duncan228
01-08-2008, 04:49 PM
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/steve_aschburner/01/08/blazers.youth/index.html
Going green
Blazers (unlike Wolves) show you can win with youth
Young Man's Game
The Blazers are the NBA's youngest team and the third youngest in league history
Player Age Years of experience
LaMarcus Aldridge 22 1
Steve Blake 27 4
Channing Frye 24 2
Taurean Green 21 Rookie
Jarrett Jack 24 2
James Jones 27 4
Raef LaFrentz 31 9
Josh McRoberts 20 Rookie
Darius Miles 26 6
Greg Oden 19 Rookie
Travis Outlaw 23 4
Joel Przybilla 28 7
Sergio Rodriguez 21 1
Brandon Roy 23 1
Martell Webster 21 2
Whoever it was who first said, "Youth is wasted on the young'' -- George Bernard Shaw, songwriter Sammy Cahn or the nosy guy on the porch in that Jimmy Stewart movie -- must have had the NBA in mind.
With an occasional exception like the Portland Trail Blazers.
The San Antonio Spurs, the closest thing these days to an NBA dynasty, routinely start four players age 30 or older (Bruce Bowen, 36; Michael Finley, 34; Fabricio Oberto, 32; and Tim Duncan, 31). So will the perennially contending Detroit Pistons once Richard Hamilton hits that milestone age on Feb. 14 (Antonio McDyess, 33; Rasheed Wallace, 33; Chauncey Billups, 31; and Hamilton).
Denver, too, starts four 30-year-olds these days around Carmelo Anthony. Boston has gone from the bottom to the top relying on a trio of relative NBA/AARP straddlers. And the catalyst of the Western Conference's most successful team to date, Phoenix, is a point guard who soon will turn 34, with an aching back and more miles on his odometer than Ricky Rudd.
Then there's Minnesota, built from the ground down this season, with nine players who are age 25 or younger and as many skinned knees as you might expect from such a kiddie corps. Losers in 29 of their first 33 games, the Timberwolves seem to have regressed from training wheels to tricycles lately, lugging an eight-game losing streak into Tuesday night's clash with Miami (nearly as inept and admittedly older) that is longer than any endured in 12 seasons of the Kevin Garnett era.
Six of those eight losses were by 10 points or more, compared to 10 of their first 21. And get a load of this: As of tip-off against the Heat, the Wolves had trailed for nearly three consecutive games -- the final 44:09 against Portland on Jan. 2, followed by two wire-to-wire drubbings against Denver and Dallas -- and 315:45 of a possible 384 minutes in the eight losses.
"Right now, the issue is guys getting beat down and losing their competitive edge,'' Minnesota's VP of basketball operations, Kevin McHale, said after practice Monday. "You can't do that. You can do a lot of stuff, but you cannot not compete. The losses pile up, you knew it would be an up-and-down year, you knew there was going to be fluctuations. The problem is, you hit the bottom of that thing, you lose your 'thinking-you-should-win,' you lose all those things mentally that make you competitive.''
The Wolves, through their first 30 games, led or were tied at halftime 12 times; they lost 10 of those. Twelve times, they were up or even with 12 minutes left -- and lost. More recently, though, the close ones that got away have gone away.
McHale said he knew, by experience, that rebuilding so completely, shedding veterans (and salaries) and selling tickets to these unsightly practices-that-count would be a struggle. Yet he assembled the roster that way anyway, with key parts from a Celtics club that lost 58 times last season.
"If you have eight or nine young guys and you're trying to find a core group to move forward with,'' McHale said, "it's very seldom do all eight or nine guys just flourish and go.''
Wait. What's that stirring sound from the Pacific Northwest? Is that you, Sasquatch?
Nope, it's the bouncing baby Blazers, a team even younger than the Wolves but with five times their victory total.
Portland began the season with an average age of 24 years, 26 days. With 10 of 15 players age 24 or younger and five no more than 21 years old, they are the NBA's youngest team now and its third youngest ever. And yet, they ran off a 13-2 record in December, have built an impressive home-court advantage (16-3) and already have learned the valuable lesson of doing your work early (tied or ahead after the first quarter in 15 of their last 17 games) to lighten their load late.
The Blazers' best player is Brandon Roy, 23; he's the one Portland got in its 2006 draft switcheroo with the Wolves for now-injured Randy Foye. LaMarcus Aldridge is 22, Travis Outlaw is 23, Martell Webster is 21 and Greg Oden, who hasn't played a minute, is 19. When Portland general manager Kevin Pritchard shipped forward Zach Randolph, 25 at the time, to New York in June, his team actually got younger (once he bought out Steve Francis). Most of them soon will vote in their first or second presidential election.
"We're young, but we weren't going to let them use that as an excuse,'' Blazers assistant coach Maurice Lucas said last week in Minneapolis, after helping some of the kids through pre-game warm-ups. "Same thing with Oden. Why should that stop these guys from getting better?''
Oden, the league's No. 1 draft pick, is out this season after knee surgery. The city of Portland initially sagged with the news and the Blazers started 5-12, but finally accepted that the cavalry wasn't coming.
"Why shouldn't you be able to play when you're young?'' Lucas said. "When we won, we were the youngest championship team ever.''
That Portland club that won the 1977 NBA title was built around Bill Walton, 24; Lucas, 25; Lionel Hollins, 23; Bob Gross, 23; and Johnny Davis, 21. The franchise itself was only seven years old, never finishing above .500 prior to that season. Jack Ramsay, its coach, felt the team's youth made it malleable, willing to accept his system and share the ball.
"This is a young bloods' league,'' Lucas said. "They were all the best in college or high school, why shouldn't they be good here? We talked to them [about Oden] and told them we wouldn't accept that as an excuse.''
Farther down the court, Wolves coach Randy Wittman -- 16-59 since taking over for Dwane Casey last January, with the first loss coming at Portland last winter -- admired the Blazers' turnaround.
"We need to really look at what they're doing,'' Wittman said. "They went through a period, the last couple of years, of trying to figure out which direction they were going to go in -- which young guys they were going to keep, which ones they were going to move.
"That's kind of what we're doing. We're evaluating which guys we want to move forward with, where we need help, in the draft and in the offseason. We're still a long way away.''
With not a lot of time, and even less patience from fans and critics, at least in terms of individual job security. Being too young can get old quickly.
"These guys need to know, the NBA can go so fast,'' veteran Wolves guard Marko Jaric said. "You can be here one day and then out of the league. Players think they have time [to prove themselves], and then I get a call, 'Marko, where is a good place to eat in Belgium?' ''
Steve Aschburner covered the Minnesota Timberwolves and the NBA for 13 seasons for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He has served as president or vice president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association since 2005.
Going green
Blazers (unlike Wolves) show you can win with youth
Young Man's Game
The Blazers are the NBA's youngest team and the third youngest in league history
Player Age Years of experience
LaMarcus Aldridge 22 1
Steve Blake 27 4
Channing Frye 24 2
Taurean Green 21 Rookie
Jarrett Jack 24 2
James Jones 27 4
Raef LaFrentz 31 9
Josh McRoberts 20 Rookie
Darius Miles 26 6
Greg Oden 19 Rookie
Travis Outlaw 23 4
Joel Przybilla 28 7
Sergio Rodriguez 21 1
Brandon Roy 23 1
Martell Webster 21 2
Whoever it was who first said, "Youth is wasted on the young'' -- George Bernard Shaw, songwriter Sammy Cahn or the nosy guy on the porch in that Jimmy Stewart movie -- must have had the NBA in mind.
With an occasional exception like the Portland Trail Blazers.
The San Antonio Spurs, the closest thing these days to an NBA dynasty, routinely start four players age 30 or older (Bruce Bowen, 36; Michael Finley, 34; Fabricio Oberto, 32; and Tim Duncan, 31). So will the perennially contending Detroit Pistons once Richard Hamilton hits that milestone age on Feb. 14 (Antonio McDyess, 33; Rasheed Wallace, 33; Chauncey Billups, 31; and Hamilton).
Denver, too, starts four 30-year-olds these days around Carmelo Anthony. Boston has gone from the bottom to the top relying on a trio of relative NBA/AARP straddlers. And the catalyst of the Western Conference's most successful team to date, Phoenix, is a point guard who soon will turn 34, with an aching back and more miles on his odometer than Ricky Rudd.
Then there's Minnesota, built from the ground down this season, with nine players who are age 25 or younger and as many skinned knees as you might expect from such a kiddie corps. Losers in 29 of their first 33 games, the Timberwolves seem to have regressed from training wheels to tricycles lately, lugging an eight-game losing streak into Tuesday night's clash with Miami (nearly as inept and admittedly older) that is longer than any endured in 12 seasons of the Kevin Garnett era.
Six of those eight losses were by 10 points or more, compared to 10 of their first 21. And get a load of this: As of tip-off against the Heat, the Wolves had trailed for nearly three consecutive games -- the final 44:09 against Portland on Jan. 2, followed by two wire-to-wire drubbings against Denver and Dallas -- and 315:45 of a possible 384 minutes in the eight losses.
"Right now, the issue is guys getting beat down and losing their competitive edge,'' Minnesota's VP of basketball operations, Kevin McHale, said after practice Monday. "You can't do that. You can do a lot of stuff, but you cannot not compete. The losses pile up, you knew it would be an up-and-down year, you knew there was going to be fluctuations. The problem is, you hit the bottom of that thing, you lose your 'thinking-you-should-win,' you lose all those things mentally that make you competitive.''
The Wolves, through their first 30 games, led or were tied at halftime 12 times; they lost 10 of those. Twelve times, they were up or even with 12 minutes left -- and lost. More recently, though, the close ones that got away have gone away.
McHale said he knew, by experience, that rebuilding so completely, shedding veterans (and salaries) and selling tickets to these unsightly practices-that-count would be a struggle. Yet he assembled the roster that way anyway, with key parts from a Celtics club that lost 58 times last season.
"If you have eight or nine young guys and you're trying to find a core group to move forward with,'' McHale said, "it's very seldom do all eight or nine guys just flourish and go.''
Wait. What's that stirring sound from the Pacific Northwest? Is that you, Sasquatch?
Nope, it's the bouncing baby Blazers, a team even younger than the Wolves but with five times their victory total.
Portland began the season with an average age of 24 years, 26 days. With 10 of 15 players age 24 or younger and five no more than 21 years old, they are the NBA's youngest team now and its third youngest ever. And yet, they ran off a 13-2 record in December, have built an impressive home-court advantage (16-3) and already have learned the valuable lesson of doing your work early (tied or ahead after the first quarter in 15 of their last 17 games) to lighten their load late.
The Blazers' best player is Brandon Roy, 23; he's the one Portland got in its 2006 draft switcheroo with the Wolves for now-injured Randy Foye. LaMarcus Aldridge is 22, Travis Outlaw is 23, Martell Webster is 21 and Greg Oden, who hasn't played a minute, is 19. When Portland general manager Kevin Pritchard shipped forward Zach Randolph, 25 at the time, to New York in June, his team actually got younger (once he bought out Steve Francis). Most of them soon will vote in their first or second presidential election.
"We're young, but we weren't going to let them use that as an excuse,'' Blazers assistant coach Maurice Lucas said last week in Minneapolis, after helping some of the kids through pre-game warm-ups. "Same thing with Oden. Why should that stop these guys from getting better?''
Oden, the league's No. 1 draft pick, is out this season after knee surgery. The city of Portland initially sagged with the news and the Blazers started 5-12, but finally accepted that the cavalry wasn't coming.
"Why shouldn't you be able to play when you're young?'' Lucas said. "When we won, we were the youngest championship team ever.''
That Portland club that won the 1977 NBA title was built around Bill Walton, 24; Lucas, 25; Lionel Hollins, 23; Bob Gross, 23; and Johnny Davis, 21. The franchise itself was only seven years old, never finishing above .500 prior to that season. Jack Ramsay, its coach, felt the team's youth made it malleable, willing to accept his system and share the ball.
"This is a young bloods' league,'' Lucas said. "They were all the best in college or high school, why shouldn't they be good here? We talked to them [about Oden] and told them we wouldn't accept that as an excuse.''
Farther down the court, Wolves coach Randy Wittman -- 16-59 since taking over for Dwane Casey last January, with the first loss coming at Portland last winter -- admired the Blazers' turnaround.
"We need to really look at what they're doing,'' Wittman said. "They went through a period, the last couple of years, of trying to figure out which direction they were going to go in -- which young guys they were going to keep, which ones they were going to move.
"That's kind of what we're doing. We're evaluating which guys we want to move forward with, where we need help, in the draft and in the offseason. We're still a long way away.''
With not a lot of time, and even less patience from fans and critics, at least in terms of individual job security. Being too young can get old quickly.
"These guys need to know, the NBA can go so fast,'' veteran Wolves guard Marko Jaric said. "You can be here one day and then out of the league. Players think they have time [to prove themselves], and then I get a call, 'Marko, where is a good place to eat in Belgium?' ''
Steve Aschburner covered the Minnesota Timberwolves and the NBA for 13 seasons for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He has served as president or vice president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association since 2005.