Is It Time To Abandon Ship?

The Minnesota Timberwolves are sinking, well more like falling off a cliff. They currently sit five games out of the eight and final playoff spot in the Western Conference, and they have only won two games out of their last 13 games played.

I will give the T-Wolves a little break because Rick Adelman was not on the bench during this losing streak because of family issues, but is it time for this team to abandon this season, and sell off some of their talent?

Their is one problem in doing that, the fans. The fans haven't seen a winning season since the 2004-2005 season, so trying to win them back over after all the hype leading into this season will be a tough problem for Minnesota to over come.

Also Kevin Love. He wants to win, and his opt-out clause is only two years away. Love is a franchise player, a player that packs arenas day-in, and day-out. A player you can build around to win championships, so by abandoning this season the organization would be giving Love a lot a good reasons to leave Minnesota in two years.

Another possibility is too just move the Timberwolves. Since their inaugural season in 1989 this teams has been destined to fail. We have had knuckle push-ups, "I need more money to feed my family", and who could forget Darko Milicic, and the list goes on, and on. Maybe the land that the Target Center sits on his jinked. You can could go far as to say that the warehouse district in Minneapolis is an old Indian burial ground, because since the Minnesota Twins moved next door they have lost almost 300 games in three seasons, and we also have the infamous "bi-lateral leg weakness", so maybe we can blame the land for our teams sucking in stadiums, and arenas named after Target.

Just moving the T-Wolves is the knee-jerk reaction, but lets focus on what the T-Wolves can do in order to overcome this season. The first thing to do is just plain and simple GET HEALTHY. Even before the season tipped off Love broke his hand, and since then Brandon Roy, Chase Budinger, Josh Smith, and everyone else on the team not named Luke Ridnour has been injured.

If this team was healthy, and that is a big if; then we could of seen the NBA playoffs return to this state, but instead fans are thinking that this team will never return back to the playoffs. What the Timberwolves need to do is start looking at next year. Trade away some pieces like Andrei Kirilenko, Derrick Williams, and even Kevin Love.

This team is heading toward a dark time where they will have to chose either Team Rubio or Team Love, and by not giving Love the max contract last year, then that means David Kahn thinks Ricky Rubio is this teams franchise player. Love could bring back a lot of talent in a trade, maybe even bringing back Pau Gasol, who is good friends with Ricky Rubio.

Some fans might hold out hope that this years team might actually make the playoffs, but with how the past few weeks have looked, that hope is fading faster, and faster; and the rest of Minnesota sports fans have already migrated to Saint Paul to watch the Minnesota Wild. The old sports cliche "their is always next year" should be the Minnesota Timberwolves motto for the rest of this season.