piece of **** I've ever had the misfortune of watching. Everyone associated with the team should receive a public reprimand, lose their job, and give back every cent they've been paid by the team. ****ing pathetic.

Except for Love I hope, right?

Gotta hold out that shred of hope that he stays with the team into the future!

i have limited respect for love after watching the game where his streak ended. where he was noticeably distraught and flopping on the ground in agony after missing a free throw in a 20 pt game. how about a win streak

I have a feeling that team is super dysfunctional in regards to coach vs. players. I've had this feeling ever since I saw the clip of Rambis telling Love he was part of the All Star team. It felt suuuuuuuper awkward to me and while I haven't been on teams and in locker rooms in my own life, it really felt nothing like how it should feel, even with cameras there.

So I guess what I'm saying is as long as Love isn't pulling the public @#$% most other "superstar" players pull, I think as fans, everyone can be pretty happy with how he's conducting himself. Plus, the flopping thing is still a league-wide issue. The best power forward of all time flops 5x more than Love does and more emphatically so I'm willing to overlook some nonsense here and there.

i didn't mean to use flop in the sense of pretending to fall to draw a foul (which i don't have a huge problem with, since it is an effort to help your team). i meant it, like, flopping on the ground like a crappie while almost crying while the ball is dead. whatever the opposite of a celebration is.

i mean i don't ever see the guy show that much negative emotion about losing (not that i want to), so it's just really disgusting when he shows it over personal stats in a game the wolves were getting killed in.

not that i hate kevin love. he's an excellent player and he's young and basically a good guy i think. i just hate certain things about him and chose to point that out when someone hinted that he was the only thing NOT wrong with the wolves.

Kevin McHale making a good play on the ball.


Love is a very good NBA player and a great guy. He does some annoying, immature things on the court once in a while, but I think that's part of being young still. In the time I've seen him interacting with fans, he has been one of the nicest pro athletes I've ever seen.

Yesterday's game illustrates how bad this team is without Love. Love is succeeding in spite of Rambis, and the rest of the team plays worse because of Rambis imo.

I can go on all day about reasons he should be fired.

32-121 record with the Wolves. Let that sink in for a bit.

Player development - how about Ramon Sessions? He had a 17.9 PER with Milwaukee two years ago. His PER was ~11 last year with us. This year with Cleveland, its 19.06. What's that say about getting the most out of a player?

Wolves are down 4 at the end of 3 and I would put their chances of winning at between 0-1%. Pek was right under the basket,could have touched the backboard without jumping, and missed a shot by 4 feet. That has to be hard to do.

can beasley play the 2? randolph was unreal tonight and so was derek williams. chances are the BPA in the draft is going to be a forward. they are going to be so deep in the frontcourt and pretty bad in the backcourt. can you play beasley at the 2 or do you trade someone? if you do trade what do you try to get? i would consider trading love or beasley for an outstanding 2 if that was available.

Hard to get an outstanding player in return when you have none are your team to begin with.

i'd say love is both outstanding and overrated by a good portion of the league, so i wouldn't be surprised at all if they could get something for him.

Id like to see Randolph play the 2. He handles the ball better than any of our other guards

Beasley doesnt handle the ball well enough to play the 2.

Here's a national reporter who is paying attention to Rambis' lousy coaching. This link shows a breakdown of a critical play (or lack of a play) towards the end of the Dallas game the other day. http://nbaplaybook.com/2011/03/25/mi...s-a-plan-late/ The link has a video and excellent analysis imo. Key quote: As the coach, it is his job to put his players in the best position to succeed, and time after time it just seems that Rambis just has his guys go out there and play.

Today we were treated to a similar situation. The Wolves made the game vs Boston close - they even took the lead briefly in the 4th. They showed heart, played good defense and for most of the game, played with more effort than I've seen in a while. In the end, there was no plan to finish the game. Boston had a plan, made by a professional coach (and players who know how to finish), so they won.

The Wolves have an arrogant ass as a head coach who should have been a career assistant (at best).

Are there tie breaking procedures for teams in the lottery, or do they both get the same amount of lottery balls?

I think there's some type of tie breaker. Didnt we tie Washington a couple years ago (before we traded for their pick) and lost whatever tie breaker there was?

Tom Thibodeau is the kind of coach I wish the Wolves had. He was an assistant for the Wolves a long time ago under Bill Mussleman. He appears to have his team playing the way Mussleman had the Wolves play back then, only Thibodeau has way more talent to work with. The guy is involved with everything going on in the game, and his team responds with a lot of effort. He is the anti-Rambis.

Jim Peterson was commenting during the game about how he likes Thibodeau's style, and how different it is from having someone passively sitting on the sideline like they're a king on a throne, rather than being involved with the players during practices or games. He didn't mention Rambis, but it was pretty clear who he was referring to.

The Bulls are very good, not just because Rose is so good, but because they contest every single shot the other team takes. When it looked like the Wolves made a good play to get someone open for an easy shot last night, the Bulls had a help defender contesting the next guy to get the ball.

Contrast that with the Wolves who are always late with help defense and always leaving people open for easy shots. Sure, the Wolves lack talent, but they are poorly coached and that is what is most frustrating about this team to me.


edit - I just read something at Canis - someone mentioned that Jim Peterson would do a pretty good job as coach of the Wolves. I agree. I've mentioned before that I wouldnt mind seeing any of the assistants take over for Rambis, but getting someone like Jim Pete in there would probably be better imo.

what is the record for fewest wins in 2 seasons?

I dont know. I think 9 is the record for one season, so we probably will not beat the two season record.



This is a really good article written by a guy at Canis who spent a good deal of time with some front office people from other teams. He asked them lots of questions about their opinions of the Wolves.

http://www.canishoopus.com/2011/4/3/...on-the-twolves

For those still thinking that Kahn &/or Rambis should remain in their current positions, please read that.

From ESPN.com:

Which coach has done the least with the least? Least with the most?

There were five answers. Here are two:

Sebastian Pruiti, NBA Playbook: Kurt Rambis. Rambis doesn't have the best roster to work with, but he hasn't helped it with the coaching decisions that he has made. Trying to get the Timberwolves to run the triangle offense was a poor decision, but his in-game management is even worse.

Scott Skiles, for least with most. Many had the Bucks pegged for the playoffs, but a poor offensive game plan involving a lot of jumpers has doomed them.


David Thorpe, ESPN.com: Kurt Rambis has simply not been able to get the Wolves to compete and play as well as they can with anything close to consistency. From benching Kevin Love early in the season to having a team with lesser talent play faster than almost anyone in the league, his decisions show he's just not been a guy who can help his players play their best basketball.

I like the Warriors' talent, on paper. What I don't like is their indifference to defense, and Keith Smart has to be accountable for that. That team should not be a bottom-five defensive team.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/s...=5-on-5-110404

lol...who would have thought 3 months later we'd be battling them for the other end of the final season record. I think Cleveland has a real shot of passing us. They have one less win and their remaining schedule is @Toronto, Chi, @Milwaukee, @Detroit, and Wash. Outside of the Chicago game all those games seem winnable. The Wolves only have 4 games remaining and if the other teams remotely show up (they might not) I don't see us winning another game.

----

cha, remember earlier ITT when someone was raving about Rambis and the coaching staff and the work they were doing with Darko?

not clearly, but it was probably me

I was just talking to a friend about Darko's play this year - how he outplayed P Gasol, Stoudamire, and Duncan early in the season.... I figured he was about to play like that vs everyone, then he fell off a cliff. Since then, he has shown a few flashes of potential, but usually just looks lazy and tired out there.

Tonight's game he looked like he would have rather been home in bed. I heard a rumor that he smokes cigs - which would partially explain his lack of being in NBA shape. I think he would make a good 15-20 minute a game, defensive, part time center - not a guy you want to run your whole offense through. The guy has skills, but apparently no desire to try to get the most out of them. I guess that's why he rode the bench for all his previous teams

Anyone else notice how all the Wolves not named Pek or Tolliver have regressed since the beginning of the season? Nice job with player development Kurt.

The Wolves gave me free tickets to tonight's game plus after the game I got to sit in the post game press conference. They told me not to ask questions I really wanted to ask Rambis if he thinks he's done anything to deserve keeping his job beyond this season, but I think they would have thrown me out, lol.

One reporter asked him something related to A. Randolph's development. Rambis asked the guy, "how old is he?" and rambled on a while about how most players dont peak until they're 28 - 32. Between the lines it was easy to see he was making excuses for his whole team's lack of experience. I guess he has to come up with some excuses to justify how pathetic his win-loss record is.

How did you get free tickets + post-game conference seats?


Also, I went to the Heat-Wolves game this weekend, and after the game a friend and I went out to the visiting team bus to see the players get on the bus. This year, my friend did that after the nuggets game and wore a UNC jersey and got autographed shoes from Ty Lawson, which was pretty cool. We knew there would be a ton of people for this game, and sure enough, there were probably 125-150 people waiting out back. The security seemed clearly overwhelmed with the people and it didn't help when this 15 yr old gangster looking kid jumped the barrier and got gang-tackled by 4 security and that's when things got interesting.

By this point, essentially the whole team came out except Lebron and Wade, and the head of security came over and told EVERYONE they now had to leave because that guy crossing the barrier posed a security threat. The crowd was mostly the thuggish gangster wannabe crowd and they weren't too receptive to this and no one left. Next thing we know there are probably 8-10 police cars with K9 units and they are trying to clear us out. At this point some of the rowdy people are mad and start yelling at this short fat white cop and she is armed with pepper spray threatening them. One tells her to **** off and she tells him to **** off back. Anyways...people start to walk away and she just runs behind some poor kid who wasn't doing anything and shoves him to the ground. Crowd gets real unhappy over that and get in her face and she pepper sprays in a big arc. I am maybe 15' away and my friend 20' away and we both get a WHOLE bunch of it in our eyes/nose/etcetc. I guess this counts as my first time getting pepper-sprayed and it led to a good story to tell the friends who went out to the bars immd after the game.

lol nice story

Two reasons the Wolves did that for me:
- I'm a (half) season ticket holder and I renewed (inexplicably) for next season.
- I read Canis Hoopus and have made a handful of posts over there. I found out through that site that the Wolves were offering stuff like that to "bloggers", so I signed up for it a few months ago. I post so rarely over there that I figured they wouldn't consider doing that for me, but they must figure that since I'm one of the few people (suckers?) who renewed for next season, they'd throw me a bone.

Actually, they threw me all kinds of bones. In addition to that, I got to sit courtside for warmups before the Toronto game a couple months ago & got good seats (a few rows behind the Wolves bench) to that game. Also when I renewed, I got 4 pairs of seats in the more expensive area of the arena in addition to the ones I bought.

The Wolves marketing people really do a good job to keep the season ticket holders happy. I wish they'd put that kind of effort into building a good team.

Pre/Post Rambis WS/48 (WS/48 is an estimate of the number of wins contributed by a player per 48 minutes played. League average is ~0.100)

Al Jefferson – .090 (Wolves) vs. .127 (Utah)
Ramon Sessions – .031 vs. .094 (Cleveland)
Ryan Hollins – .048 vs. .065 (Cleveland)
Ryan Gomes – .052 vs. .057 (Clips)
Brian Cardinal – .071 vs. .125 (Dallas)

Michael Beasley – .095 (Miami) vs. .035 (Wolves)
Luke Ridnour – .168 (Milwaukee) vs. .094
Martell Webster – .105 (Portland) vs. .083
Sebastian Telfair – .020 (Cleveland) vs. .011
Randolph – .098 (Golden State) vs. .057
Darko – .088 (Memphis) vs. .010
Tolliver – .085 (Golden State) vs. .118

Only one player on that list has a higher WS/48 under Rambis than under a different coach.


The only coach with a winning percentage in the same ballpark as Rambis (.198) who was given more games is the illustrious Brian Winters who navigated his squads to a combined 36-148 (.196) mark.

That’s it. In the history of the NBA only 1 coach has ever been given more rope to hang himself than Rambis with his level of success.

Cmon Glen, wtf is it going to take to get you to fire this clown?!

Does it get any lower than a guy you drafted lighting you up NBA record style?