Very Random Sports Thoughts: Manny playing early, Timberwolves trading & drafting, and my Twins

I have so many thoughts on my little iPod "Notes" app, of things I want to write about in the blog, but getting my healing brain to cooperate seems to be the issue. So I am going to put those notes aside, and just cover some current sports things on my mind, since they don't take a lot of deep & analytical thinking!

• I already complained about this on Twitter, but why does suspended Dodger Manny Ramirez get to have "rehab" games in the minor leagues before his 50 game suspension is up? He shouldn't be allowed to play anywhere higher than American Legion ball until the suspension is done. MLB says he can't talk to the media from the Dodgers clubhouse, but he's allowed to go get his swing back in the minors? If a player is tossed from a game, the player replacing him doesn't even get a warm-up throw, catch, etc (and it's not even the fault of the replacement player), but Manny can play AA ball? This is a suspension for failing a drug test, not a DL trip for a torn ligament. If he needs rehab games, it should happen after the suspension. Someone please explain to me how this makes sense.


• The Timberwolves are currently trying to make up for all their lost draft picks from the Joe Smith debacle in this one year (just to clarify, I liked & still like Joe Smith, but he is not the kind of player that one should risk a lengthy punishment to try to sign him early...), by picking up their 4th pick of the 1st round. The latest trade, sending Randy Foye & Mike Miller to the Washington Wizards for 3 players & the #5 pick, is ok with me, if that actually matters to anyone. I plan to write an expanded blog about Randy Foye's time with the Wolves, and the impossible situation he was in through no fault of his own, but I think it would help him to be somewhere where is not continually compared to Brandon Roy. Mike Miller just seemed to lose the shooting touch he'd always shown against the Wolves, once he was actually on his childhood favorite team. My personal opinion is that his "man bob" haircut was the reason he was struggling, since not many Minnesotan men wear headbands, but I have no scientific backing on that thought! Now the question is what the Wolves will do with these picks, which leads me to...


• Please don't package picks to get Hasheem Thabeet. I have nothing against Thabeet, and he seems like a nice enough kid. I just think the odds of him being a complete dud in the pros is larger than the odds of him being a star. This is based on watching him play against the Zags twice in the last 2 years, as well as watching a large number of Big East games during his tenure at UConn. He has some defensive presence, but I feel that in the NBA, that will be overshadowed by his lack of offensive skills. I think Stephen Curry, with his size issue, is a much better risk than Thabeet. Having said that, I'd be ok with the T-Wolves taking Thabeet at #5 or #6 if he is still there, as there is a shortage of big men in this draft, just not with them giving up picks to move up to #2 or #3 for him.


• Which draft picks would I love to see on the T-Wolves when it's all said and done? I'm not even going to include Oklahama stud Blake Griffin, as he will be gone, and I think the Wolves have a couple good building blocks at his position, in Kevin Love & Al Jefferson. I will be showing a bit of a bias here with a couple of them, but I'd love for them to get any of the following:
• Spain's PG Ricky Rubio - I think he is overrated, but should still be a solid player, with the potential to have some Steve Nash passing ability...though potential is not a guarantee. Ndude Ebi had potential too.
• Davidson's SG/PG Stephen Curry -small, but that shot is something that Wolves haven't had in...well...ever. Closest they came was the year Freddie Hoiberg was hitting 50% on 3's, but he wasn't as good at creating his shot.
• Syracuse PG Jonny Flynn - I rank him above Jrue Holiday & Tyreke Evans
• Duke SG Gerald Henderson which pains me to say, due to my anti-Duke stance, and memories of Christian Laettner, Cherokee Parks & Will Avery.
• Gonzaga SF Austin Daye - but this is primarily because of my Zags love. I think Daye needs a few more years & a whole lot more bulk due to his position.
• St. Mary's PG Patty Mills - I've seen him play in person 3 times, and even when he wasn't shooting well, his quickness blew me away. Plus, unlike every other college player in this draft, Mills has played against NBA All-Stars in the Olympics, when he played for Australia, and he more than held his own. How often do teams get a chance like that to see how a kid does when he is up against the best?
• Gonzaga PF Josh Heytvelt - No, this is not just because of my afore-mentioned bias...Heytvelt is more like Kevin Garnett than Al Jefferson (not in skill level, but style of play). He likes to play face-up to the basket. Plus he has a long range jump shot that becomes a match-up issue as a 6'11" player. Wolves could throw out an interesting Jefferson/Love/Heytvelt mix, and see if the opponent has enough big men to follow them all.
• Now for what wouldn't make me happy...Hasheem Thabeet before the #5 spot, James Harden, Jrue Holiday, Dejuan Blair or BJ Mullens.

• And now for my Twins...disappointing loss in Milwaukee, after a bad relay throw home allowed the game to be tied, and a bad decision by Pitcher Nick Blackburn allowing the go-ahead run to score. But the way Nick Blackburn has been pitching for most of this season, is something very fun to see! After surprising most of us in Game 163 at the Chicago White Sox (due to an absurd coin flip) with an almost perfect performance, he just seemed to pick up where he left off, trusting his stuff, and trusting his fielders. I love it!

• Everyone noticed that this was the first Milwaukee-Twins series to not be on a weekend, seemingly since Milwaukee was in the AL. Naturally the Milwaukee at Minnesota series was on the weekend, but I am convinced that Bud Selig was tired of seeing the Twins fans showing up at Miller Park, so he switched it to a mid-week series to make it a little tougher on the fans, so there wouldn't be so many Twins chants during the games. I think he's still bitter that he was unable to contract the Twins, and then they've "owned" his team ever since then. (Ok, perhaps I'm not really convinced of all this, but I like the theory anyway!)

• Finally, in what was a perfect birthday present for me, the Twins got rid of Luis Ayala on June 22. It's as if they granted me the wish when I blew out my candles! I just couldn't handle him as a pitcher (and admit that I did not have an open mind when he came to the Twins due to his play for the Mets last season), but to find out he was asking to be traded because he wanted to be the set-up guy and was mad he wasn't getting the 8th inning, and that wouldn't help for his contract for next year? Aside from the fact that Gardy wouldn't stand for that no matter what, why would the Twins give the 8th inning to a pitcher who let batters hit .353 with runners in scoring position (.306 overall), especially considering his 1st batter faced BA had to be over .500 (but I can't seem to find that stat anywhere) which increases the odds that a player will get into scoring position. Oh well. I no longer need to debate this, as it is all over now! Thank you Twins!

Random Thoughts for a Friday night/Saturday morning

Here are a few thoughts that crossed my mind recently:

• Due to injuries, Minnesota Wild Forward Marian Gaborik has only played in 13 of the teams’ 78 games to date. He has 9 goals & 5 assists in those 13 games, for a total of 14 points. The 9 goals make him 10th on the team, even though he’s only played in 17% of the games. He’s one of only 5 members of the team to have a positive +/- number for the year (and two of the other guys have spent half the year in the minors). His 1.08 points per game far surpasses anyone else on the team (Captain Mikko Koivu is 2nd with 0.84 points per game). The Wild as a team are currently on the outside looking in for the Western Conference playoff race, needing to probably win 3 or 4 of their final 4 games, and get help from some other teams, in order to sneak in to the post-season. They’ve won 47% of their games this year, and had 9 games where they earned 1 of a possible 2 points with an overtime loss (22% of their losses were OT losses). With Gaby in the line-up, they’ve won 62% of the time, and 40% of their losses were OT losses where they earned that 1 point and didn’t go home completely empty-handed. Basically what all of this stats mumbo-jumbo is saying (and the numbers are a lot simpler than they may look!), is that if Marian Gaborik had stayed healthy this year, the Wild would be trying to play for home advantage in the playoffs right now, rather than crossing their fingers & hoping that enough other teams lose for them to slide in to the second season. What I don’t know, is if that’s an argument for the team to try to hold on to him whatever it takes, or an argument for the team to cut ties, and try to find a difference maker who might be on the ice a little more often than the frequently injured Czech all-star. Wild fans saw what happened last year though, when he stayed on the ice for the essentially the whole season – the team won its first Northwest Division Championship. Hmm…
  


• Life on Mars on ABC. Poor Jason O’Mara never seems to get a show that lasts long. He was in The Agency, In Justice & now Life on Mars. The Agency lasted the longest at 22 episodes. In Justice was 13 & Life on Mars has been canceled after 17 eps. (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0641816/) I have watched Life on Mars all season (but don’t tell me how it ends since I am 3 episodes behind on my iPod), and haven’t been sure what to think. I thought the first couple episodes were great, and they hooked me in, but then the next one was just odd, and it seemed to alternate between a fun & different cop show, to too bizarre to really watch. All the ones from February have, in my opinion, really clicked and demonstrated what the show could be, but it had already lost too many viewers by that point, and was canceled. I loved the concept of the guy being stuck in 1973 & not knowing if it was a dream, a coma, time travel, etc., but they just experimented with making it too many different kinds of shows early on. Disappointing. Good thing Burn Notice comes back in June for Season 3 (and I’m following @jeffrey_donovan on Twitter in the meantime- he plays Michael Westen - as gives little updates on the filming & even some fun photos from the set).
  


• My latest sports rant is about slam dunk contests. They need to change. I think after years of stagnant, boring type competitions, the dunks have gotten much creative again, from the high school level, to college, to the pros, but the judging needs to change. One, get judges that have a clue. Jon Secada doing the high school one? Calvin Johnson (Detroit Lions wide receiver) doing the college one, and giving a 7 on a dunk when everyone else gave it a 10 might show that he didn’t really know what defines a good dunk. Two, let them use video replay in their voting! With some of the creative dunks that kids come up with these days, its sometimes hard to catch all of what they did when watching it in real time as it happens. Some dunks don’t look quite so impressive until you see the replay, and then I often find myself thinking “How on earth did they do that?” I realize this is not quite as important as improving the economy & establishing world peace, but this has a much easier fix too!



• Congrats to Gonzaga basketball seniors who had some fun this week in Detroit. While it wasn't for the Final Four, as they would've wished, they made their presence felt in the College All-Star competitions. Jeremy Pargo & Micah Downs were two of the eight participants in the slam dunk contest. They each had some of the best dunks in the first round, and advanced to the semis, but failed to get their dunks down in the Semis, so hence, didn't advance to the finals. One of Pargo's dunks made the Sportscenter highlights though: http://tiny.cc/2009CollegeDunk and one You Tube site showed all the 1st round dunks http://tiny.cc/09DunkRd1 and here are a couple other good Pargo dunks from real Gonzaga games: http://tiny.cc/PargoatSMC, http://tiny.cc/Pargo360, http://tiny.cc/PargoAkron. Unfortunately, even though Micah Downs had one of the best game dunks I've seen last year, which was #1 Top Play on Sportscenter, I can't find a video of it online, so you'll just have to take my word for it, but I did find one little dunk video I took last year, which is at the end of this post. I haven't figured out how to edit videos yet, so after Micah's dunk there is a lot of nothing, and then a fairly routine Ira Brown dunk, so just watch the beginning! Then in the Hershey's All-Star Basketball Game, big man Josh Heytvelt played a big role in team Reese's coming back to win, as he hit a go-ahead 3 pointer late in the game, finishing with 17 pts & 11 rebounds, in another opportunity for him to show off to the scouts his ability to play inside & outside. http://tiny.cc/HeytveltReeses



• Jeremy Pargo also did his part earlier this year to help promote the "Coaches vs. Cancer" fight for the Spokane area chapter. Zags coach Mark Few has had many fundraisers, which have made him the #2 money raising coach nationwide for Coaches vs. Cancer. Pretty impressive for the smaller school in a very small media market! Here's a video that Jeremy Pargo did, and yes, this text number is still applicable to make $5 donations to the cause! http://tiny.cc/PargoCVC
  


• Finally, those of you reading this on Facebook, you should take a look at what will be a continuing series of a photo diary, where Sleepy (as in the 7 Dwarfs) shares the picture story of his life, traveling with me for work trips & vacations, including his thoughts and comments. He got started yesterday, but I'm only letting him do a few pictures at a time, so you'll have to keep checking in on him! http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=67181&id=533074373&l=26b89ea2fd.
  

How Zags could've beaten North Carolina

I have a few thoughts in my mind, which must be what kept me awake until 6:20am today. Just to clarify, I in no way think I know more than Gonzaga Head Coach Mark Few, nor am I questioning anything he did. I'm just expressing what I observed about the game.

The turnovers were a huge issue, and leaving jump shooters open was a problem, but I think if Gonzaga had taken good shots, they could've beaten North Carolina. Rick Pitino, head coach of #1 overall seed Louisville, said after their win over Arizona yesterday "That's the great myth for us. People say you're not a good shooting team. We're not when we take challenged shots. When we pass, we're a great shooting team. Our press feeds off the passing and the scoring." ( http://tiny.cc/RickPitino ) That was a major issue for the Zags, and I believe it stems from how they played against "lesser" teams all year. They took way too many long jump shots without ever passing the ball inside, or driving the ball inside first. On Friday, those shots usually didn't go in, and North Carolina was able to get the long rebound and run down in transition to score. Over, and over, and over.

Gonzaga was able to get away with doing this all season long against teams that were not as good, but by getting in those bad habits, it kept coming out on Friday night against a much tougher opponent. When the Zags drove inside first, or passed inside first, good things happened! Heytvelt scored or was fouled, Bouldin took a smaller defensive player to the hoop, or it was passed out for an easier jump shot for someone like Gray. I'd been arguing this point to my family watching the game with me, the whole night. Clark Kellogg started to say the same things on CBS all throughout the 2nd half (I'm fairly certain I never thought that Billy Packer and I were on the same page in the past!).

I completely believe that UNC is the best overall team in the tourney this year, and as Mark Few also said "It's just -- and I've said all along, if all 16 of us, if we all play at the top of our game, North Carolina wins the national championship. I just feel like, when they're playing at their highest end, they're better than the rest of us. " (http://tiny.cc/LL5nY ) I also believe that North Carolina didn't necessarily play their very best, but had a chance to show off their best skills because of offensive mistakes made by Gonzaga .

Alas, we'll never know. Thanks to Jeremy Pargo for 4 years of intense dedication and fun moments; to Josh Heytvelt for showing everyone how a tough experience can make a person better overall, both on and off the court; to Micah Downs for taking on the true "Zag" role this year, as the biggest hustler & scrapper on the team, combined with a very high talent level; to Ira Brown for showing fans some special athleticism and energy off the bench; and to Andrew Sorenson for always being fun to cheer for, for always being the first off the bench to great teammates, and for making us all smile with the 15 pts on senior day!