ESPN Rankings: Wolves Worst In The West
Earlier this week ESPN released it’s summer forecast for the Western Conference standings. The numbers are in and the experts/cool kids have our Wolves finishing dead last with a record of 26-56.
Ouch!!! Charlie, that really hurts.
Now, I know you’ve seen it a hundred times, but hey, it’s summer–and there’s still a week before the Kevin Love trade goes down. So take it like it’s happy medicine:
I don’t know which kid is sicker: is it Charlie for biting, or the big broseph for sticking his finger in Charlie’s mouth?
But enough of that jibber-jab, it’s time to get serious about the slap-in-the-face ESPN ranking. The media gods have the Wolves slotted behind the Jazz, Kings, and Lakers. The Kings and the Lakers have a ton of question marks, but if things go really well they could pull together 35-40 win seasons, so their rankings are easier to swallow.
But what really hurts is that while the Timberpup’s are predicted to have the same 26-win record as Utah, they’re placed behind them in the rankings. Holy Colin Cowherd!
To put my anger in perspective, the Wolves finished 31-51 in the 2011-12 season. That year, our best player was the honorable Bond villain Andrei Kirilenko. Remember, Rubio missed the beginning of the season coming back from his knee injury, and Love missed all but 18 games with his stupid hand injury from doing his stupid knuckle pushups.
It was the year of the injury bug, and the Wolves were throwing the likes of Josh Howard, Chris Johnson, and Mikael Gelabale on to the floor just to make ends meet. Even Adelman missed large chunks of time, leaving Terry Porter to coach the team. Here are some of Porter’s ingenious thoughts:
Terry seems like a great guy, but his insights don’t exactly inspire confidence. It didn’t help that the Wolves completely fell apart with him running the show.
Yep, that team won 31 games. And this team is supposed to win only 26? (I’m scratching my head.) Something seems askew…Wait! I have an idea! Let’s do an honest appraisal of what we have going forward in comparison to the 2011-12 squad.
This season we have Flip Saunders coaching the team, and while his facial expressions remind me of a dirty ashtray, compared to Rick Adelman he looks like the energizer bunny. UPGRADE.
Furthermore, Ricky Rubio is no longer nursing his rehabilitated knee, and he’s added muscle, looking stronger than ever before. And bad boy Nik Pekovic has added two years of experience, multiple tattoos, and more skulls than you can count to his resume. Can you say UPGRADES?
And look at the rest of the roster. This year we have Corey Brewer, Kevin Martin, a healthy Chase Budinger, and a whole slew of young talent that simply wasn’t around for the 31 win season. Instead of Greg “The Steamer” Stiemsma we have Gorgui Dieng; instead of Lazar Hayward we have Shabazz Muhammad. Throw in Andrew Wiggins, Zach LaVine, and Thad Young and/or Anthony Bennett and what do we have?
One word: UPGRADES.
No disrespect to the Guardians of the Galaxy known as ESPN, but a 26-56 record seems a little dismissive, doesn’t it? I’m not saying that we’ll be world-beaters but I’m willing to bet that the Wolves will win at least 31 games next season (once again, figuratively speaking of course).
Just to show some good will and to make it clear that I’m not mad at the super heroes at ESPN, I’ve decided to include my favorite SportsCenter commercial (Okay, it’s because I don’t want Russillo to kick my ascot…I had no idea bald dudes could be that jacked):
All that I can say is that John Clayton is truly a golden god…
Now that I’m done with my jig, I have some questions for you:
1) Will the Wolves win more than 26 games next season?
2) Who was really at fault, Charlie or his big brother?
3) What’s your favorite SportsCenter commercial?
Until next time, you stay classy DWW Nation.