RunOnSpeech

Minnesota Timberwolves president of basketball operations David Kahn held a press conference to introduce his newest player. Read the following excerpt from a Jim Souhan column in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (9/16/09).

Kahn went after [Ramon] Session to replace [Ricky] Rubio, at least temporarily. How does Kahn feel about that draft choice now?

"Right now, I feel like we did the right thing," he said.

He was just warming up.

Get comfortable, this is going to take awhile.

The following actually escaped from Kahn's mouth in one long sentence: "And I feel like, the way this played out this summer, it became even more apparent to me that his value, because of what he has already accomplished as a professional, and the way he plays and the buzz around him, will mean that the value that he has will hold, and that however we choose to exploit the value--meaning whether he's in our uniform or somebody else's uniform, and I really hope he's in our uniform, by the way, but I also have to acknowledge that I don't know what will happen over the next couple of years--but clearly at that position, there wasn't anybody else we could have taken that could have helped us for the future of this franchise like he could have whether he's here or elsewhere, and so I think you can make an argument down the road--I'm the first to say that five, seven years from now, we may be able to go back and look at the draft and clearly point out that it was the wrong thing to do."

And breath...

I think that last section could qualify as an entry in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, where writers compose a single wretched sentence to open the worst of all possible novels. Compared to the expectations for his NBA team in 2009-2010, he might even rank higher in the writing contest.

In case you are unfamiliar with the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, it is based on the following selection:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
--Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)