Free Love

Tuesday night I was privileged enough to watch the San Antonio Spurs play the Minnesota Timberwolves at the Target Center in Minneapolis.  Though many people would probably tell me that watching this year's Timberwolves team is more of a punishment than a privilege, I thoroughly enjoyed my experience and decided I would make a few observations from the evening.

1. Someone needs to get Kevin Love out of Minnesota.

There are only a few players in this league that I truly enjoy watching play and Kevin Love is one of them.  I love watching Kevin Love rebound.  Rebounding is an art form and though almost every player in the league has the ability to do it, very few do it well.  Being an exceptional rebounder requires a great understanding of the nature of missed shots.  You need to understand the angles that rebounds come off of the rim, the likelihood of getting a rebound in a particular position, and the position you need to grab that rebound.  Love understands these things to a greater extent than ninety percent of the entire league.

It is an absolute shame to see a player of Kevin Love's caliber stuck in Minnesota.  I understand that with 30 teams in the NBA there has to be good players stuck on bad teams, but I can't help but feel sorry for Love.  In most cases, the great players stuck on bad teams are guys that are front runners that score a ton of points and look out for themselves, but Love is nothing like this.  Love prides himself on making his teammates better.  We have long heard about the phenomenal strength of his outlet passes and how great of a passer he is.  As I watched Love intently on Tuesday, I was able to see just how much effort he exerted and how much he cared about his team.

It's sad to see a budding superstar who truly gives his best effort night in and night out stuck on a team like the Timberwolves.  Love is surrounded by the foreign twin towers Darko Milicic and Nikola Pekovic.  Milicic is starting to understand how to be an NBA center, but is still not very good and Pekovic just looks awful.  He has terrible footwork and even worse hands.  He constantly looks lost and seems to have no idea what is going on during each play.  The rest of the team is filled with lottery pick busts and guys with questionable character with the exception of veteran point guard Luke Ridnour.  The team assembled by David Kahn is an absolute joke, not because he has the worst talent in the league but because the team he assembled has nothing in common.

2. The Milwaukee Bucks actually work hard and play hard.

As I watched the Timberwolves on Tuesday night, I started to realize how big of a difference a good coach can make.  From a talent standpoint, the Bucks are better than the Timberwolves, but not that much better.  The thing that struck me most was how little effort the Timberwolves put into each play.  When Scott Skiles became head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks, the Bucks PR people introduced the newest advertising slogan, "Work Hard, Play Hard".  Typically, these slogans are just cheesy catch phrases that the team can put on a whole bunch of t-shirts and towels and make some money, but on Tuesday night I realized that the Bucks truly follow that slogan.  The differences in the effort between the Bucks and T'Wolves could not have been more drastic.

3. My love for Matt Bonner has reached dangerously high levels.

In one of my earlier posts, I discussed how much I loved the San Antonio Spurs and had mentioned how much I loved Matt Bonner.  At first I thought I loved him because of his red hair and general lack of talent, but as I watched him even more I realized that there are even more reasons why I love him.  I love the fact that I can compare his talents to the talent of myself and some of my friends.  I love that he only shoots threes and drives to the right with his right hand.  I love that I can talk about how awkward his game is.  I love watching the reaction of players that play against him after he hits a shot in their face because it is absolutely priceless.  (Wow.  I have a problem.  I need to stop.)

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Here is the newest song from the guys over at 3 A.M. Records.  If you listen to my radio show, these are the guys who made the opening to our show.  They make a ton of great music, so check them out.