All Around The World The Same Song

"Give me that stupid hat and take off your shirt!" Or something along those lines.

All of the worst things people say about Valentine's Day are true. It is a made-up holiday, no doubt, manufactured for the purpose of selling candy, flowers, and Hallmark cards. It puts unnecessary pressure on guys who feel they've done a pretty good job up to this point. Worse yet, Valentine's Day plays on the insecurities of (mostly) women whose existence is validated by a man in their life. You are not single and have not been for some time. Being the pampered soul you are, you bemoan the yearly difficulties of impressing someone who is going to love you regardless.

Valentine's Day is not all anxiety and depression. In a long-term relationship, you, and everyone really, have the tendency to take your partner for granted. Valentine's Day, if nothing else, is your yearly reminder to show them you care, even though you don't always show it. You'd prefer something less traditional as a Valentine's Day warm-up, but your girlfriend wants to see The Vow. You think of hundreds of things, some of them very unsavory, you would rather do, but your girlfriend wants to see The Vow so The Vow is what you're going to see. You've subjected her to the Washington Wizards and the Portland Trail Blazers and Tony Allen enough to understand relationships even things out. You recall a recent conversation:

"Who's playing?"

"The Knicks and Timberwolves."

"Gross. Who do you want to win?"

"Oh, I don't really care."

"Why are you watching if you don't care who wins?"

You have no good answer for this question. It isn't normal to watch a six or so hours of basketball a night? Normal people do other things on Saturday night? You watch basketball because that's what you enjoy, and you cannot explain why you get so much satisfaction from sitting idly and watching others achieve athletic greatness. It isn't easy to love you, you understand, and realize the least you can do is sit still for two more hours and watch The Vow instead of LeBron.


The Vow transports you to a world where you are supposed to believe Channing Tatum is an underdog, overdue bills are paid with LOVE, and a near fatal car accident is ultimately beneficial. Tatum wears a goofy hat in the beginning and ugly sweaters throughout--a deal breaker for most guys, but Channing Tatum is not most guys. He made the women in the theater (about 80 percent of the crowd) swoon when he appeared in a        
non-frontal nude scene. His love interest, Rachel McAdams is a well-dressed coat rack, serving mostly to get Tatum naked and to help him set an impossible "good guy" standard. Despite the plot being structured around McAdams' ability to remember, you get the feeling a hour-long loop of Tatum in his underwear reciting a sappy monologue would have grossed the same.

There is no need to get into the story because you know how the story ends. This does not stop you, however, from becoming immersed. You try to deny it, but a part of you says "Fuck Jeremy," and wonders why it's taking so long for McAdams to make the right decision. This can't possibly be a true story like the opening credits say it is, and if so, how much money are these real people making off this? The actress playing McAdams' sister is fortunate to look like her, you think, helping time move by. You want to feel above this, but you know you aren't. Deep down, you know every basketball season is no different from the worst chick flicks.

The ending, storylines, and drama are the same, played by different actors/players and shifting circumstances based on story/team. You know the year will end with a champion being crowned. You know there will be surprise team and a surprise rookie or two. You know this team will come up short in the playoffs and these breakout player(s) will regress to the mean. You don't care. This is your preferred form of entertainment. The difference being, those who enjoy chick flicks always root for the winner. They know they will leave happy. It's not like that in sports. You don't want your team to be Jeremy or the douchy future-brother-in-law who, in his big scene, questions the profitability of a recording studio in today's day and age. You want your team to be Channing Tatum and there can only be one.

To borrow an English phrase, the Bulls seem to be losing the plot a bit. At full-strength they're the best team in the NBA. Will they ever be at full-strength though? This is not meant to be a panicked reaction to a regular season road loss to Boston without Derrick Rose. This is a legitimate concern come playoff time. The Bulls will finish with the top seed in the East and face Miami in the Eastern Conference Finals. This is the predictable part of the movie. Nagging injuries or not, as long as Rose and Deng play, the Bulls are good enough to get past the first two rounds. Rose and Deng's injuries seem like they aren't going away and Rip Hamilton has literally went away somewhere. No one has seen him in weeks. Twenty-point road wins against bad teams are nice and all, but Miami is the only real competition to get the girl.

It feels like the Bulls are descending into supporting role territory or even worse, one of those woman who hosts an Anti-Valentine's Day Party. That's probably too extreme you're thinking, but remember, you sat through The Vow last night--you're not thinking straight. Your bewilderment and inherent pessimism knows no bounds and you just want the Bulls to be Channing Tatum because The Vow did its job and made you feel oh so inadequate.

See how none of this makes sense?        

T'Wolves Provide A New Rebuilding Blueprint

While I watched Kevin Love grab rebound, after rebound, after rebound Saturday night, something dawned on me. Not that Kevin Love is really good, I already knew that. But I began to look around at the Timberwolves team on the floor. Love - Wesley Johnson - Super Cool Beas' lazy eyes - the ever more productive Darko Milicic, and none other than the 16 million dollar man, Luke Ridnour.
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.