Howlin' T-Wolf

ESPN’s Game Box Score

Here we go again…

The Wolves came into Sacramento looking for a competitive contest against another one of the league’s worst teams but found themselves attending the “Tyreke Evans Show” instead. Only one rebound short of his second career triple double, Evans showed again why he should be named this season’s Rookie of the Year. He finished with 29 points, 11 assists and 9 rebounds, leading the Kings to their 23rd win of the season.

Evans took advantage of a lackluster transition defense and took it hard to the rack on multiple occasions. Probably at least three times, Evans took a defensive rebound and went coast-to-coast with it untouched by any Wolves defender. This put tons of pressure on the Wolves to play more efficiently on offense but they just couldn’t answer. They ended the game shooting almost 42% but couldn’t find a basket when it mattered most.

The first half proved to be a close contest. Both teams were allowing the offenses to shoot open looks, inside and out, but it wasn’t until the end of the 2nd where the tide really turned. Evans started heating up from everywhere on the floor and the Wolves couldn’t answer. With a halftime score of 62-49 in favor of the Kings, the Wolves started to panic. Between the end of the second and beginning of the third, the Kings went on a 23-0 run that wasn’t broken until a Ryan Gomes jumper with under seven minutes to go in the third. It’s these kinds of runs that separate the bad teams from the really bad teams. And honestly, the Wolves are a really bad team right now. They couldn’t even buy a basket if they wanted to during that run and the loss of confidence is a direct factor of the pitiful performance here tonight.

The Wolves gave the Kings a few different looks on defense, like switching from man-to-man to a 2-3 zone in hopes of slowing Evans and the Kings down but to no avail. Andreas Nocioni, Donte Green and Evans covered the perimeter while Carl Landry, Spencer Hawes and Jason Thompson dominated in the paint. The Wolves had difficulty contesting the outside shooters and defending the mid-range jumpers from the big men, as well as their physical play in the paint. Nothing new there. As for those big guys, Landry started off hot in the first, going 4-4 with 11 points, then cooled off but was replaced nicely by Thompson. He ended up with 15 points, shooting 6-7 from the field and provided a nice spark from the bench.

Speaking of bench play, try this on for size. The Wolves bench actually outscored all starters minus Al Jefferson. Jonny Flynn, Corey Brewer, Ryan Gomes and Ryan Hollins scored a combined 37 points while Ramon Sessions, Wayne Ellington, Oleksey Pecherov, Damien Wilkins and even Sash Pavolic combined for 41. I’m not so sure whether this is because they had so much garbage time to handle or if its because of the amount of inefficiency we received from the starters.

As for Jefferson, he had a nice game, finishing with 22 points and 10 rebounds. He looked unstoppable in the first half, perturbing Landry and Hawes from the block, but for some apparent reason they stopped giving it to the big fella in the second half. Maybe its because they were already down by too much or maybe the Kings defense stiffened up underneath. I really don’t know because, frankly, this game left me scratching my head, which was filled with questions like “What the hell are they doing?!”

Another question I thought about and will pose, which is a little more specific than the last: Why isn’t Sessions playing more minutes than Flynn on a nightly basis? He doesn’t necessarily need to start but his production off the bench was superb tonight. He was playing defense — Evans actually started cooling off when Sessions came in the game in the third — and he ran the offense correctly, all while hitting open shots from all over. He finished with an impressive 13 points, four assists and four rebounds in 27 minutes. As for Flynn, he had 12 points, in which five were during garbage time at the end of the fourth quarter, and didn’t record his first assist until the clock hit 1:20 left in the game. All of that in 21 minutes from the 6th overall pick in last summer’s draft. With that kind of performance, I am officially going to start a petition that Sessions and Flynn should completely split minutes, or better yet, Sessions plays more than Flynn each game for the rest of the season. Sessions, only 23, is a young guard too, searching for his role on an NBA team just like Flynn, so I think the Wolves ought to give Sessions more time to prove himself as a legitimate role-player on this team. Who knows, maybe playing Sessions more will light a fire under Flynn’s kiester and kick him into a whole other gear.

A quick little note with more on the bench play, Wayne Ellington posted his second consecutive double-digit performance. He had 15 points, while shooting 4-5 from three-point land. It surely does look like he has found his stroke that he had back in January. He is creating shots and taking what the defense gives him. It’s good to see that going forward for the Wolves’ rookie.

The Wolves will be leaving Sacramento, and the home to the “Tyreke Evans Show,” to head to Phoenix for a showdown in the desert Tuesday night. The losing streak is now at eight losses in a row, and even worse 15 out of their last 16. Its safe to say that their confidence has left the building as well as any sense of immediate change in the future. If the Wolves want to have any shot at up-ending the Suns, they will probably want to fix their defense. Easier said than done but the biggest open-sore for the Wolves right now is their transition defense, and going against the league’s most run-oriented team, it will be exploited like no other. It’ll be like the Suns pouring sulfuric acid into the gaping gash known as the Wolves’ transition defense. And I’m predicting it will hurt. Badly.

Well, good luck in Phoenix, boys.