MINNEAPOLIS – Sports – or at least the chatter that goes along with them – are rife with misconceptions and misinformation. It's inherent in being a fan of a team, as fanhood at its core breeds some pretty unreasonable and extreme beliefs. (Remember, y'all, that the root of fan is fanatic.) It's like the craziest kind of love, whereby when teams lose it can feel like some abject form of betrayal, and accusations are flung like dishes at an ex-boyfriend.
Twenty years ago, a beat writer who spent most of his or her week around a team was mostly deaf to that particular brand of banter. The Internet wasn't quite part of daily life yet, so save some screaming fans and letters to the editor – eight-year-old me once attempted to write one to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch protesting Ozzie Smith's retirement – speculative anger was kept beyond an invisible barrier.
Five years ago, a beat writer was mildly in touch. Twitter wasn't yet a thing, but the horror of Internet comments had been unleashed upon the world, and there were message boards and fan forums and many of the other most bombastic of outlets that exist today.
But today. Oh, today. Today there is Twitter. Today I can hear from each and every one of you, and it's great. It really is. Except that once or twice a day, I get a message that makes me want to trumpet a correction to the world. Twitter can be a playground of misinformation, much of it well-intentioned, but over the course of the season, I've seen some pretty interesting takes. And thus, this story was born.
Below, find five misconceptions about the 2012-13 Timberwolves. If you happened to tweet at me about them, well, thanks for the inspiration. I'll send you your royalties shortly.
Brandon Roy fleeced the Timberwolves on purpose.
Brandon Roy is not a thief. He's not a liar nor a criminal. He is a formerly great basketball player who had perhaps an unrealistic view of the strength of his knees. That said, Roy believed he could play this season. He'd gotten the treatment, done the rehab, and he had teams (or perhaps just a team; that we'll never know) who were interested. And so he signed.
This wasn't about the money. Roy is making $5 million this year in Minnesota, but he has a max deal to the tune of $16.4 million this season coming his way out of Portland's pockets. They amnestied him, so they're still cutting checks, and Timberwolves or no Timberwolves, Roy is set for life.
This wasn't about the money. This was about another chance to play. The Timberwolves offered it. Roy wasn't about to say no.
Nikola Pekovic is pretty much the most fragile big man to ever grace the planet.
Pekovic earned major points in my book on Monday, when he returned to the starting lineup after just one game on the bench with a sprained left ankle. I'll admit it: I expected the injury to be the start of a 10-day saga in which a minor problem takes seemingly forever to heal. That's happened before, but this time it was a missed game, a day off, and then he was back.
That said, Pekovic does play in such a way that he's prone to such injuries, the sprains and strains that nag and reappear. Rick Adelman has talked about getting the big man to add some finesse to his game, thereby – at least theoretically – cutting down on those injuries, but overall, the coach is not worried about Pekovic's stamina or perceived fragility.
Centers get injured. It's a matter less of weakness than of physics. I'm sure my 10th-grade teacher could draw up one hell of a diagram, but it comes down to this: tiny ankle and foot bones supporting massive frames, friction, force, acceleration, collision. Pekovic needs to work to tailor his game and his physique to counteract this, yes, and injury questions will come into play if and when the team re-signs him this summer. That said, it's not like his injury troubles are unprecedented, and it'll take much worse for him to have any trouble at all in free agency.
Kevin Love playing in just a handful of games this spring would be worthless.
The number of games Kevin Love may be able to play this season has been diminishing by the week. It's down to eight or so at this point, an insignificant number that would cause many teams to simply pull him for the year. That's still an option for the Timberwolves, but talk to Love or Adelman, and that's not quite the certain outcome.
Love has said that if he remains on his current timetable, which he still is, if barely, he wants to come back and play. Adelman has agreed. His point is that Love returning hasn't been about a push toward a playoff spot since early February at the very latest and for the most hopeful, and so really, time is not at the center of the argument. Adelman, his staff and even the players want to get a glimpse of what their team could have been – and could still be – and to do that, they want to get Love on the court, even if it's for just a few games.
"I've gotten to the point where if he plays, great, if not we'll deal with the guys I have here," Adelman said Tuesdsay. "We're trying to finish the year, and I'm telling the guys to stay with it. … If Kevin is there, great. But I have no control over it. You take each game and try to figure out how to get better as a team."
There will be roadblocks. There will be the medical staff's opinion, and no doubt they don't quite place the same inherent value in seeing the team for a few games as does the coaching staff. On the converse, though, a few games of Love could sell some tickets as the season winds down, although his surprise, last-minute November return proved that sometimes ticket sales and basketball operations aren't quite on the same page.
Intensity for intensity's sake is a good thing.
This one pertains to Ricky Rubio, about whom it seems illegal to speak or write ill in the state of Minnesota. That's the last thing I want to do, but Rubio is not perfect, and one of Adelman's biggest points of insistence about the point guard relates to his intensity.
After Rubio kicked a chair on the sideline within minutes of the start of last Friday's game against Oklahoma City, Adelman was asked about the point guard's visible frustration. His answer was tempered with the same hesitation that's colored the Timberwolves' coaching staff's approach to Rubio of late: they don't want to see him hurt, but they also feel crazy telling a guy to stop playing so hard.
"He's got to relax a little bit, too," Adelman said. "Sometimes he gets his engine going so much, he gets too aggressive. But you love that, because it rubs off on the rest of the guys."
Chris Johnson is a better center than Greg Stiemsma.
I mean this as no insult to Chris Johnson. He's one of the most pleasant guys I've covered, and he's come a long way in securing himself a roster spot on the Timberwolves this year with a shot at staying on next. He's fun to watch, too, with those high-flying dunks and high-energy plays.
That said, unless he gets stronger and gains a bit of girth, he's never going to see big minutes in the NBA.
Granted, Greg Stiemsma is hardly a starting center, either, although he's stepped into that role several times this season when Nikola Pekovic is injured. He's done so to mixed reviews, at times, but all in all, he's a perfectly serviceable backup center, especially if he can keep his fouls in check.
But Stiemsma's game isn't exciting. It's not particularly played above the rim, and midrange jumpers don't exactly leave fans cowering in awe in the stands. Sometimes, though, exciting isn't the answer, and right now, Johnson is a third-string big man, Stiemsma a backup.
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