1. Two weeks ago, I was invited to have breakfast with President of Basketball Operations David Kahn. From the hour-long conversation, here are the highlights:
a) “I don’t know what to make of Jonny Flynn yet. He’s been very inconsistent.”
b) “Kevin Love is our most complete player.”
c) After I asked about trading Jefferson, and the likelihood it happens. “Look, Shaq’s on his fifth team, and he’s a top-five center of all time. I probably will, at some point, have to trade him. Is that point near? Probably not.”
d) “I’ve told Kevin this, too, but Kevin Love is the absolute last player I’d trade from this team.”
e) “I’m forming the opinion that it was better that Ricky has a couple more years to develop over in Spain. To have him here, this year, would’ve put enormous, and unfair, pressure on an 18-year-old.”
f) “I truly expect Ricky to be in Minnesota in 2011. He’s the kind of player that will not only put fans in our stands, but he will put people in our opponent’s stands.”
g) After I asked how the fans could have confidence in the drafting philosophy of the team, considering there’s been one great pick in franchise history, Kahn replied, “Well, I could probably comb through the history of the franchise to find a second one …”
h) “We need a 2, 3, and 5. We’re set at the 1 and 4. But wings and a true 5. I hope to re-sign Darko, but we need wings and bigs.”
He also took several not-so-subtle digs at the previous administration.
i) “I’m not going to be satisfied with just making the playoffs every season, and being resigned to the 16th or 17th overall pick in the draft.”
j) “When we get our star, I’ll know how to build complementary pieces.”
And my personal favorite, which comforted me to no end because it showed his intelligence and rational nature. (Finally, a GM who sees what’s ACTUALLY happening on the court!).
k) “As it stands, we don’t have a best player. And we don’t have a second-best player. I want to emphasize that I know that.”
2. Continuing that theme, our guy Al Jefferson said the following gem after last night’s win over the Kings, the team’s first win in 36 days: “One thing I have to realize: We play well when I play great defense,” Jefferson said. “That’s what’s going to win a lot of games for us.” Three years it’s taken for that message to sink in. Three years.
3. Just this week the Wolves began their Most Improved Campaign for Corey Brewer. Local company Caribou Coffee is currently concocting “Brewer’s Blend,” and shipping it to voters across the country. The campaign is nauseatingly cute, but sadly doesn’t have a shot in hell at persuading voters. Brewer’s got about five players ahead of him for the award.
4. The Dayton Flyers just won the NIT. Does this mean they’re the 65th best team in the nation? Watching this game, I can’t see how the Gophers, an 11 seed, could’ve beaten either of these squads.
5. This concerns me for a variety of reasons. Exactly what we need, more justified security at airports. Richard Reid tries to light his damn shoes on fire … now we all have to take our shoes off. Underwear-bomber guy tries to light his genitals on fire … and you know we’ll have one-by-one strip searches for each passenger soon. And why the hell is this idiot bringing a LOADED pistol to an airport anyway? Honest to god. What does he think, a gun fight’s going to break out in his terminal?
6. Couldn’t sleep one night, and between the late-night male enhancement commercials and the get-rich-quick real estate schemes, I came across United People for Christ founder Rev. Peter Popoff and his “miracle spring water.” This guy apparently has a limitless supply of holy water, and sprays his followers with it causing their ails, whether it’s credit card debt or rheumatoid arthritis, to immediately cease. I can even order my very own Supernatural Debt Cancellation Kit!
7. Last week I watched, finally, “Network,” the 1976 journalism classic. If you’re involved in journalism, or care about journalism, or are interested in media, or simply love wonderful writing and even better acting, you need to see this movie. So much of what they dealt with 34 years ago rings even louder today. Terrific movie. Here’s an example of one of its classic rants. The boss of the television station is ripping into prophetic anchor Howard Beale …
“You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it! Is that clear? You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, it’s tidal gravity! It is ecological balance!
You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today.
That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU … WILL … ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those *are* the nations of the world today.
What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime.
And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that … perfect world … in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.”
8. Two weeks ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proclaimed that Israel would continue its expansion of 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem, and then had the unfathomable audacity to ask the Palestinians, who have said they would not restart the peace negotiation unless the new project was scrapped, not to place new restrictions on the talks.
Please. That goes both ways, Mr. Netanyahu. What unbelievable hypocrisy. Israel claims to want peace. It claims to be for a two-state solution. It claims to want progress. This is some way to show it. Pouring gas on hot coals doesn’t scream a desire for peace or even a willingness to negotiate. This is bull-headed, stubborn and anti-peace legislation, and the U.S. has every right to be angry. And so do the Palestinians. It’s getting increasingly more difficult to support this government in Israel.
9. I can’t decide if the Tea Party has legitimate concerns — deficit reduction, federal government take overs, etc. — or if they’re simply a more modern version of the Klan.
10. Last month a conservative sect of the Texas Board of Education injected a new curriculum into the state’s social studies, history and economics lesson plans. Mark Morford has something to say about it, and it’s, as usual, strikingly relevant and wonderful. “Dear Texas: Please shut up. Sincerely, History.”
The Jungle 