"Now put it in the perspective of having severely ****ed up the #4 pick the previous year reaching for Wes"

http://www.nba.com/2010/news/05/18/c...ock/index.html

Even if what you're saying is true he's run incredibly bad. But you're pretty much making facts up. Wes was projected at 3-4 on pretty much everyone's board. Characterizing it as a severe **** up is incredibly intellectually dishonest. Wes would have been drafted immediately if the Wolves had passed on him and he could have easily gone 3rd overall.

They reached slightly for Flynn. He was 8 in the consensus mock.

The problem with Williams is not that he is playing out of position. The problem is that he's terrible at basketball.

See I was suuuuper on board for DW2. Even with the fit problems, it was trade or draft him. If no good trade was presented I get it. But Wes was super meh and Flynn was instantly facepalm.gif. That being said I think Kahn has increasingly deferred judgment and I'm ok going forward.

The problem with Flynn was that it made no sense with Rubio being picked right before him. Why draft both? Seriously, come up with a legitimate rationale. That being said, it was a weak draft and there was a ton of variance involved. I also give him a ton of credit for this past offseason: either 1) he deferred to super smart people (good sign) or 2) he hit a huge home run with AK47, Cunningham, Budinger, and most importantly SHVED.

We are NOT in a bad spot going forward. I think only OKC is definitively ahead of us in the WC and that's pretty cool.

really? 1) rubio was 2 yrs away from playing and not guaranteed to ever end up on the roster (easily could have been traded) 2) if flynn had worked out rubio and flynn theoretically could have played together at the same time. 3)you need more than 1 point guard. are you pissed that we have barea? 4) the team was terrible and should have been stockpiling talent rather than drafting for fit.

that said, i don't doubt that flynn was a reach and a bad pick. i liked it at the time, but i wasn't really qualified to have an opinion. nevertheless, the reason it was a bad pick certainly wasn't because flynn plays PG

This is interesting. It'd be cool if someone knew how to put dots for where the Wolves picks fall on the graphs.


willie, I dont have time right now to respond to all that stuff, but I googled 2009 draft boards to see where Flynn was rated on them. I looked at 3. The highest I saw was #8. One he was #12. The other he was not in the top 75

Bobbo - is that the value of win shares over an entire career, or once the drafted player hits their prime, or their rookie season, or the average win shares/year over their career?

It seems in almost every case, that those picks we're talking about are waaaaaaay below the expected value. Sure it could be variance, but it probably isn't all variance. Hard to know for sure, but I think given the Wolves personnel at the time of each draft and the projected value each draft year, Kahn has made poor decisions and run bad (although, keep in mind he ran very hot on the Rubio pick overall - he was projected to possibly not even come over to the NBA while on a Wolves contract when he was picked), which has resulted in essentially a disaster for the last few years of draft picks. But the fact that all the other picks didn't even pan out just a little bit has been crippling.

Ok, I can buy most of this. I don't agree with 3) being relevant but I think you're right, I'm probably confusing my general disdain for Flynn as a player with a position-specific critique.

Still don't understand how Flynn and Rubio could've been paired together but I'm hardly an NBA-level talent evaluator.

The idea of playing Rubio and Flynn together was/is stupid, drafting Rubio and a 2nd PG isn't that bad IMO. Like Willie said you knew Rubio wasn't coming over at least 2 years. If Flynn turns out to be a stud you can keep him and trade the rights to Rubio, if he busts out you can dump him when Rubio comes over.

I agree that the reason Kahn thought Flynn was a good pick was that the Twolves really needed a good pg anyway, and Rubio wouldn't come over right away - he thought Flynn would have a lot of value.

The problem was that Flynn did go too early there and was one of only a couple of complete busts in the lottery that year. Yeah, that's variance, but I dno, he also didn't seem to have much upside or anything either at the time.

Kind of like how Johnson was, worst case scenario, supposedly going to be a replacement level player. He's just awful - he's not NBA level talent and his ceiling wasn't even supposed to be that high. If you're not getting potential, you really need to hit on more picks - like the Spurs (who have probably run well in some ways but also just seem good at picking talent).

Good analysis.

This is hard not to do. Probably my least favorite TWolf ever. Gawd i hated Flynn.

Trading him for a 1st was nice tho
yep. Although we played Rubio and Ridnour together all last year out of necessity.

Although if Rubio had turned out to be a bust (which looked really, really likely) we would have been in huuuuuuge trouble.

Also, Kahn got unlucky in that the Blazers screwed us in the Martell Webster deal by not disclosing his injury.

Cleveland called the Wolves shopping Varejao. The Wolves want to see what happens once Rubio has played for a little while before making any deals.

http://www.1500espn.com/sportswire/T..._Varejao121412

My take: The Wolves have said they want to see how DWont does once Rubio returns. He is likely part of what CLE is asking for. I'm guessing either Luke or JJ would be part of the deal, but we'd be better off if they take Roy instead (doubt they'd go for that). Kahn clings to the false hope that DWont will be a superstar - last summer he got rid of all the other crap that Adelman told him to get rid of, but refused to get rid of DWont. He thinks once Rubio returns, that will magically make DW a star or something.

If the deal was presented as Varejao for DWont + Luke or JJ and we passed on that, we ****ed up big imo. Hopefully that stays on the table and DW's trade value doesnt get flushed down the toilet before they trade Varejao to someone else.

Varejao PEK & Love would be an amazing 4/5 rotation. V can play well at 4 or 5. Any two of those three can play with each other. I prefer a deal like this than trading for Gasol because of Gasol's ridiculous contract. Plus I think we'd do this without trading away PEK.

You think the Cavs are gonna part with AV for Dwill+one of our point guards? I'm not saying you're wrong because I haven't heard anything. I'm just shocked they'd take that little for him. Easiest trade ever if they offered it.

I would guess they are going to want either Pek/draft picks.

The NO announcers just said Roy was a week or two away from coming back?

I think he did his first basketball work yesterday and a few days ago they were hoping he'd be back before the end of the year, so yeah, sounds about right...

No way do they just want Dwill + JJ or something like that - that's a snap trade. They almost surely either want picks or Pek. I admittedly don't know what picks the Wolves have to dangle but Varejao is maybe 50 times as good as Dwill.

They are moving the ball so so well right now, its fun to watch

And Howard out with a hyperextended knee...

LMAO dude throws JJ out of the way and then gets rewarded with an and-one opportunity. What a joke.

AK47 SNAPPING OFF!

****, why do coaches not empty the bench up 14 <2 minutes left?

Looks like KLove just hurt same hand he broke while playing in garbage time.

Way to keep Love+AK in the game when you have 100% equity in the game.

Love's hand

so? doesn't change the fact that shooting 36% on 17 attempts/game and 20% on 5 three point attempts/game is chucking, if his hand is still affecting his shot that much he shouldn't be playing like it's fine.

Bolding "he broke his hand" scared the **** out of me dude

So Vazquez and Rivers pretty much have the games of their lives and we win by double digits. Yeah, this team can PLAY.

edit: Dallas and GSW losing very winnable games is nice as well.