The Team That Should Have Been…

So the 2008 NBA Draft is upon us and we all know what that means. The man with the cardigan sweaters is bound to fail yet again. Timberwolves’ fans won’t be surprised if Kevin McHale selects Brook Lopez with the number 3 pick. Any other team and their fans would most likely be stunned. But terrible draft picks are synonymous with the team from the north. Year after year the Timberwolves seem to roll the dice with no reward yet in sight.

The last good draft for Minnesota was in 1996 in which the Wolves selected Ray Allen with the fifth overall pick, but traded his rights for the rights of Stephon Marbury. For a few years the duo of Marbury and Garnett was fun to watch, but the Wolves were still missing a key piece to put them over the top. Hindsight is 20/20 but Ray Allen may have been the safer and better pick in the long run.

The Wolves next draft day blunder was in 1998 when they selected Rasho Nesterovic with the 17^th pick. The safer and better pick in the long run was Al Harrington (All-Star Rashad Lewis was also available).

The very next year Minnesota selected Wally Szczerbiak with the 6^th overall pick. Still on the board at that time included Richard Hamilton, Andre Miller, Shawn Marion, Jason Terry, Corey Maggette. Hamilton should have been the pick here, who had just completed a great college career that ended with an NCAA championship season at Connecticut. Instead the Wolves elected to draft a non-athletic shooter from the University of Miami (Ohio) who appeared to be perpetually glued to the floor as offensive players blew by him on their way to the basket. In the very same year and very same round only a few picks later the Minnesota Timberwolves selected William Avery (who?) with the 14^th overall pick. Yes, Avery had a good career at Duke but still undrafted were Ron Artest and Andrei Kirilenko. Both safer and better picks in the long run (see the recurring theme yet?). With the 14^th pick, the Wolves should have selected Ron Artest who has had a good career so far unlike Will Avery whose career is warming the bench for the superior athletes on the team.

And finally one of the worst picks in Minnesota Timberwolves history, Ndudi Ebi. Drafted 26^th overall in the 2003 draft, Ebi was out of the league even before anyone knew how to pronounce his name. Drafted after Ebi? All-Star guard Josh Howard. Potentially, if the Timberwolves management had even half a brain they would have won an NBA Championship by now. This is because their lineup would be:

5) Kevin Garnett – 1995

4) Al Harrington (Rashad Lewis) – 1998

3) Ron Artest – 1999

2) Richard Hamilton – 1999

1) Josh Howard – 2003

Sixth-Man) Ray Allen (Stephon Marbury) – 1996

Other draft day mishaps include trading the Rookie of the Year Brandon Roy for the less than stellar Randy Foye. Most recently, Corey Brewer appears to be the latest result of poor draft day preparation by the Minnesota Timberwolves. Most likely the Wolves would not have had these picks if they had drafted better in the previous years as outlined above, so we can’t exactly hold these two against them because they should never have been in that spot to begin with.

Only Kevin McHale could run a professional sports team into the ground and he has put the Wolves six feet under with no light in sight.