[外電] State of the Cap: Minnesota Timberwolves
2010/11 Minnesota Timberwolves Payroll: $35.1 million
2010/11 NBA Salary Cap: $56.1 million
Roughly: $21 million under cap
Variables:
Darko Milicic - Unrestricted Free Agent
Damien Wilkins - Unrestricted Free Agent
Oleksiy Pecherov - Unrestricted Free Agent
Sasha Pavlovic - Unrestricted Free Agent
Brian Cardinal - Unrestricted Free Agent
Ryan Gomes - Non-guaranteed Team Option for $4.2 million -$1 million buyout
Greg Stiesma - Non-guaranteed Team Option for $762K
Nathan Jawai - Qualifying Offer for $1.0 million
Ricky Rubio - Rights Retained, $2.8 million cap hold
Draft Picks - 4th, 16th pick, 23rd pick, 45th pick, and 56th pick.
The Good: Nobody has assembled a better Euroleague roster than David Kahn.
Ricky Rubio just capped off a tremendous season where he helped lead FC
Barcalona to the Euroleague title. Nikola Pekovic had a strong campaign for
Panathinaikos. Henk Norel continued to show promise with DKV Joventut, and
Darko Milicic flashed enough in his stay so that he should be able to find a
deal despite a tightening European market. If only Minnesota was in Europe
and not the NBA, they might have been able to make the Final Four.
The Bad: Minnesota is one of the more dysfunctional franchises around. They
went from the incompetence of Kevin McHale to the power hungry David Kahn. It
has not taken long for Kahn to get rid of many of the players he inherited
from McHale, but it is hard to see how any move that has been made will have
any substantial long term meaning. The team had a stock pile of draft picks
last summer, and yet only Jonny Flynn and Wayne Ellington played for the team
last year. Flynn showed himself to be an NBA level point guard, but no better
than a number of point guards taken after him and not good enough to justify
alienating Ricky Rubio. Ellington was a streaky shooter, and his value to an
NBA team is almost entirely based on his ability to shoot from the perimeter.
If he does so the way he did in January and February, he can have a long
career. If he shoots the way he did the rest of the season, he might not be
long for the league. The organization appears to be aware of the fact that
Kevin Love and Al Jefferson cannot play together. Only the completely
apathetic Warriors were worse defensively than Minnesota. It is a difficult
task to be more incompetent on that end than Toronto and New York, but the
Wolves were able to do it. Clearly one of their big but not tall men has to
go, though deciding to build around Love instead of Jefferson, as has been
reported, would be foolish. Love is smaller, struggles with length, has
conditioning issues, has struggled to adjust to the triangle offense Rambis
wants to run, and just flat out is not as good as Jefferson. It will be
interesting to see what kind of package Minnesota could get in return for
Jefferson. Teams who are competitive, but not close, like Oklahoma City and
Chicago could become much more interesting if they were to get a post scorer
like Jefferson. Both teams have the worker bee big men who can protect the
hoop and block shots, but neither have a reliable back-to-the-basket scorer.
Big Al's recent DUI also muddies the trade waters.
The Future: The Timberwolves appear to be on their way to being well under
the salary cap heading into the summer. They are still showing interest in
Darko Milicic but it's unlikely they would allow him to keep a $11.3 million
cap hold. If they simply choose to decline options on Stiesma and Jawai while
keeping Ryan Gomes, the team will be $11.7 million under the cap. The problem
for Minnesota is that their climate and struggles make it nearly impossible
for them to attract free agents without severely overpaying, making the draft
even more important for them than for other teams.
Minnesota should figure to be one of the major players on draft night. They
have three first round picks, and one in the top five (4th, 16th, 23rd).
Corey Brewer went from bust to respectable last season, but selecting Wes
Johnson with the 4th pick would give them an instant upgrade at the 3
position and will probably be the best player available to them at 4 if they
aren;t able to move up to get the guy they really covet (Evan Turner) at 2.
It will be a revealing night for Timberwolves fans to see what Kahn thinks of
his core and the franchise’s direction going forward. DeMarcus Cousins could
be an option with the fourth pick. But the problem is he would further
compound a logjam of similar bigmen (Love and Jefferson).
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