Basketball blues

The NBA draft lottery for Timberwolves fans is like the playoffs for Viking fans: we get our hopes up every time, every time we're massively disappointed, and every time we react with the same "This always happens to us!" combination of anger, depression, and shrug-your-shoulders-and-grimace ennui.

The Minnesota Timberwolves won 15 games last season, and they weren't even that good. I can imagine some scenarios in which they aren't unwatchably awful next season (realistic scenarios, even), but those scenarios are pretty unlikely (they depend mostly on huge leaps from Jonny Flynn and Kevin Love, and the addition of a guard or small forward with legitimate scoring ability). They might be just as palpably terrible next year as they were this year.

The Timberwolves have some pieces I can talk myself into (Jonny Flynn, Kevin Love, Ricky Rubio), but they sure seem a long, long way from ever being competitive again.