Wolves Unfiltered: Mark Madsen
By Stephen Litel
January 13th, 2009
Before the Minnesota Timberwolves five-game winning streak snapped at the hands of the Miami Heat Tuesday night, I sat down with Mark Madsen for a chat in the locker room. In the latest Unfiltered piece, Madsen discusses the team’s recent surge of improved play, energy, fun and…wins.
Litel: What’s the biggest difference in this team’s play the past couple weeks? Not only in garnering some wins, but in your overall improved play?
Madsen: “I think we’ve had a number of individual strong performances. Randy Foye has really had a breakout season in a lot of ways. He’s really coming into his own by showing what he can do in terms of breaking his man down off the dribble and in terms of hitting pressure three-pointers. What Randy Foye’s emergence does is opens the lane up for Al (Jefferson) to operate and for Al to showcase his abilities out of single coverage, out of double coverage and there are teams that triple team Al.”
“I think another component is Sebastian Telfair. He’s really always been a mature person, but he’s taken his poise and his ability to hit really big shots to an even higher level. He’s really been doing it since he came here, but he continues to do it with more and more regularity. That’s been huge for us.”
Could you see a gradual change in this team or did a light click on at some point, allowing for the improved play?
“I don’t know if there was really a watershed moment per se or a zenith of our turning this program around, but when you add up all those little packets and all those little sums, you know? Kevin McHale and the system he’s put in requires players to make plays and he entrusts us with a lot of responsibility to not be afraid to go outside of that framework of the offense when the conditions of the game dictate that.”
“You’ve seen Ryan Gomes and his aggressiveness level has been taken up a notch. All the extra repetitions, all the small things that Ryan’s been doing as it relates to his diet, the extra weight-lifting sessions to probably all the extra mental repetitions behind closed doors has become crucial to him really becoming a defensive stopper as well as taking his scoring to another level.”
This team is full of young men. Is the recent turnaround an indication of those young men maturing off the court and thereby showing a new maturity on the court?
“I think that is part of it. We did have an incident, but it’s nice, occasionally, to have a situation when emotions run high and we’ve had that in the last month or two. That tells me the guys care. I’m not going to go into details of who it was or what happened, but guys really care enough to really get into it. I don’t think we had that last season here. When I saw that--yeah, you might have had to of pulled guys apart for a second--but, in the long term, it’s two guys who really care about winning. If that attitude permeates throughout the rest of this team, good things are going to happen.”
Has this team “turned the corner” at this point as a whole and will, at the very least, compete each night? Are the 29-point blown leads a thing of the past?
“I’ll be honest with you, Stephen. I stated at the media sessions that I truly believed we could compete for a playoff opportunity and, if we get to the playoffs, we have the ability to compete for a championship. Now, I might have been slightly early in my prediction. We had a lot of close games that if they had gone the right way, we might be sitting within that scenario.”
“We can still get there. Could it be this season? Yeah, it could. Is it more than likely next season? Probably, but we’re still fighting for that ideal.”
Finally, is there anything you’d like to say directly to Timberwolves fans?
“There is and I would say this to all the Minnesota basketball fans and, in fact, NBA fans and fans of the game of basketball in general: come out and watch us play. Give us the opportunity to show you how hard we’re working. Come out and get to know Rodney Carney, who can electrify an arena, who can electrify a practice behind closed doors with his intensity, his athleticism and his intelligence. I mean, it’s a rare combination. Come out and give us the opportunity to share a great evening of the game of basketball together.”
