Minnesota Timberwolves 2009/2010

 Dernier message 
 posté par Anonyme : 
State of the Cap: Minnesota Timberwolves
Sun, 05/30/2010 - 5:35pm

By Mike Misek

2010/11 Minnesota Timberwolves Payroll: $35.1 million
2010/11 NBA Salary Cap: $56.1 million
Roughly: $21 million under cap

Variables:
Darko Milicic - Unrestricted Free Agent
Damien Wilkins - Unrestricted Free Agent
Oleksiy Pecherov - Unrestricted Free Agent
Sasha Pavlovic - Unrestricted Free Agent
Brian Cardinal - Unrestricted Free Agent
Ryan Gomes - Non-guaranteed Team Option for $4.2 million -$1 million buyout
Greg Stiesma - Non-guaranteed Team Option for $762K
Nathan Jawai - Qualifying Offer for $1.0 million
Ricky Rubio - Rights Retained, $2.8 million cap hold
Draft Picks - 4th, 16th pick, 23rd pick, 45th pick, and 56th pick.




The Good: Nobody has assembled a better Euroleague roster than David Kahn. Ricky Rubio just capped off a tremendous season where he helped lead FC Barcalona to the Euroleague title. Nikola Pekovic had a strong campaign for Panathinaikos. Henk Norel continued to show promise with DKV Joventut, and Darko Milicic flashed enough in his stay so that he should be able to find a deal despite a tightening European market. If only Minnesota was in Europe and not the NBA, they might have been able to make the Final Four.

The Bad: Minnesota is one of the more dysfunctional franchises around. They went from the incompetence of Kevin McHale to the power hungry David Kahn. It has not taken long for Kahn to get rid of many of the players he inherited from McHale, but it is hard to see how any move that has been made will have any substantial long term meaning. The team had a stock pile of draft picks last summer, and yet only Jonny Flynn and Wayne Ellington played for the team last year. Flynn showed himself to be an NBA level point guard, but no better than a number of point guards taken after him and not good enough to justify alienating Ricky Rubio. Ellington was a streaky shooter, and his value to an NBA team is almost entirely based on his ability to shoot from the perimeter. If he does so the way he did in January and February, he can have a long career. If he shoots the way he did the rest of the season, he might not be long for the league. The organization appears to be aware of the fact that Kevin Love and Al Jefferson cannot play together. Only the completely apathetic Warriors were worse defensively than Minnesota. It is a difficult task to be more incompetent on that end than Toronto and New York, but the Wolves were able to do it. Clearly one of their big but not tall men has to go, though deciding to build around Love instead of Jefferson, as has been reported, would be foolish. Love is smaller, struggles with length, has conditioning issues, has struggled to adjust to the triangle offense Rambis wants to run, and just flat out is not as good as Jefferson. It will be interesting to see what kind of package Minnesota could get in return for Jefferson. Teams who are competitive, but not close, like Oklahoma City and Chicago could become much more interesting if they were to get a post scorer like Jefferson. Both teams have the worker bee big men who can protect the hoop and block shots, but neither have a reliable back-to-the-basket scorer. Big Al's recent DUI also muddies the trade waters.

The Future: The Timberwolves appear to be on their way to being well under the salary cap heading into the summer. They are still showing interest in Darko Milicic but it's unlikely they would allow him to keep a $11.3 million cap hold. If they simply choose to decline options on Stiesma and Jawai while keeping Ryan Gomes, the team will be $11.7 million under the cap. The problem for Minnesota is that their climate and struggles make it nearly impossible for them to attract free agents without severely overpaying, making the draft even more important for them than for other teams.

Minnesota should figure to be one of the major players on draft night. They have three first round picks, and one in the top five (4th, 16th, 23rd). Corey Brewer went from bust to respectable last season, but selecting Wes Johnson with the 4th pick would give them an instant upgrade at the 3 position and will probably be the best player available to them at 4 if they aren;t able to move up to get the guy they really covet (Evan Turner) at 2. It will be a revealing night for Timberwolves fans to see what Kahn thinks of his core and the franchise’s direction going forward. DeMarcus Cousins could be an option with the fourth pick. But the problem is he would further compound a logjam of similar bigmen (Love and Jefferson).



Votre commentaire ou votre réponse :

Voici à quoi doit ressembler une simple quote :
<blockquote class="citation"><cite><strong>Untel</strong> a dit :</cite> Son message</blockquote>
Vous pouvez mettre votre message directemment à la suite.
On doit donc toujours avoir une seule balise "<blockquote class="citation">" et elle doit forcément être refermée par "</blockquote>" avant le début de votre message.
Tout ce qui se trouve entre le premier <cite><strong>Untel</strong> a dit :</cite> et le message que vous souhaitez conserver peut être effacé.

Joindre une photo

Depuis votre ordinateur
  (cliquez sur parcourir pour choisir une photo sur votre ordinateur, inférieure à 500ko)
Ou depuis un serveur internet
exemple : http://imgur.com/
Auteur : Vous allez poster en Anonyme, si tel n'est pas votre souhait,
merci de vous inscrire !


Afin de lutter contre le SPAM, vous devez répondre à cette question pour pouvoir poster




Utilisation des smileys... Pour placer un smiley dans votre message, il vous suffit d'introduire l'un des raccourcis clavier ci-dessous dans votre texte. Mettez-en partout !
Smiley
Raccourci clavier :) :( ;) :D :)) :o) Cliquez ici pour voir les raccourcis correspondants...

Un petit cour d'HTML...
  • Texte en gras : écrire le texte entre les balises <b> et </b>.
    <b>gras</b> donne gras
  • Texte en Italique : écrire le texte entre les balises <i> et </i>
    <i>italique</i> donne italique
  • Texte souligné : écrire le texte entre les balises <u> et </u>
    <u>souligné</u> donne souligné
  • Lien Internet : écrire le texte entre les balises <a href="adresse_internet"> et </a>.
    <a href="http://www.stopweb.com">stopweb</a> donne stopweb
  • Insérer une image : mettre l'adresse comme ceci <img src="adresse_internet">.
    <img src="http://www.stopweb.com/photos/334641"> donne
  • Vous pouvez, bien sûr, combiner toutes ces commandes entre elles :
    <a href="http://www.stopweb.com"><b><i><u>stopweb</u></i></b></a> donne stopweb

  • Texte en couleur : écrire le texte entre les balises <font color=couleur> et </font>
    <font color=darkred>texte en rouge foncé</font> donne texte en rouge foncé