Archives For Zach Harper

Kevin Love is out 8-to-10 weeks with hand surgery

Zach Harper —  January 9, 2013 — 3 Comments

LoveMonster

Welp, here’s the news with Kevin Love that we already know.

The Minnesota Timberwolves today announced that after an examination by Dr. Andy Weiland, a hand specialist at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, forward Kevin Love will require surgery to repair the third and fourth metacarpal in his right hand. He injured his hand during the third quarter of the Jan. 3 game at Denver.

Details of the surgery expected to be announced tomorrow. Love is expected to be sidelined for 8-10 weeks.

So now what? The Wolves will fight; we know that about them. This is arguably the most talented roster from top to bottom this franchise has ever seen. I don’t know if that says more about this roster or it says more about this franchise, but it would be a pretty good argument to have if you said this is 1 through 15 the best Minnesota has seen.  Continue Reading…

In 2012-13 Season, Injuries, Kevin Love
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Ricky Rubio’s assists against the Atlanta Hawks

Zach Harper —  January 9, 2013 — 2 Comments

Let’s break them down, kids.

  1. It’s pretty incredible how Ricky sets guys up with the simplest of passes. Derrick Williams has been pretty great about setting his feet over the past 15-20 games and really looks like a good spot-up shooter out there with Rubio. Rubio mentioned after the game that he’s looking to make the extra pass if it’s there, and if not then he’s looking to take the shot himself. Right now, the extra pass is the way to go.
  2. This play got me so excited for a healthy Rubio teaming up with Andrei Kirilenko. Rubio often can beat his man baseline, dribble through the paint and find a cutter. AK is so good at cutting from the weak side that it opens up a lot of possibilities. The great thing about this play is Kirilenko does a slight fake to the baseline before cutting more toward the hoop. I had a great angle of it from the other side and DeShawn Stevenson was looking toward the side, just searching for movement that way from Kirilenko. That slight fake to the baseline moved Stevenson out of the way and opened up an easy lane for Kirilenko to receive the ball. It’s just brilliant basketball.
  3. Ricky and Derrick have tried this spin-off-the-high-post lob play like four or five times this season and Ricky has come up short on every pass, which is odd. This time, he made up for it right away by stealing the pass and finding Barea for a wide-open 3-pointer.
  4. The Wolves were 1-for-2 on lobs to Stiemsma that he tries to bank in with a tap tonight.
  5. I don’t see why you’d ever trap Ricky off the pick-and-roll. It’s not like taking away his jumper is a key to stopping them. You leave someone open and he’ll find it. Or he’ll start the ball movement for a hockey assist.
  6. I can’t believe Rubio actually got an assist for this pass. D Dub takes two dribbles before finishing and wasn’t exactly on the move when he caught the ball. But it makes up for this thievery in New Orleans last season.
  7. Making the extra pass is fun, kids.
  8. Derrick Williams is going to get a lot of this pick-and-pop chances with Rubio. His feet are set so he’s going to knock it down.
  9. This last pass wasn’t an assist, but good lord it was fun. He tried it once, threw it off of John Jenkins’ thigh, chased down the ball, and threw basically the same pass again. Pek didn’t finish the play but he got to the free throw line.
In 2012-13 Season, Highlights , , ,
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Ruminations about last night’s frustrations

Zach Harper —  January 4, 2013 — 8 Comments

Love Now

The man in the picture above is Corey Brewer. The man to his left and your right is Kevin Love.

Kevin Love is someone that people have opinions about and those opinions have been well discussed ever since Adrian Wojnarowski wrote a thing. With every poor game, the criticism ramps up and becomes suffocating within the conversation of what this team is, what they need to do, and what they do best. The weird thing to me in this entire ordeal about Kevin Love is I feel like I’ve been painted into a corner as a Kevin Love apologist. Well, actually I have become a Kevin Love apologist.

The main reason for this is I feel like I understand why he’s struggling so much. People want to claim it’s unhappiness with the team or a lack of effort or he doesn’t care or he’s pouting or he’s actually a spy sent from the Los Angeles Lakers to sabotage any chance of the team’s old city building themselves up into a contender (RUMOR: Troy Hudson was previous Lakers spy). But really, I think there are very reasonable explanations for why Love has struggled so much.  Continue Reading…

In 2012-13 Season, Kevin Love, Player Analysis
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Timberwolves 3-point shooting: Infinite Sorrow 2012 Audit

Zach Harper —  January 3, 2013 — 6 Comments

sad puppy

A few of the readers from the last 3-point shooting audit suggested that this should be an updated post every month. All of the numbers for this post are through the win over the Suns and don’t include last night’s debacle to the Utah Jazz.

At a certain point, the 3-point shooting has become laughable to me. Part of me is frustrated but part of me is Rene Russo in the movie Tin Cup as I watch Kevin Costner egotistically club golf ball after golf ball into the water hazard as he tries to prove through machismo and grit that he doesn’t have to layup on the par-5 18th hole at the U.S. Open. He’s good enough and strong enough to clear the water and get onto the green. Russo (his girlfriend/shrink) in this scene at one point just starts laughing and cheering him to keep at it, even if it means he sinks all of his golf balls into the water and he isn’t allowed to finish his one final shot at glory by being disqualified from the tournament.

The Wolves are such a historically bad 3-point shooting team right now that I’m now finding myself maniacally laughing whenever a long distance shot clangs off the iron. There are two teams in NBA history who have attempted more than 13 3-pointers per game while shooting under 30% from beyond the arc. One of those teams is the Charlotte Bobcats from last season. That’s right; the worst team in NBA history shot 29.5% from downtown while attempting 13.5 3-point shots per game. The other team? You’re currently rooting for them.

The Wolves take 19.5 3-pointers per game right now and are making just 29.3%. At a certain point, you start wondering if actual wolves could make a higher percentage of these shots or if the team could make some by accident when trying to throw alley-oop passes. The fact that they’re historically bad at this just floors me for some reason.

What I feel like is we’re watching one of those “coin pusher” machines you find in casinos.  Continue Reading…

In 2012-13 Season, Statistical Analysis , , , , , , , , , ,
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Jazz 106, Wolves 84: The air up there

Zach Harper —  January 3, 2013 — 6 Comments

Donde Esta el athletico

This game was crap.

Complain about officiating or the effort or the energy or whatever. Doesn’t really matter. The Wolves played like absolute crap in this game. It happens every once in a while in this league. You hit a road game, you don’t have anything to offer that night, and the home team blows you out. The Wolves have been on the winning side of this equation before and they’ve been on the losing side of this equation before.

Tonight was the losing side and the Jazz just absolutely outplayed them in nearly every way. There isn’t much analysis that can go into it. The team still can’t make 3-pointers. They shot 2-of-17 from the field. It was the eighth time in team history they’ve shot worse than 12% from 3-point range while taking at least 17 3-point attempts. They’re 1-7 in those games with the only win coming on opening night against the Kings this season. It’s not a recipe for success and at a certain point, you have to wonder if they should even take more than a few 3-pointers in a game anymore.

But we’ll get into the 3-point debacle of the season more in the next post.

I don’t really want to talk about the game directly because it was just a bad game. We can eviscerate the people involved with it, but I’ve never been one for overreacting to a small sample size of “evidence.” What I really want to talk about is the lack of athleticism within this team right now.  Continue Reading…

In 2012-13 Season, Game Analysis , , , , , ,
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Finding love in a hopeless place

Zach Harper —  January 1, 2013 — Leave a comment

BrandonRoy

I hadn’t posted on the Brandon Roy news from earlier this past week because I didn’t really know what to say about it.

He’s looking for alternative methods to keep his comeback going. He was looking good practicing with the team and had a chance to play this past Saturday if his back-to-back practices went well. The problem was the back-to-back practices never happened. His knees didn’t allow it.

We can get into debating whether or not the signing was the correct move but I’m not sure what comes out of such a discussion. It was a low risk, medium reward type of deal. If he’s able to find a way to come back again (and I really hope he gets that chance), I think he’ll have a few moments in which he can provide a little spark to the team and the rest of his contributions will come from being a veteran voice in the locker room. If he can’t come back and has to retire again, I still think a name (even if he’s battered) choosing to sign with this team is just some nice credit for the organization to build around the league. It shows players want to come here, especially if Rubio comes back to full health (many players last season whispered about wanting to play with Rubio last season).

It can be looked at as another swing and a miss by Wolves’ management and it sort of is. But a move like this could have better long-term potential than many of us realize, and I refuse to believe you can have bad contracts on deals of two years or less. It’s a one year test to see if the guy fits and if not, it’s an expiring contract that can be moved at the trade deadline the next season. It’s financially responsible to give out those deals for guys you’re taking a risk on.

But the real point of this post isn’t about Brandon Roy right now.  Continue Reading…

In 2012-13 Season, Transactions , , , , ,
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Timberwolves sign Lazar Hayward

Zach Harper —  December 31, 2012 — 1 Comment

LazarHayward

With the final roster spot vacated because of Josh Howard’s torn ACL, the Timberwolves have settled on Lazar Hayward to provide some depth on the wing. After working out James Anderson, Joey Graham and Hayward this past week (according to the Star Tribune), the Wolves have settled on Hayward after James Anderson went to the Houston Rockets.

As many of you may remember, Hayward scored 160 points in 42 games as a rookie for the Wolves in the 2010-11 season before being dealt to the Oklahoma City Thunder last December. Personally, I would have preferred James Anderson because he does more offensively and would fill more of the shooting guard role the Wolves need when they decide to go small or even just to have backup for Shved at times. Anderson can also play the 3 in a pinch. However, Hayward will most likely provide a few minutes here and there to save Andrei Kirilenko’s legs and back and allow Adelman to not lose too much size at the backup small forward position, if he decides to keep Derrick Williams more at the 4 when he plays him.

The deal is non-guaranteed, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he was only here for a week or two as they try to acquire or sign someone else to fill in for the rest of the season.

So yeah… that’s pretty much all there is to this story.

Oh wait, there is one more thing.  Continue Reading…

In 2012-13 Season, Transactions , , ,
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Timberwolves 111, Suns 107: Getting big

Zach Harper —  December 30, 2012 — 5 Comments

LoveDunk

The makeup of what this team is good at and what they struggle to do still confounds me a bit.

Going into this season, I don’t think there were many people who assumed the Wolves would struggle offensively (22nd) and be a defensive juggernaut of sorts (6th). A big part of the reason is the outside shooting of the Timberwolves. This team is still under 30% on the season and no team in the history of the NBA has taken more 3-pointers per game while making under 30% of them. The Wolves just can’t shoot the 3-ball right now and probably won’t shoot it well until Kevin Love gets back into rhythm and Chase Budinger gets back onto the court.

Until that happens, the Wolves have to go inside and they have to be clever about the way they go inside. Just straight pounding the ball into the post with Love and Pek is too basic to be consistently effective against opposing defenses. The Wolves have an advantage in the frontcourt that most teams don’t seem to have around the league. Between Andrei Kirilenko, Nikola Pekovic and Kevin Love, there are few SF/PF/C hydras as crafty at scoring the basketball as the Wolves’ trio.  Continue Reading…

In 2012-13 Season, Game Analysis , , , , ,
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Kevin Love and his eye won’t play Sunday against the Knicks

Zach Harper —  December 22, 2012 — 5 Comments

 

LoveEyePatch

 

From the T’Wolves PR Twitter account, Kevin Love’s eye injury sustained against the Oklahoma City Thunder Thursday night will keep him out of Sunday’s game against the New York Knicks. He’s also not flying to New York with the team.

Here’s video of the eye injury when it happened with just under two minutes remaining in the game.

Russell Westbrook definitely gets him in the left eye (you can see it best from the above angle). After the game, he said he hadn’t had it checked out yet by the medical and training staff before he talked to reporters in the locker room but was planning on doing so. Looking at his eye after the game, it looked like that map of the infection in the movie Outbreak when they’re showing how the red/affected areas (the disease) on the map spreads after 48 hours then 72 hours then a couple of weeks. Love’s eye was headed toward that “couple of weeks” map for sure.

Either Dante Cunningham or Derrick Williams will start in his place. I’d prefer Williams with Andrei Kirilenko defending Carmelo Anthony, since the Knicks like to start out pretty small. All he really has to do is stay out on shooters to begin the game and rebound the ball. It would be a nice test for his defensive awareness.

In 2012-13 Season, Injuries, Kevin Love
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Alexey Shved highlights from the win over the Thunder

Zach Harper —  December 21, 2012 — 5 Comments

AlexeyShvedPose

Alexey Shved notched the first double-double of his career with 12 points, 12 assists, and he even grabbed seven rebounds too. He shot well from 3-point range and turned the ball over just one time. I’d say it was the best game of his short career, considering the match-ups he had throughout the night and the solid defense he played one game after getting annihilated by Dwyane Wade.

@AndrewQ_ on Twitter sent along this highlight video of Shved’s plays from the victory over the Thunder Thursday night.

The pass at the 50-second mark was definitely my favorite play of his from last night.

How do we feel about his performance, fellas?

In 2012-13 Season, Highlights
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