The Lost Weekend

Doug Collins is right.

We are the worst team in the league.

Seattle may still give us a run for the money, but after watching the club this weekend, we "win" by a sprained ankle. Randy Wittman, mouth agape like someone just killed his dog in the front yard, must be checking the karma scope for what he did in his past lives to deserve two "set-up to fail" NBA head coaching opportunities. Membership in Taylor.org does come with some responsibilities though; he's been around here long enough to understand that. Every group needs the Fall Guy...Randy's time is now; his tenure may run for at least this year and the next.

The optimists in the room might offer that there are plenty of 0-fer teams still in the standings. Taking a look at the statistics, teams like Washington are solidly ahead of us in giving up points per game. I ask anyone, who would you pick to win in a Wizards-Wolves match up? How about the Heat or Warriors? Only Seattle makes you stop and think about it for a second.

The fallacy of the whole youth argument is that the players we received in the KG trade weren't rookies, each of them have enough years in the league for evaluators to know whether or not they have an upside. Their chronological age may be young, but most of the folks are in their make or break 3 or 4th year. In the case of Jefferson and Telfair, this is their 4th year in the league. Green and Gomes in their 3rd. Given that any team--except Boston, it seems--generally needs time to mesh in cases of extreme roster upheaval, these first five or so games provide a ready made excuse for those who bought into the starting over argument. But players should be figuring it out by this time in their professional career. It's the amount of games--not chronological age. This is where the hype of Taylor.org does deserve credit for lowering the bar. Youth and roster upheaval--what can we possibly expect? Keep those dollars flowing folks...after a couple of years, we'll maybe get back to playoff contention. It's up to us as fans to expect--and demand--more, namely:

1) Defense. It's sexy to have a shot blocker for those 4 or 5 plays a game where the ball gets swatted away. Theo's fighting the good fight, but what about the other 40 or so other plays that get run? Jim Pete correctly pointed out last night that the perimeter defense of the Wolves has been traditionally bad. This is not a particular coaching problem, it permeates the entire organization. How about a little smash-mouth at the defensive end of the court fellas? It's also clear that if anyone was planning to have AJ play the 5 for more than 10 minutes a game, they should have their head examined--since firings seem to be few and far between at Taylor.org. I enjoy watching Jefferson on the low block and rebound, but his defense is suspect, especially at center.

2) Sharing the ball. If it's true--as Britt Robson offers--that we lack talent, then finding the way to share the ball is paramount. We're averaging just under 20 assists a game; teams such as the Jazz and Celtics are around 28 and 26 respectively. We need to move the ball and establish the pecking order, to find match ups we actually can exploit. Inside out with AJ as first option. Like his defense, he will have to be better at passing the ball out of double teams, but there's the All-Star challenge for the young man. And, not much pick and roll so far. Sharing the ball is an aspect of chemistry and BBall IQ, so one would expect if they really do want to win, instead of reverting to "me-first on the playground" ball this should be hammered home for the entire season. Anyone who wants to stay here should make that commitment.

Those two dynamics are indications of effort--not talent. If you want to threaten people with watching what could be a historical amount of losses for one season (Doug Collins was on that team, BTW), then instead of merely selling chemistry and loyalty in your marketing campaign, how about actually displaying it?