Let’s not pussyfoot around here (I just vacuumed): would you trust David Kahn and his Minnesota Timbergoofs (or is it “Timbergooves”?) with your fantasy team? No. You wouldn’t. You would? No. You wouldn’t. Stop it. Despite the facts that Wesley Johnson was the best player Minnesota was likely going to get in this year’s draft and that Kahn managed to accidentally not mess it up, the third-year Orange is still entering into a system that needs a lot of Band-Aids, and not the kind where Kate Hudson tags along on your tour bus, bro. Rookie Johnson is like a three-legged puppy forced to cross a cargo net – he’ll make it to the end eventually, it’s just going to be hilarious in the meantime.
The problem here, if I may be so bold as to pretend there’s just one, is that Corey Brewer and the newly acquired Martell Webster play slight variations of the game Wesley Johnson played in Syracuse and will be expected to play in the Land O’Lakes. All three are wiry, all three are quick and all can be troublesome matchups for other small forwards. But having a trio of such similarly skilled players in the decidedly unskilled hands of Kurt Rambis and the T-Spoof (T-Spooves?) brass is a bad omen. Bad as in “not good.” There are no good omens. If they’re good, they’d be “signs.”
So trust me when I say Johnson’s entering this season under a bad sign, which, as we learned two dozen words ago, is an omen. Oh, man.
Even if Johnson starts the season and stays startin’, the T-Woofs are going to tinker with fitting in Brewer and Webster whilst also tinkering with not sucking as bad as they did last season. Ask Kevin Love all about it, he’ll tell you. Johnson’s going to have to overcome a lot of tinkering. The kid has too many tools not to make an impact, but it won’t happen quickly. I’m thinking late 2011.
Season Projections: .495/.770/1 3pt/13.5 pts/6.5 rbd/1.5 ast/1 stl/1.5 blk/2 tov
