MinnesotaSportsScene.com

Credit Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor for recognizing who and who is not a problem on the win-challenged Minnesota NBA team. In a recent interview with StarTribune’s Kent Youngblood, Taylor defined who the team’s untouchables are, and how the team’s decision-making will be handled going forward.

Unlike a lot of owners, Taylor seems to be listening to the fans. He identified PF Kevin Garnett, SG Rashad McCants, PG Randy Foye and SF/PF Craig Smith as the team’s untouchables in trade talks. That means nearly everyone else is at risk to be traded … and they should be.

If the Wolves can turn their fortunes on the court around, owner Glen Taylor will deserve a free set of Powell furniture for recognizing that team president Kevin McHale is a big part of the problem.

Without going so far as to lay blame or disrespect McHale, Taylor, ever a gentleman, did say that McHale won’t be making decisions all on his own this off-season. McHale will now have to partner with Rob Babcock, Jim Stack and Fred Hoiberg, not to mention Taylor himself.

While time will tell how well any of these things will play out, at least Taylor seems to be recognizing the problems

If the Vikings miss out on RB Adrian Peterson or trading down to take a decent WR like Dwanye Bowe, a lot of Vikings fans will have to start looking into hair replacement solutions once they’re done pulling out all their own in frustration.

While many people are idolizing current RB Chester Taylor, his reputation is overblown; Taylor is a solid, but not a superstar, back, whereas Peterson has the potential to be a monster on the gridiron. It’s like saying, “We don’t need to draft Emmitt Smith because we already have Darrin Nelson.”

While there’s a lot of momentum behind pressuring the Vikings into moving up in the draft to attempt to get WR Calvin Johnson, but the cost would be prohibitive. It would be much better to move down a few spots, draft Bowe, and gain extra picks in the bargain.

Of course, only time will tell what strategy the Vikings will take this year, but considering how few free agents the team has signed, more than ever this draft will determine just how much of a turnaround the Vikings will be capable of this fall.

Other than winning over the Knicks last week, the Wolves have been on a determined losing streak, going so far as to bench PF Kevin Garnett for the rest of a 32-win season. If the Wolves can avoid winning their final game, that’ll deliver a 32-50 record on the year, and a decent shot at keeping their 2007 NBA Draft pick.

Since it’s been a bad season anyway, I’m encouraging the Wolves to go for broke and lose their final game. Don’t practice very hard, miss shots, stop taking the energy pills, play like there’s a tomorrow. Because winning at this point can only end the season on a sour note.

Here’s why.

At 32-49, the Wolves are currently in a three-way tie for the sixth-worst record in the NBA. That’s great, because it means at worst, the Wolves would draft eighth and thus keep their pick this year, the most talent-rich draft in the last decade. Heck, one of the teams they are tied with might even do Minnesota a favor and win, reducing the three-way tie a bit more and producing an even better pick for the Wolves.

Right now, the Wolves need to move as for toward the worst record as possible, to increase their lottery chances. Because really, the only way they’re going to get better any time this decade is to get a high pick in this talent-rich draft.

What Wolves fan wouldn’t want to see Kevin Durant or Greg Oden playing alongside Kevin Garnett? Sure, the Wolves would need a franchise-first bit of good fortune in the lottery to jump up to the top spot, or second spot, in the draft for that to happen. But even if they draft between six and eight, that means they’ll probably get one of the Florida Four. That’d still be nice.

But winning the final game? That would put the Wolves in a multi-way tie for ninth that could push their pick as far back as 11 or 12. Which means the pick would go to the Clippers and the Wolves would be shut out of the draft until the second round.

That would be the final insult to a terrible season.

So, Go Wolves! Lose that last game!

Loyal to a fault can be a vice at times.

That’s the lesson to draw from Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor’s commitment to Kevin McHale as the GM of the team. Even now, as we near an NBA draft lottery that is the richest in talent of any pro hoops draft in a decade with a good chance the team could lose its first-round pick to a terrible trade we were on the wrong side of, there’s really only one man primarily responsible for the way the Wolves have been mismanaged into hopelessness. Most of the current Wolves roster couldn’t even sell the world’s best diet pills, let alone sell season tickets.

No, it’s not former Coach Dwane Casey or current Coach Randy Wittman. It’s McHale. McHale is the one who was largely responsible for the Joe Smith negotiation blunder that led to the Wolves losing five of their past seven first-round picks. Then, as soon as we got out from under that, McHale threw two more future picks away on trades that have only made the Wolves worse.

If the Wolves miss out on picking up some top-notch talent, the only real option left for the franchise is to trade Garnett to Chicago for Tyrus Thomas, a couple other players and at least one of their two first-round picks in this year’s draft, and start over from scratch.

Although radical, the Wolves would gain a much-needed commodity: hope. The team has some building blocks that would be more intriguing if it were in true rebuilding mode. Randy Foye, Rashad McCants and Craig Smith are solid and potentially great. Mark Blount is serviceable at center. Add in Tyrus Thomas, maybe Lual Deng and at least one first-round draft pick from the Bulls in exchange for Garnett and you’d have a nice, tidy talent base to build on, and some hope for the future. That’s lacking, lately, K-Mac.

But here’s the key: someone not named McHale needs to be running the team when a Chicago trade like this is made, or we’ll end up being the ones giving away first-round picks.

I’m not saying Kevin McHale’s a bad guy. But a bad GM? That’s another story.

At this point in the season, the worst news the Timberwolves could receive is that they’ve won again. That’s because, with the playoffs completely out of the picture, the best thing for the Wolves to do would be to tank it the rest of the way.

That might be hard to swallow for KG. The man’s a competitor and a winner through and through. But for the good of the club, he needs to help the club lose the rest of their games, not win. Why? It’s simple.

The Timberwolves have their draft pick this year protected as long as they finish with one of the bottom 10 records in the NBA. With only about 10-12 games to go, they need to be sure to lose every last game the rest of the way to get below 10 in the draft.

Otherwise, they’ll lose out on a first-round pick in the most talent-rich draft in the NBA in several years, and they’ll lose out next year no matter what. That means if the Wolves screw up by winning too much, not only will they miss the playoffs, but they’ll also miss their best chance to get better anytime soon.

You see, that “basketball immortality” mind, Kevin McHale, has not only managed to bring terrible talent to the T-Wolves in trades, but given away two first-round draft picks in the process. We still have a chance to get a pick this year, but we need to be one of the 10 worst teams in the NBA to keep it. And this is the year to keep it, since the draft is so talent-rich.

You can bet your grandfather clock that All Wail McHale will find a way to screw it up, like motivating the team to win five of their last 10 and winning their way out of a pick. Or that he’ll find a way to screw up the pick if we keep it.

But the bottom line is this: McHale’s the reason we have so many bad contracts and so many guards tied up for so long. And he’s why we don’t have first-round draft picks for two of the next three years. And was part of the reason we didn’t have first-rounders in five of the last seven years.

McHale’s done everything humanly possible to ruin the T-Wolves. McHale needs to go.

But the least he could do on his way out is give the team one bit of good advice: lose the rest of the way and give yourselves a chance to draft someone awesome. Otherwise, we won’t be seeing a hot young draft pick worthy of playing on the same court as Kevin Garnett until 2009. And that’s barring another “trade” that sends KG away from the Wolves along with even more picks.

Can this team get any worse? Sure can… as long as McHale’s in charge of this navy…

Recruited throughout the Big 10, Champlin Park linebacker Sam Maresh announced he will be a Gopher recently; Maresh adds another recruiting victory to the resume of new football coach Tim Brewster, who is committed to turning around the Gophers gridiron program from a low-tier bowl team with a mirage schedule into a serious contender. Recruits like Maresh will help Brewster get there.

Since taking over the program, Brewster has secured some nice commits but Maresh is probably the top kid he’s recruited to Minnesota personally, not counting kids who aren’t his sons. But Maresh is a good start at recruiting kids whose names aren’t Brewster. If he can build on momentum like this, he’ll soon need a ladder rack to help store all the bodies he’s adding to the program.

It’s great news for the Gophers gridiron program, which was in danger of being overshadowed in recent weeks by Gophers men’s basketball; the hiring of Tubby Smith to replace the ousted Dan Monson was a much bigger hire. Recruiting Maresh puts the spotlight back on the football program.