Drinking the Kool-Aid

So the NBA Draft happened, despite the death of the King of Pop. (As an aside, how pissed off is Farrah Fawcett's ghost right now? All people will say is "Oh yeah, she died on the same day as Michael Jackson, right?" until, oh, the apocalypse.) And a funny thing happened: all of the sudden, I can't go through a 30-minute ESPNews cycle without hearing a bunch of talk about our local cagers. There are two reactions to the T-Wolves draft that seem to be prevalent:

1. What the fuck was David Kahn thinking?
2. What the fuck was David Kahn thinking?

This, in response to Kahn taking two point guards with the numbers 5 and 6 overall picks. (Also, some advice for Kevin Love: maybe it's time to close the Twitter account.) It should come as no surprise to both of the Pierre Page's regular readers that I am ecstatic about how the draft turned out for the Wolves.

The prevailing sentiment leading up to the draft was that Kahn wanted two of these three players with his two top picks: Ricky Rubio, Tyreke Evans and Hasheem Thabeet. When Thabeet and then Evans got taken, Kahn jumped on Rubio like a Spaniard jumping on a poor photo-op decision. Then the baffling part: immediately afterwards, Kahn took Jonny Flynn, another point guard, this one decidedly less shaggy and less Spanish. Immediately, Jay Bilas et al started speculating about a deal in the works to get rid of one of the two, and fairly so: both Flynn and Rubio are pure point guards, so keeping both of them seems a bit silly.

Here's why I love the Timberwolves' draft strategy: right away, Rubio said he may not play in the NBA next season, if the Wolves keep him (instead of trading him to a bigger-market team). Say he stays in Spain, or goes to Turkey. The Wolves can keep his rights, and Kahn has made it clear he's building for about 2011-12. So let him go play. We can find out if Flynn is an NBA starter-caliber point guard. If he is, and I think he is, that puts leverage with Kahn and the Wolves. They can say, "Look, as an organization, we're doing just fine with Flynn, we're happy with him, etc." and wait for an exceptional deal for either Flynn or Rubio. And exceptional deals are out there: according to Kahn, one executive has already called him and offered one "untouchable" player on his roster, plus two other players, in exchange for the rights to Rubio.

Then, as a bonus, he takes Ty Lawson (another PG), with their 18th pick, trades him to the Nuggets for a future draft pick, but it's one that originally belonged to the perpetually awful Charlotte Bobcats. Beautiful. My man boner is officially cemented.

I think Kahn is a genius right now. Perhaps it's the reflected glow of simply not being Kevin McHale. (As an aside, I wish people would just stop saying that Glen Taylor wanted someone else more, and settled on Kahn after all other options fell through. This is the same Glen Taylor that had reiterated, with every shred of evidence to the contrary, that McHale was doing a great job, year in and year out. Just shut up already.)