The Wolves stink. I know it, you know it, most of the country knows it. It comes as no surprise, then, that most of the Wolves chatter in blogs, message boards and traditional media has surrounded player movement and just what the hell McHale and Co. will do to get themselves out of this one.

I started a series about finding Big Al a frontcourt mate, but in retrospect it was premature. Before we continue the "How to Fix the Wolves" talk, I thought it would be valuable to look at how successful teams have been put together.

This analysis has holes, to be sure, but it's just a start that will hopefully light a fire in your minds as to how us wanna-be GMs think about our armchair hobbies.

"Success" is defined in this rudimentary study as championship rings, playoff appearances and average annual wins over the last five years (in that order). While I hope this makes obvious sense, I want to point out the biggest hole: below I correlate how today's rosters were composed with historical performance. Not only does this fail to account for "potential," but with rosters churning at high rates (especially for worse teams) it's tough to attribute a 50-win season in 02-03 to today's roster.

With that out of the way, here is how teams shake out:

1. San Antonio: 3 championships, 5 playoff appearances, 59.4 wins per season
2. Detroit: 1, 5, 55.0
3. Miami: 1, 4, 44.4
4. Dallas: 0, 5, 59.4
5. New Jersey: 0, 5, 45.6
6. Phoenix: 0, 4, 50.0
7. Sacramento: 0, 4, 48.2
8. Indiana: 0, 4, 45.8
9. LA Lakers: 0, 4, 45.4
10. Houston: 0, 4, 45.0
11. Denver: 0, 4, 39.6
12. Chicago: 0, 3, 38.0
13. Washington: 0, 3, 38.0
14. Boston: 0, 3, 36.4
15. Milwaukee: 0, 3, 36.2
16. Memphis: 0, 3, 32.8
17. Minnesota: 0, 2, 43.6
18. Utah: 0, 2, 41.4
19. Philadelphia: 0, 2, 39.4
20. Cleveland: 0, 2, 38.8
21. New Orleans: 0, 2, 36.6
22. Orlando: 0, 2, 35.0
23. Seattle: 0, 1, 39.0
24. Golden State: 0, 1, 37.0
25. LA Clippers: 0, 1, 35.8
26. Portland: 0, 1, 34.2
27. New York: 0, 1, 33.0
28. Toronto: 0, 1, 32.8
29. Atlanta: 0, 0, 26.6
30. Charlotte: 0, 0, 15.4

As you can see, the limitations of this ranking become apparent pretty quickly. The Heat and Kings are in much worse shape right now that they have been over the last 5 years. Utah, Portland and New Orleans seem to have much brighter futures than their rankings indicate. Charlotte can be excused given that they're an expansion team.

Next time I'll take a look at how the best and worst teams on this list are put together. I am, of course, open to any suggestions on fixing the ranking to better reflect things like this season (see Celtics, Boston and Timberwolves, Minnesota) as well as potential success or failure.

Until next time.