By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

These days, beating the Minnesota Timberwolves – coached in an ever-more-bizarre manner by Kevin McHale in the absence of lone star Al Jefferson – falls somewhere on the degree-of-difficulty scale between “clubbing baby seals to death” and “blasting .300 Win Mag rounds into wolves from a helicopter.”

But just because this was a game the Warriors should have won doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be rewarded for actually, you know, winning it.

Their 42 defensive rebounds were a season-high, a mark made more impressive by the fact that the Timberwolves (with Jefferson at least) are a top-10 team in terms of their offensive rebounding. Minnesota grabbed a combined 37 offensive boards in two earlier meetings with the Warriors this year; last night, that number was 12.

Golden State should get extra credit for that, because even though Minnesota plumped up the Warriors’ DREB opportunities by shooting 35.9 percent, a large chunk of those misses (almost a third — 19 out of 59) came off of 3-pointers, which generate the long bounces that become prime OREB territory.

The Sit-The-Veterans Experiment schedule was thrown off when Ronny Turiaf came up legitimately unable to play due to illness, so Corey Maggette did not get a night of rest and instead came off the bench to make sure the Warriors’ didn’t threaten their season best for turnovers (six in 28 minutes; the rest of the team had combined totals of five in 212).

It’s been three games into the STVE, and I’m still not quite sure what Don Nelson is hoping to learn from the process. Friday against the Bobcats, without Jamal Crawford, we saw that a team shouldn’t expect to win a game if C.J. Watson has to play 44 minutes – but I think most everybody around the league and the Bay already knew that.

Sunday versus Utah was a little better, as Stephen Jackson’s vacated minutes went primarily to Anthony Randolph, who opened some eyes on offense, scoring a career-high 20 points, but gave up 16 at the other end. Twelver of those came in the first quarter before the Warriors were able to switch him off of Mehmet Okur (who had 11 of that dozen vs. Randolph in the first period) and onto less dangerous targets such as Paul Millsap and Andrei Kirilenko.

Tuesday in Minnesota, we got to see that Jermareo Davidson can play against a team with no motivation, no talent and no coaching. I’m not quite sure that proves he’s actually NBA-caliber. I’m definitely certain that there’s little reason the majority of those minutes shouldn’t have gone to Randolph.

There are 21 games remaining on the Warriors’ 2008-09 schedule. Within that timeframe, here are some tests I’d pay to see as part of the STVE initiative:

** Five consecutive games of 30-plus minutes for Randolph, who hasn’t played 30 minutes in a game all season.

** Same thing for Anthony Morrow, who has played 30 minutes in a night, but not since Jan. 25.

** Five consecutive games of 25-plus minutes – all at power forward, all alongside Andris Biedrins – for Turiaf.

** Five consecutive games of 25-plus minutes – all at point guard – for Marco Belinelli, to get a better gauge of where he’s at in the quest to get minutes there.

** Another sighting of Brandan Wright, even if it’s only for a few games.

** Monta Ellis with some sort of lift off that left leg.

Contact: geofflepper@48minutes.net