Just one night after losing to the Bulls on the road, the Wolves won on Wednesday night at home … against the same Bulls team. In a rare case of back-to-back games against an Eastern Conference opponent, the Wolves started sluggishly but finished strong to overwhelm Chicago, 83-67.
The game, which would have looked sharp on an LCD HDTV hanging on a tv wall mount, looked ugly but gave Minnesota their ninth win of the season, and their fourth win in the last six games. The Wolves have not had a cupcake schedule in that stretch, which includes wins over the Phoenix Suns, Golden State Warriors and New Jersey Nets, as well as the Bulls. The two losses in that stretch include only Boston and the Chicago road game.
Al Jefferson had 26 points and 20 rebounds while Ryan Gomes had 25 points and 10 boards; both players were keys to the deal that sent Kevin Garnett to Boston last summer. Jefferson signed a contract extension before the season, but Gomes is looking like one of the expiring contract players the Wolves might want to keep around beyond this season.
With the win, the Wolves move to 9-36, which still gives Minnesota the worst record in the NBA by a half-game. Miami is just ahead of them at 9-35, while Seattle is a full game ahead at 10-35. Minnesota is almost certain to win at least one more game the rest of the way, which means they’ll avoid tying the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers’ record for worst NBA season ever, 9-73.
Of course, the problem is that the more the Wolves win, the worse their lottery chances in the off-season and with 36 losses already this year, a post-season berth is a very dim hope at best. There are only 37 games left in the Wolves season. Even if they kept up their current pace the rest of the way, winning two of every three games, the best record they could hope for is 33-49, which is about what the Wolves achieved the last two seasons.
Translation: it’s a bit late for the Wolves to get really hot the rest of the way, since they’d miss the post-season anyway, and push themselves to the middle of the lottery rather than near the top anyway. For the sake of the franchise, I’m hoping that we don’t see the Wolves go on a 24-13 tear the rest of the way. As nice as that might seem, it would be better if they Wolves played below-.500 ball, kept their lottery chances high, and waited until next season to really set the NBA on fire.
I had a chance recently to try out the Pure Water 2Go water bottles, and I was surprised by what I found. It’s been a long time since I’ve regularly consumed unfiltered tap water; usually I buy carbonated bottled water by H2Oh!, largely because it contains no sweetners or sugar, yet has that carbonated fizz that makes it fun to drink. It also tastes a lot cleaner than regular tap water in the Twin Cities, MN, where I live.


