MinnesotaSportsScene.com

The Minnesota Timberwolves made a move that pushes them halfway to healthy this past week. Specifically, they fired Randy Wittman as their head coach. Wittman, who doesn’t even win a third of his career games, has been a disaster as the ringmaster in the Timberwolves circus, and after earning only four wins in the first twenty or so games this season, he’s finally gone.

That’s a start.

The next move they made might just make me take up scrapbooking for the Wolves: Good ol’ Glen Taylor gave Kevin McHale the head coaching job for the moment, but more importantly, made him give up his duties as team VP and all-around shot-caller in the front office.

McHale now has to prove it’s the coach, not the players he’s assembled, that has been the problem. I suppose, depending on how the season goes, Taylor could still hire a competent coach and put McHale back in charge after the season is over; but I hope not.

If McHale can turn this team around and make the playoffs, maybe he should be the coach going forward. If he can’t - and so far, he hasn’t won a game since taking over the reins from Wittman - then perhaps the nightmare that has been the Kevin McHale era of Wolves management is finally over, and owner Glen Taylor will turn the page and hire both a new GM, as well as a new head coach.

With plenty of draft picks lined up over the next couple-three years, as well as a half-decent talent core built around Al Jefferson and Mike Miller, maybe a new regime can come over here and make the Wolves, if not exactly champions, at least a semblance of a competently-run NBA team.

We now have reason to hope; we’ll have to wait and see if the end of the McHale era ever comes and really ushers in a genuine reason for hope.

Timberwolves rookie forward Kevin Love has a lot of learning to do, and if coach Randy Wittman has his way, it will be defense that Love, and the rest of the team, learn first. In year two of the post-Garnett era, Wittman is again preaching defense to a team still looking to find an identity the way real estate lovers are looking for Outer Banks rentals.

Part of the identity issue was solved last season when Al Jefferson, the cornerstone of the trade that sent Garnett to Boston, asserted himself as the team’s top big man, posting better numbers than Garnett most of the season, despite being on a losing team while Garnett rode the Celtics to his first NBA Title.

Love will be part of the mix this year, but whether he plays starter minutes alongside Jefferson or comes in off the bench alongside Jason Collins remains to be seen.

Although the Minnesota Timberwolves have been anything but as reliable as car insurance this season, I have to give them credit for not losing out, even when it endangered their lottery position. The team won two of its final four games when it might have been easier to lose them.

The final game of the season against Milwaukee was a fine example. They led early, let it slip away, then fought back to tie it up at the end, take it into overtime, and ultimately win the game. That’s not a team that’s giving up in order to improve their draft position, and they still wound up positioned in third-worst in the NBA, so they didn’t hurt their lottery chances by winning two of the final four, either.

With Al Jefferson now established as the franchise player, the Wolves go into the off-season with at chance at a Top 5 pick, and, I believe, perhaps another first-round pick in the coming draft. The team has a very talented young core group of players, though most must keep improving to make the Wolves a playoff-contending team, and with more young talent headed the Wolves’ way, they can let some of the undertalented older players go.

Along with Jefferson, I believe the Wolves will want to keep Ryan Gomes around. Keeping Sebastian Telfair, however, will ride on who the Wolves draft in July. Telfair’s a solid backup PG, and filled in nicely the first half of the season while Foye was out. But if the Wolves land a draft spot to pick the Memphis point guard who’s coming out, Telfair, a restricted free agent, will likely be allowed to sign elsewhere.

There’s plenty of talent on this team, and plenty of draft picks in this future. A 22-win season is a downer, but the future is bright. What a contrast to last season, when they won more games, still missed the playoffs, Garnett’s contract prevented them from acquiring free agent help, and they faced the propsect of losing two of their next three draft picks.

As a makeover team, rebuilding from the ground up, I’d have to say this year’s Wolves, while a work in progress, as much better to invest some hope for the future into, than last year’s edition.

Minnesota Timberwolves big man Al Jefferson, who pivots between power forward and center depending on the lineup coach Wittman sends out on the floor each night, admitted to local media sources this week that his conditioning isn’t where it needs to be for the Wolves to make the post-season and perform well in the playoffs.

This is likely a result of the trade from Boston to Minnesota; in Boston, as a younger player, Jefferson was not used quite as much as the Wolves have played him this year as a full-time starter. Jefferson’s numbers have been stellar most of the season, but in the Wolves’ six-game losing skid at the end of the season with four games to go, Jefferson’s numbers have suffered as well.

“I feel like if we were to start the playoffs in two weeks, I’d have a mental breakdown,” Jefferson told the PioneerPress earlier this week. “That’s why I’ve got to do a better job this summer of getting my body in great shape, because I plan on being in the playoffs real soon. I really feel like if we started the playoffs this year, my body would break down and I would have a mental breakdown, too.”

It’s a surprising bit of honest, but not uncommon among young players adjusting to the demanding NBA schedule; even Kevin Garnett went through it. In high school, a regular season schedule is usually about 20 games long, thought that varies from state to state. That rises to an average of about 30 games in college. But in the NBA, the schedule is 82 games long, nearly three times as many games as are played in college in the regular season.

The crowds have been sparse in this 19-win season at Target Center, but the Wolves have a young, talented roster that’s only going to improve after this summer’s draft; soon they’ll need a Bose home theater system scaled up to arena-size in order to capture the roar of the crowds, once this team hits its stride in another season or two.

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.

If I had to describe Al Jefferson and limit myself to three basic assessments of his talents, it would go something like this:

Al Jefferson is younger than Kevin Garnett.

Al Jefferson is cheaper than Kevin Garnett.

And Al Jefferson is playing better this year than Kevin Garnett.

It’s clear now why the Wolves valued Jefferson so highly and insisted he must be included in any trade involving Kevin Garnett leaving the Wolves to play in Boston; right now, it’s looking like the Celtics are the ones who missed out on stocking their franchise with the better player, not only in the future, but this season as well.

This season, Garnett is averaging 19.2 ppg and 9.9 rpg, not quite a double-double, on a talent-laden team with the best record in the NBA. This season, Jefferson is averaging 20.9 ppg and 11.9 rpg, a solid double-double, on a team that hasn’t won much, but is potentially just as talent-laden, but far younger and less experienced. The Wolves still have the worst record in the NBA.

But the tide may be turning a bit in Minnesota. While Garnett is living a veteran’s dream of being on a top team, contending for a championship, the Wolves seem to have reached bottom, figured out the problems and may be even showing signs of reversing course. The key to that reversal is Jefferson, who has played a key role in the team’s last four games, in which the Wolves have gone 3-1.

The only team they’ve lost to in that stretch? Garnett’s Celtics.

I’m not saying the Wolves are ready for prime time and should start installing bathroom vanities in every players’ locker, but it is a sign of evidence for hope. On Sunday, Jefferson reached a new career high for the second time this month, scoring 40 points while grabbed down 19 rebounds in a three-point, final-period win over the New Jersey Nets.

Add to that some key young players helping out at critical times, such as Ryan Gomes and Corey Brewer, and you have somethi And with last year’s top Wolves rookie, Randy Foye, set to return to action soon - possibly before but more likely after the All-Star Break, it’s possible things could improve yet this season for the worst team in the NBA.

After a half season of near futility, the Minnesota Timberwolves have put together back-to-back wins for the first time in the franchise’s post-Garnett era. Wednesday night’s 117-110 win over Phoenix marks the second time this season the Wolves have beaten down the Suns, who are the Western Conference’s elite team this season.

Al Jefferson hit a career-high 39 points on the night, coupled with 15 boards for a standout performance, a feat that surpasses his 32-point, 20-rebound performance against the Suns back on December 8, when the Wolves earned their third victory of the season and their first win over the Suns.

The victory nearly set off Target Center’s alarm system monitoring, due to wins being so rare this season for the Wolves; the machinery considered the victory an anomaly. Joking aside, the win moves the Wolves to 7-34 at the official halfway point of the season (41 games).

The previous victory was a Monday afternoon, 109-108 road win against Golden State on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. That followed another close road game against Denver, although that one was a loss.

The Wolves have the makings of a rare quality in Minnesota this season: momentum. If they can build on this spark of success going into the All-Star Break, the second half of the season might hold more interest for Wolves fans, beyond how each win affects the Wolves’ lottery chances.

Wins have been rare for the new-look Minnesota Timberwolves this season, and going into Saturday’s game against Phoenix, few folks were expecting the third win of the season to come at that moment. Yet that is exactly what has happened.

C/PF Al Jefferson played up to his “young KG” billing, scoring 32 points and racking up an amazing 20 rebounds on the night while matched up primarily against Amare Stoudamire; Garnett himself rarely played better. Jefferson matched a career high on points and set a season-high on rebounds en route to the win.

With assistant Jerry Sichting handling the business performance management in the absence of head coach Randy Wittman, still recovering from back surgery, Sichting captained the Wolves to their first win under his direction and an NBA-low third win on the season so far.

One more bit of good news is that the Wolves could get Randy Foye back into their lineup, possibly as soon as Monday; Foye is the team’s preferred starting point guard, but he has missed the entire regular season so far rehabbing a pre-season injury. His role has been filled primarily by Sebastian Telfair with occassional help from Marko Jaric.

It’s not just a rebuilding job, it’s a fire sale!

The Minnesota Timberwolves traded aging malcontents C Mark Blount and SG Ricky Davis to the Miami Heat on Thursday in exchange for Michael Doleac, Antoine Walker, Wayne Simien, a conditional first-round draft pick… oh, and a dozen organic eggs! That was the clincher for me, right there.

I can’t really blame GM Kevin McHale for wanting to bust up the franchise and start from scratch. Certainly it will prove to be less frustrating than the direction the Wolves have been headed the last couple years, which was nowhere. While Kevin Garnett was a great “face of the franchise for a dozen years, the team was missing the playoffs by a wide margin anyway. As coach Don Nelson once said when busting up the Dallas Mavericks of the 1990s, “I can lose with this bunch of guys as well as the old bunch.”

Let’s hope this “bust up and rebuild” job goes as well for the Wolves as that one did for the Mavericks, who are now one of the more powerful teams in the Western Conference. Certainly, there are some great building blocks.

One is PF Al Jefferson, the player who made sending Garnett to Boston possible through his inclusion in the deal. He plays like a young Garnett, and while he might not peak quite at that level, it’s clear he’s good. And young.

Draft pick Corey Brewer is also a great prospect and brings a reputation for steel defense with him; that’s a quality that could be accused of almost none of the former Timberwolves now departed for other teams. And again, he’s young.

Randy Foye, last year’s draft pick, looks like a keeper, too.

Other guys look promising but I’d need to see more of them to get an idea of whether they’ll pan out. Folks like Gerald Green and Ryan Gomes do look promising, though, and that’s more than can be said of most of last year’s Timberwolves squad.

Another nice bit: McHale’s slowly collecting a nice batch of first-round draft picks for the future. If some of these guys don’t work out, don’t worry, just keep drafting. It’s an approach that’s a couple of years overdue. If we’d adopted it last year, we’d have Tyrus Thomas and some other nice Bulls on our squad, rather than Jefferson and company.

Still, it’s nice to see the team admitting it’s time to rebuild. Maybe this time, they’ll build it right.

To judge by the local media, in the wake of the unexpected death by truck-train collision of former Timberwolf Eddie Griffin, the Timberwolves have gone lights-out. There hasn’t been a mention of a free agent signing (or attempted signing), a trade either successful or falling through (even though we all know that in the wake of the KG trade, Juwan Howard wants out). Heck, as far as anyone knows, no one on the Wolves roster or staff has even bought a cookware set for their wives!

But this is a time when a lot of NBA teams go dark; with less than a month to go before the Wolves open training camp, they’d rather sit back and let the headlines continue to focus on the ups and downs of the Gophers, Vikings and Twins. Let the headlines turn back to the Timberwolves when, perhaps, there might be something more exciting to write about, like all of Boston’s rejects pulling together to go undefeated in the preseason.

Or something like that. Something to make the fans forget that KG, like Elvis, has finally left the building.

Let’s admit it. Prior to the Garnett-to-Boston trade, the Minnesota Timberwolves were one of the older teams in the NBA. As in, not young. Some veteran rosters can be a good thing, but after three seasons out of the playoffs, the Wolves simply were not that kind of team. If owner Glen Taylor hadn’t broken the group up, they soon would have been reaching their disposable underwear years, which isn’t a bad thing in general, but isn’t a way to win an NBA championship, either.

Now sure, without KG, the Wolves might not get better right away, but they are certainly younger and have several players who could become quite good in a couple more seasons, as well as a worthy replacement at PF for Garnett. Yes, Al Jefferson isn’t KG yet, but he certainly shows signs that he could develop into an elite player.

The Boston trade isn’t the “missing piece” for the Wolves. It’s an admission that it’s time to rebuild for the future. The Chicago Bulls faced that a couple years back and look where they are now; one Eastern Conference finals series away from the NBA Finals.

Perhaps the Wolves can reach that point by 2010; they only reached it once after 12 years with KG and no other superstar on their roster.

Minnesota Timberwolves forward/center Mark Madsen is recovering from shoulder surgery, according to a report on TwinCities.com.

Madsen, a tough, physical player who has done well the past five years in a reserve role, is expected to be out for about three months. That means Madsen will miss all of Coach Randy Wittman’s training camp and perhaps even the first couple weeks of the season.

The injury that caused the surgery was a JetSki incident last Monday that caused damage to Madsen’s right shoulder and pectoral muscle. The career backup to Kevin Garnett once shared bunk beds with KG during a preseason camp, but will now have to become familiar with playing behind Al Jefferson instead of KG.

“This was an unfortunate accident that I have put behind me,” Madsen said in a statement. “My focus now is to concentrate on my rehabilitation with the goal of returning to the basketball court as quickly as possible.”