And that's when it hit me.
With the exception of Ridnour, Minnesota's four other starters were top five draft picks. (Side Note: While attending college at UW-Madison, I can't even count how many times, while discussing the Bucks with my roommates, one of us prefaced a point by uttering, "With the exception of Luke Ridnour." That man defies convention).
Should Ricky Rubio find is way to America, not only would he instantly become my second favorite NBA point guard/player, but also complete a Minnesota starting lineup composed entirely of top five picks in their respective drafts. I don't know of an economic way of finding out if this has happened before, but I would guess no. At least not in the era of 28 or more teams in the league.
Below are the teams broken down into how many top five picks they have in their starting lineup.
Four
Minnesota
Three
Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Miami, Oklahoma City
Two
Dallas, LA Clippers, LA Lakers, New Orleans, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento
One
Chicago, Cleveland, Memphis, Milwaukee, New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Toronto, Utah, Washington
Zero
Charlotte, Detroit, Golden State, Houston, Indiana
What conclusions can be drawn from looking at this list? I feel comfortable making one assumption, and that is: If an NBA team doesn't have a top five pick in their starting lineup, they aren't contending for a Championship. Seemingly obvious stuff.
What about the teams that are contenders? Where do they turn up in this list? Everywhere -- and that's what is so interesting. Boston, Miami, and Oklahoma City in the 'Three' category. Dallas, the Lakers, and Orlando in the 'Two' category. And Chicago, San Antonio, and Utah in the 'One' category. There's no rhyme or reason to that.
Conventional thinking would say, "If you have so many high draft picks in your everyday lineup, then A) You're not very good because you've had so many top selections, or B) You're really good because those top selections are most likely very talented.
Then there's the Timberwolves, who have acquired their four starters in every way imaginable. They signed Milicic as a free agent, traded for Beasley, and drafted Love and Johnson (and Rubio). They're also not very good, which leads me to the point I'm trying to make:
Minnesota, whether intentionally or not, is creating a new blueprint for how to build a team. We just don't know if this will be a successful blueprint, or total bust (Insert Darko joke here).
Of course, there's plenty of flaws in targeting players based on their draft position. An especially loaded or slim draft will skew the results of where a particular player should be drafted. In an attempt to correlate draft position and talent, one must trust the management who made the pick in the first place, which probably isn't the best idea. Then there's also the problem of players whose draft position doesn't at all represent their level of play. Kobe Bryant, Rajon Rondo, and Steve Nash come to mind, none of which were drafted in the top ten.
If building a team around top five draft picks sounds like a somewhat chaotic idea, it's because it is. Watch the Wolves play. They look like a group of talented players thrown together with the hopes that something good will happen out there. Each player's role needs to be clearly defined, and to Coach Kurt Rambis' credit, maybe they have been. It just doesn't look like it. Or maybe all of these talented players, not used to accepting a scaled back role, have been non-responsive to compromising parts of their game.
I think Rubio can control the chaos. A great point guard, and Rubio is that, can make an average team competitive. The thought of him running the break with Johnson and Beasley on each side is thrilling. Speaking of Johnson and Beasley, can't they just switch positions? All I've been hearing is how Johnson isn't a good fit at the two, which I agree with. Why can't Beasley play as the off guard? He'd be a match up nightmare. Don't tell me it's because he can't play defense, because he hurts them just as much in that respect playing small forward. And Darko just needs to be Darko (Insert another Darko joke here). He'll never be good enough because he's constantly compared to LeBron and Melo, two of the best scorers and players of this generation. For this team Darko just needs to score about ten points a game (he's averaging 9.1) and grab five or six boards (Love will get the majority of them anyway). His biggest contribution will be on the defensive end, particularly blocking shots. Milicic is the most underrated shot blocker in the league right now. He's been playing well for the T'Wolves this year, he's just not LeBron or Melo, which will unfairly be the biggest flaw of his career.
This T'Wolves team is young, immensely talented, and still learning how to play together, not to mention how to win in the NBA. Collectively, they're not very good, and may never be. But in a strange way, they're making history.
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