The only reason we drafted Lawson was because we had already made a deal with Denver. He was who they told us to pick.

Aside from that, he would have been a hell of a lot better pick with the 6th pick that year than Flynn was. So would every other PG who was taken in that draft after Flynn.

Wasting the #14 or #21 or whatever pick in the 1st round (like McFale did every year) is bad, but wasting the #6 is inexcusable.

Kahn has spent 25% of the total 1st round picks in Wolves history and has a grand total of zero above average NBA players to show for them.

More piling on Kahn:

Hollinger had Lawson as the best PG in the draft, and actually neck and neck with Blake Griffin. See this quote:

Two players are neck and neck for the top spot in this year’s Draft Rater. You could easily guess that one of them is Blake Griffin, but most folks never would have guessed that the other is Lawson.

Lawson, who is coming off an electric performance in leading North Carolina to the championship, grades out highly for several reasons: Although he’s short for a point guard, his shooting numbers (47.1 percent on 3-pointers), strong assist rate and microscopic turnover ratio (9.1, first among point guard prospects) all point to him as an NBA keeper.

The Draft Rater puts Lawson slightly ahead of Griffin for first, but this doesn’t mean a team should take Lawson first. The standard error in the projections for point guards is higher than it is for big men, which means random noise could be putting Lawson ahead just as easily as on-the-court performance. If the consensus is that Griffin is the better player, I don’t think Lawson’s statistical record alone is strong enough evidence to refute it. Additionally, we’ve heard questions about Lawson’s work ethic and injuries.

But the rating is emphatic enough for me to say Lawson should be at the top of the college point guard ladder, ahead of Jonny Flynn, Jrue Holiday, Jeff Teague & Co. (If you’re wondering about Ricky Rubio, I’ll have more on him next week.)




Ed Weiland had PGs ranked Rubio 1, Lawson 2..................................... and Flynn 9th.

Sometimes I find the evaluation process a little baffling. It’s as if the scouts, GMs and other personnel men simply focus in on what goes on in the combine and workouts and ignore the season. As if they’re drafting players for a decathlon instead of the same five-on-five game these players were playing the previous winter.

I understand all the tests to some extent too. Teams are investing a ton of money into these players and they need to make sure of their strength, smarts and quickness. Teams need to be sure the player they’re getting is as tall as advertised, or at least tall enough to do the job. I also realize that the college game is slightly different from the pro game and teams are looking for different things than what may have been successful at the NCAA level. That all said, when a player has a year like Ty Lawson just had it seems silly to me that he would fall behind so many clearly inferior players because he didn’t perform as well as them in a few controlled tests. Unless some team is playing possum seriously well, it looks like Lawson will fall at least into the late teens. He’s the only college PG who has shown an ability not only to pass first and set up teammates, but to score efficiently when his team needs him to. The fact that he proved this for 3 NCAA seasons should have him near the top of the PG list, but scouts seem to be wild for clearly inferior players this year.

This is Weidland's draft report card after that draft:

This is a draft of a few good and several slightly-above-average prospects. Right now I would say that Rubio and Evans have the best shot to become great players. After that we have a few good-to-very good in Griffin, Harden, Lawson and Blair. One who would be called potentially valuable in Thabeet. There are a few projects who could pay off down the road in Derozan, Claver, Daye, Johnson, Holiday and Mullens. I think when this draft is finally analyzed it will look a lot like the 1989 draft. That draft featured several good PGs and perimeter players. The best big players in that draft were all taken later in the process. I could easily see 10-12 points and wings from this draft becoming effective players. I could also see BJ Mullens and Dejuan Blair becoming two of the best inside players taken in this draft.
This draft is about the PGs though. This will become known as the PG draft. Remember the 1983 football draft? That was the QB draft. In order the QBs went: John Elway, Todd Blackledge, Jim Kelly, Tony Eason, Ken O’Brien and Dan Marino. If ranked by careers it would go: Elway by a razor over Marino because of his super bowl wins. Those two are followed by Kelly, quite a large gap, then Eason, O’Brien and Blackledge. That means in the final analysis the QBs finished 1-6-3-4-5-2. Here’s how the PGs were drafted in the 2009 draft:

1.Ricky Rubio (Elway)
2.Jonny Flynn (Blackledge)
3.Stephen Curry (Kelly)
4.Brandon Jennings (Eason)
5.Jrue Holiday (O’Brien)
6.Ty Lawson (Marino)

This analogy makes sense. Rubio will become a legendary player like Elway. But he’ll have somewhat of a rough start to his career. He may even force a trade out of Minnesota, like Elway did with Baltimore. Flynn will be the Blackledge. The guy everyone fell in love with on draft day, even though he just didn’t measure up to the others. He will be the bust. Stephen Curry to the Warriors is the obvious Jim Kelly. He’ll be part of a high-scoring, entertaining offense that may or may not lose four consecutive finals. Jennings and Holiday will be Eason and O’Brien. They’ll have their moments, but are nothing more than solid journeymen. Holiday fits well as the O’Brien because both were considered projects at the time they were drafted. Lawson will be Marino. It will be apparent to everyone almost immediately that it was a mistake to pass on this guy. No I didn’t forget Tyreke Evans, he’s a SG.


Maybe we should hire one of these analysts to be our GM. The GM we have makes draft choices about as well as a trained money throwing darts.

I like Hollinger and he does a has a lot of good information, but he also had Love and Beasely ahead of Derrick(sp) Rose.

And I think Blake Griffin has a chance to be better than "good to very good but not great"

I've listened to the last qtr and half while playing poker and it sounds as though the Suns have made 30 3s.

Magic number is 1. One more Wolves loss or a Cleveland win and we have the worst record in the NBA. I'm pretty sure Cleveland will beat Washington. The Cavs haven't been that bad lately.

we really don't even need to count on Cleveland, since there is about a 0.1% chance that the TWolves win their last game.

Although I'm sure our dreadful lottery run will continue and we'll end up with like the 4th pick or something.

Last night's game was fun to watch, except for seeing the Suns get all those open looks. Maybe someday we'll have a coach that gets his team to contest open shots.

Beasley could have won the game before it went into OT if he had made a damn FT. He played really well offensively prior to that, and actually made a nice block to send the game into OT. That being said, he puts forth little effort defensively most of the time.

So it looks like we'll have a 25% shot at Irving. It sounds like he is way better than anyone else in the draft & significantly better than John Wall according to what I've read. There's a very good chance he could be similar to Chris Paul.

If we get Irving does that mean we will trade the rights to Rubio?

Something tells me if we get #1 we'll **** if up and take that center from Turkey or something. I can hear Kahn saying something like, "we still believe Rubio is coming over and we haven't given up on Johnny yet, remember he's coming off a surgery that generally takes up to two years to recover." FFS I'm going to be mad.

I think we need a new thread title, too.

This is (part of) why we need a new GM and a new coach asap.

New thread title suggestion - release rambis & can kahn

they need a time machine to go back to 1996 and stop the 15years of ****ing every single decision up, has the franchise even made 1 smart move since drafting KG?

I can't wait to see what the next one will be

The franchise never made a single smart decision before drafting KC either.

They offered cheap tickets to Cha and so we're going to the MUST SEE GAME OF THE YEAR tonight at Target Center.

If this is any indication I'd say the Twolves will be in the Western Conference finals by end of next year, .

fyp

lol, Kahn said when he got hired it would be a 2 - 3 year process. Next year is year 3, so according to Kahn's plan, we should be competing in the playoffs next year. bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahaahaha!

seeya tonight!

That ticket is free? Oh I guess the cheap ones were those better seats.

Well, regardless, dinner is on me for the game of the century!

Gotta feed you properly so your next health & fitness log post isn't "couldn't lift anything b/c Yugo made me eat plain salad for dinner".

I think the title should be something about the lottery or worst record in the NBA.

Minnesota Timberwolves - Kyrie Irving, ONE TIME!

cha is this the first time we've had the worst record in the NBA?

No. Off the top of my head, one I remember is the year before we drafted Laettner. We had the worst record and got the third pick in the draft that year. The first pick was Shaq and the second was Alonzo Mourning.

I cant remember if we were worst any other seasons or not.

Any other suggestions for a new thread title? Maybe we should make a pole.

Thanks for dinner yugo - that was a good time, and we saw some good basketball played by the wolves....during the third quarter anyway

Cha & I were at the game and I think the last play really summed it all up, Ellington dribbling the ball unforced out of bounds for no reason. Your 2010/2011 MN Timberwolllllves!

Cha did get a t-shirt at the end of the game though so that was definitely a bright spot on the season as a whole.

Oh yeah, and dinner at 508 club was def > Smalley's.

http://www.canishoopus.com/2011/4/14...ercifully-over

"David Kahn says he's staying, made it pretty clear Kurt Rambis is not, and declared the state of the roster (not the team....the roster) is ahead of schedule.

In other words, he blamed the cook and got Glen Taylor to believe it."

We'll see what happens. I'd be halfway satisfied if Rambis goes & Kahn stays. The team is hard to watch with Rambis coaching it. Kahn is clueless too, but if I had to pick only one of them to go right away, it'd be Rambis.

Call it a hunch, but there's no way we're getting the first pick...

At least with the first pick we don't have to be dissapointed we failed yet again to move up in the lottery.

i remember that too. think how different the team's history might have been had they got the first pick. of course, at the time i was like 10 and was thrilled that they were getting the GOAT college player instead of someone i had not heard of.

Well the lowest pick we can get is 4. We have to hope Barnes enters the draft. I'm thinking if he's enters there are only 3 decent players in the draft, Williams being the other.

WORST TWO YEAR RECORDS IN NBA HISTORY
1 - 140 -- Dallas 1992-93 (71) and 1993-94 (69)
2T - 135 -- Vancouver 1995-96 (67) and 1996-97 (68)
2T - 135 -- L.A. Clippers 1986-87 (70) and 1987-88 (65)
4T - 132 -- Minnesota 2009-10 (67) and 2010-11 (65)
4T - 132 -- Chicago 1999-00 (65) and 2000-01 (67)
4T - 132 -- Denver 1996-97 (61) and 1997-98 (71)
7T - 131 -- Vancouver 1996-97 (68) and 1997-98 (63)
7T - 131 -- Dallas 1991-92 (60) and 1992-93 (71)
7T - 131 -- Miami 1988-89 (67) and 1989-90 (64)
10T - 130 -- Minnesota 1991-92 (67) and 1992-93 (63)
10T - 130 -- Philadelphia 1972-73 (73) and 1973-74 (57)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...s_head_coaches

Rambis is in some "elite" company in the battle for the worst coach ever. Rodgers, Lowe, Wittman & Rambis all rank up there with the worst of all time imo.

Kurt Rambis is now only the 3rd coach in NBA history to have consecutive sub-20 win seasons. The other two are Tim Floyd and Ron Rothstein.