Reminiscing With Ratke | FIBA, Mutombo And A Preview To A Preview

It’s early September. Topics for this column are limited. We all need training camp. This column needs training camp.

Four more weeks.

This week’s column includes international play, the finger wag, Miguel Sano’s rise, and our plan to preview the upcoming season.

Enjoy.

Most NBA fans are like, “Okay, can NBA 2K16 come out already? I need basketball back in my life.”

Well, 2K doesn’t come out until the end of the month, but you can get your basketball fix throughout the next two weeks during international play.

There are four members of the Wolves who are and have appeared in international play thus far.

Center Gorgui Dieng led Senegal to a fourth place finish in the AfroBasket last week. He looked very solid, averaging 22.9 points and 14.9 rebounds per game, both tournament highs. He was named to the tournament’s All-Star Five.

Read up about Dieng’s domination here.

Anthony Bennett and Andrew Wiggins are representing Canada as I type this. Currently they are playing against Cuba in a game that Canada will surely win. The two have Canada up by 30 at half right now, so yeah. Mark it as a W. Canada is in preliminary play right now. It will play again on Thursday and Friday of this week. Both games start at 6 p.m. CST. The games can be streamed on ESPN3 (if you have it). So far, Wiggins and Bennett have looked good.

You can read about how they performed in their first game here.

And then there’s one of the newer members of the Wolves, Nemanja Bjelica. He’ll be representing Serbia in the EuroBasket. He’ll kick things off on Saturday against Spain. Ricky Rubio likely would have been playing in this game if he were healthy. But here we are. It’s still worth keeping an eye on if you’re unfamiliar with Bjelica’s game.

It’s not the NBA, but it’s still basketball and it should help keep you busy before training camps open.

Make sure to keep up on Timberwolves.com as we will continue to update you on how these players are performing.

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Dikembe Mutombo is a Hall of Famer, and rightfully so. The dude ranks 11th all-time in defensive rebounds, 10th in offensive rebounds, 19th in total rebounds and second in blocks. He was a defensive force and his finger wag has made a seamless transition to beer pong tables across the nation.

If that’s not on his plaque in Springfield, it should be.

The Hawks announced earlier this week that they would be retiring Mutombo’s No. 55 jersey on Nov. 24 as they host the Boston Celtics.

Mutombo was great in his four and a half seasons in Atlanta. He was named an All-Star three times and led the league in rebounding and blocks twice.

His averages over 343 games with the Hawks: 11.9 points, 12.6 rebounds and 3.2 blocks per game. Certainly impressive numbers. Nobody can dispute that.

The question remains whether or not someone playing for a franchise less than a fourth of his career should have his jersey retired. As far as Mutombo ranks in Atlanta history: He’s behind players like Zaza Pachulia and Josh Smith for total offensive rebounds, Al Horford for defensive rebounds, Smith again for total rebounds and Smith also has 300 more blocks than Mutombo had in his career with the Hawks.

Smith never made an All-Star game and played with Atlanta for nine seasons, so he had about twice the time to get these numbers. But still, when I think of a player getting his jersey retired, I think of someone who was entrenched in their team for a decade or so - not four and a half years. Obviously, there are extreme situations that end in retired jerseys, and Minnesota fans know that all too well.

Counting Mutombo, the Hawks have retired four players’ jerseys. Only the Magic, Heat, Wolves, Mavericks, Hornets and Pelicans have retired less than four, so maybe the new Atlanta ownership group felt like it was a good opportunity to start their regime.

There’s no right or wrong answer here. Just something to think about.

Believe it or not, summer is pretty much over. Kids are going back to school. Adults are doing exactly what they were doing before (this is depressing). Your beer softball league is coming to an end and you’ll replace your beer intake with Monday Night or Thursday Night Football. And in underrated news, it will be cool to wear hoodies again.

With the end of summer comes the beginning of the NBA season. Teams will open up training camps at the end of September and we’ll start to see how rookies fit in a faster league. We’ll see players hit the waiver wire after teams make roster decisions. While watching the games is a blast, so is speculation on what could happen. That’s probably why we treat the trade deadline like it’s a national holiday.

We will be starting our 2015-16 NBA Preview for Timberwolves.com on Sept. 8. We will start best to worst. This unfortunately works because the Wolves finished with an NBA-worst 16 wins last season. We figured we would preview our team last.

Last season, we had a written preview for each team. That was great and I was really proud of the job Dane Mizutani and I did. But we decided to turn up the heat a little bit.

Like last year, we will be releasing a written preview of a team per day. We will alternate from West to East and will start with the Golden State Warriors. Unlike last year, we will also have a video featuring me breaking down the team. And what I’m most excited for, we will have an audio element. I will interview a beat writer, NBA guru or fan about the team for 10-to-15 minutes and post it as well. It won’t be the BS Report (please come back, Bill), but our digital team thinks it will be something fans will enjoy leading up to the season. Our first guest will be Zach Harper of CBS Sports. If you don’t know Harper, you should. Does he tweet more than anyone ever should? Maybe. Does he think his hair is better than everyone else’s? Absolutely. But he’s one of the best in the business. He’s smart and funny. And yes, he does have an above-average hair game.

(This is starting to read like I’m setting him up on eHarmony or something.)

While our job is to inform you about the Wolves, we believe it’s also important to inform you about the 29 other teams in the league.

I’m really excited for this, you guys. This is going to be a lot of fun. A lot of work, yes. But a lot of fun as well.

When we start, please give as much feedback as possible on what we can improve on.

On Tuesday night, the lady friend and I went to the Twins game thanks to my friend and Twins photographer Brace Hemmelgarn.

I don’t know if the Twins will make the playoffs. The negativity that Minnesota sports has built in me since I was eight (thanks Gary Anderson) tells me no. They are currently a game out from the Wild Card, but man, meaningful baseball in September sure is fun.

And Miguel Sano. What in the Narnia. He is so freaking good.

My girlfriend asked me, “Why wasn’t he in the All-Star Game?”

If he was with the team in April, he just might have.

The Twins are getting fans to watch games in September. That’s really all you can ask for if you’re in their front office. Nobody saw this coming in the spring.

Keep it up, Twinkies.

For those of you who are heading to the Minnesota State Fair in the next few days, make sure to stop by the FAN Central hub. The Wolves have some cool stuff there, along with plenty of items for fans to check out.

I’ll be out there on Thursday from 1 to 5 p.m. If you deliver me this Mac & Cheese Cupcake, I’ll reimburse you and give you a hug. I’m not kidding. Someone please go get me a Mac & Cheese Cupcake.  

Here is a map of the State Fair. Don’t get lost and always remember to use the buddy system. There’s a reason why you’ve heard of it since you were five. It works.

Grantland.com’s Kirk Goldsberry wrote a great piece (like always) on scoring in pick-up ball. Most pick-up scoring consists of two-point shots (outside the three-point line) and one-point shots (inside the three-point line). This obviously (for you math majors) makes the shot from beyond the arc twice as valuable as say, a layup, especially when you’re only going up to 11.

Goldsberry proposed that all pick-up games should be scored just like an NBA game. And he’s probably right as far as fairness goes. But I play basketball a few times a week over lunch break and if Goldsberry was in charge of scoring one of our games, my value would decrease by 93 percent. My only value comes in the form of a lucky shot from deep per game. I don’t go into the paint. It’s dangerous in there.

You should really just read his article here.

The sneaky-good take away from it is Mark Cuban telling Goldsberry that he’s in some nonsense league that only plays by ones. Which should be illegal.

“Every game should be 1s only. No question. Why? Because the issue isn’t winning versus losing, the issue is fairness. Eleven by 1 gives everyone a chance to get a decent run in,” Cuban told Goldsberry.

For as competitive as Cuban is, that surprised me. It’s not about fairness, Mark. It’s about winning.

That’s all I’ve got this week. As always, thanks for reading. Enjoy you week.