People are stupid: Timberwolves beat reporters edition

Tom Powers (hat tip to Truehoop) says

As midnight approached, it was announced that Wolves vice president Kevin McHale still was working on 'a deal' and wouldn't be able to make an appearance in the pressroom for some time. We all groaned. His deals usually suck. No one put it past him to trade Mayo in the middle of the night. As it turned out, we were right. His deal sucked. He traded Mayo in the middle of the night. There is no hope for this franchise.

For the background, the Timberwolves drafted O.J. Mayo, a player who scores a lot but kind of sucks (you all know by now that scoring lots isn't as important as scoring efficiently, right?  And that scoring a lot very inefficiently is even worse than not scoring at all?  Right?), with the third pick of the draft, then traded him, Antoine Walker (another guy who scores a lot very inefficiently), Marko Jaric (the most overpaid player in the league), and Greg Buckner (who?) for Mike Miller (a guy who scores a lot very efficiently....HMMMMM....), Kevin Love (a guy who scored very efficiently in college, and grabbed a ton of boards...HMMMMM....), and some other dudes with big contracts that cancel out Jaric and Buckner's bad contracts.

And Tom thinks this sucks.  Well, Tom, you are an idiot.  This isn't really knews to any twin cities sports fans; the man has let his blind hatred of Kevin McHale (who, in all fairness, has made some doozies in terms of stupid moves) color every article he ever writes about the Wolves for years now.  But this deal is good.  No, wait, this deal is AWESOME.  This deal is moneyball-like goodness.

The wolves just replaced two guys with negative win scores, a rookie who's WAY overrated, and an overpaid journeyman who's a little sub-par with probably the best small forward in the west (yes, I said that, and yes, I know Lamar Odom plays small forward) who's only 28 years old, and a rookie who will get paid less (yay, pay scale!), rebound more, score more efficiently, defend tougher, and knows how to win.  In fact, short of drafting Kevin Garnett, this is by far the best deal McHale or any other Wolves exec has ever done.

And I want to get some predictions on this blog here because I am SO going to enjoy pointing back to this blog post in 2-3 years:

1. OJ Mayo is going to score a lot of points in the league, and convince a lot of guys that he is a star player.  But like Carmelo Anthony, Jamal Crawford, and other innefficient scorers with bad assists-turnover ratios and poor rebound rates, his teams won't win as long as he's the focal point.
2. The Timberwolves will not only win more than they did last year, they will win substantially more than the Grizzlies.
3. Kevin Love is going to be one of those players who does not score a ton of points, but for some really strange reason guys like Tom Powers will never quite figure out, his teams will compete well anyway.
4. Timberwolves fans are going to freaking LOVE Mike Miller.

Seriously, Tom, you pick for "potential".  I'll pick the guy who scored 16 pts on 50% shooting (43%, yeah, that's right, FORTYTHREE PERCENT from beyond the ard) while grabbing 7 boards (as a small forward!) and dishing out 3.4 assists (as a small forward!).  Potential can kiss my ass.