Born Weird

Last night at dinner, I ran into the mother and brother of Minnesota Vikings OT Ryan Cook, which was kinda cool. Our brief chat inspired me to actually lay down some of my complaints about the way the Vikings and Timberwolves have been managing personnel.

The Vikings

While I’ve never been a huge Vikings fan, I’ve followed the team ever since I was a kid growing up in the Minneapolis suburbs. To me, the good wide receiver Carter on the team was number 81 Anthony before Cris entered the scene. I remember quarterbacks like Wade Wilson and Tommy Kramer.

My first exposure to poor front-office decisionmaking in the Minnesota sports scene was the 1989 trade in which the Vikings liquated their future for RB Herschel Walker, a trade so massive it has its own wikipedia entry. As an eleven-year-old I remember thinking to myself, “All this for just one player? Does that make sense?” And of course, it didn’t.

Things were better after Denny Green took the helm in 1992, with the team making more sensible moves —like getting Randy Moss with the 21st pick in the draft. Green’s teams weren’t always the most complete, but their offense was usually pretty fun to watch… it seemed like it never mattered who was under center or how old they were, they were successful. The late careers of Warren Moon and Randall Cunningham shone, though I’ll never forget the pain of seeing the 15-1 team lose at home in overtime to the Atlanta Falcons in 1998.

After Green’s sudden departure came the lost-in-the-woods Mike Tice years. He was a good guy by all accounts, but not head coaching material. Now we’ve got Brad Childress at the helm.

The team’s brain trust has made some moves in the last few years that have really paid off, like drafting Adrian Peterson and assembling a ridiculously fabulous D-line. But at the QB position the franchise has been an embarrassment.

I can see how Childress hoped Tarvaris Jackson would evolve into the next Donovan McNabb at a bargain basement price. But it was obvious to even casual observers after watching him in 2007 that it wasn’t going to happen. Childress stood by his man, though, at least through part of 2008. But finally Childress realized his gamble with Jackson wasn’t going to pay off. And now we find ourselves on the daily Brett Favre watch.

This Brett Favre nonsense is even more stupid than sticking with Jackson too long in the first place. First off: If you’ve decided your current starter isn’t good enough, don’t make that public until you’re sure you have a replacement. At this point, if the Vikings don’t get Favre, whoever starts (either Jackson or free-agent addition and former Cyclone Sage Rosenfels) will clearly not have the confidence of the coaching staff, and that’s not a good situation.

Second, Favre is a horrible, horrible fit for the Vikings. This is a team with a solid defense (especially up front) and the best running back in the league (now that LDT is getting old). Teams built like this don’t need a gun-slinging, ad-libbing, mistake-prone hotshot. What they need is a game-managing, throw-the-ball-away, mistake-free guy who plays within himself. They need what the Ravens had when they won the Super Bowl with Trent Dilfer.

Sure, Brett Favre was great in his prime. But that was a long time ago. Over the last four seasons, Favre’s TD-to-INT ratio is 88-84. That’s not a good ratio. Favre might be a slight improvement over Jackson or Rosenfels if he stays healthy, but only slightly.

At this point he’s the only option the Vikings have, which is part of the problem. What the team should have done is signed a free-agent veteran capable of making decisions, one who understands his own limits and won’t make stupid throws. I’m talking about someone like Jeff Garcia, whose ratio over the same span is 38 and 18. Much smaller numbers, sure, but that’s okay when you’re a team built on a ground game and defense.

At this point, the Vikings are screwed regardless of how things with Favre pan out. If he signs, he’ll turn the ball over and/or get hurt. If he doesn’t, the team with go into the season with the CFL-quality tandem of Jackson and Rosenfels… likely to produce similar results, but younger. Good luck with that, Brad.

The Timberwolves

I’m not much of an NBA fan, but I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for the TImberwolves simply because they seem to have been born under a bad sign. The NBA draft lottery has been unkind to the team, and they haven’t helped themselves with draft picks like Christian Laettner and Pooh Richardson.

But things have gone from bad to worse in the last few years. They traded away Garnett for next to nothing — a sympathy trade on Kevin McHale’s part if there’s ever been such a thing. Sympathy for both Garnett and the Celtics, I think. Though I’m happy Garnett finally got a ring, the Wolves didn’t get much in return.

Example #2 is the brilliant trade of draft pick Brandon Roy for Randy Foye. They took Roy with the sixth pick, Portland took Foye with very next pick. Then, inexplicably, the Wolves traded Roy for Foye (and $1 million cash). History has not been kind, as SI reported in March.

But the lunacy hit new heights with this year’s draft. In what was widely considered an extremely thin draft class, the T-Wolves traded Mike Miller and the aforementioned Foye for additional first-round picks, giving them ultimately the fifth, sixth, 18th and 28th picks in the first round — a lot of picks for a crappy draft.

So what did they do? They drafted young, high-risk, high-reward Spanish PG Ricky Rubio with the fifth pick, a not-unreasonable thing to do. Then with the sixth pick, they drafted… another PG, Jonny Flynn of Syracuse. Not content with draft two PGs, back-to-back no less, with their third first-round pick they took PG Ty Lawson. Yep, that’s right. Three PGs in the first round. (Their fourth pick in the round was also a guard, but not a point.)

Things like this generally only happen in fantasy drafts when a human being is unavailable and the computer is picking without regard to position. It’s preposterous. Drafting two PGs I can sorta understand — the Lawson pick was a good value at 18 and a decent insurance policy should Rubio elect to stay in Spain rather than join the NBA. But taking Flynn? That’s like putting up on a big marquee reading, “Hey Rubio, we know there’s a chance you might not sign. So we took this other guy who plays your same position, making our backcourt really crowded now. That makes you more likely to sign, right?”

Of course, this created some drama and no one knows what’s going to happen with Rubio. After emerging from the point guard draft binge, the team seems to have realized what it did, and promptly traded Ty Lawson to Denver. Fine, whatever. But why did they draft Flynn when Stephen Curry was on the board?? The team needs a pure scorer, and Curry has one damn fine smooth, quick stroke. It would have been fabulous to see Curry and Rubio share a backcourt together. If the team was so concerned about signing Rubio, they should have just drafted Flynn and Curry and passed over Ricky altogether.

I think Bill Simmons put it best:

I would have drafted Ricky Rubio at No. 5 and Stephen Curry at No. 6. Then I would have sent Rubio 10 hours of Curry tapes and told him, “Look, we’re pairing you with an undersized guard with 28-foot range who could get off a 3-pointer if he were trapped in a phone booth. He’s electric. You will love him.”….

Here’s what I wouldn’t have done: taken a second point guard (Jonny Flynn) at No. 6, then vowed to play them together. That pick was transparent — Flynn clearly was a “here’s our backup plan if we don’t sign Rubio” selection. Rubio saw right through it. … Here’s to four years of a hot-poop sundae, Wolves fans!

The only silver lining to this idiocy is that apparently Jonny Flynn has looked great in summer league play (according to my latest issue of SI). He’ll need to be an All-Star for this draft to have made any sense for the team.

On the bright side, the Twins seem to do a pretty good job of evaluating talent and fielding a viable “small market” club. And this is their last year in the Metrodome, the worst place known to man to see a baseball game. Pity it’s baseball.