The curious case of Mike Miller

It is a simple sketch, really, a line drawing of a basketball with a shooter's creed angled across it the way sailors often went with "Mom'' back in tattoos' drunk and tawdry days. In this case, the words are "Let it Fly'' and the design is unobtrusively high on Mike Miller's back, between the shoulder blades, just south of his neck.

Which, come to think of it, might be the problem. Just as with real estate, the key to body art is location, location, location. Miller and his team, the Minnesota Timberwolves, might be better served if this particular one was smack dab in the middle of his forehead. Oh, and in reverse, the way ECNALUBMA gets painted on the front of an emergency vehicle. That way, the veteran swingman could read it every morning, a reminder each time he looked in the mirror: YLF TI TEL.

Maybe then, he would practice what the ink under his skin preaches.

This is the curious case of Mike Miller, a bona fide NBA sharpshooter who wants to do anything but shoot, as determinedly and as inexplicably as Brad Pitt's Benjamin Button aging from old to young. His play this season has been nothing short of confounding to Minnesota fans and league faithful, a one-man wrecking crew doing a 180 on an NBA cliché. Miller has been the antithesis of the claim that every player in the league would gladly jack up more shots if he could, that his life would be an endless loop of "Yes!'' if not for some coach constantly tell him "No.''

It is hurting his team, as much as any single failing can hurt an 18-42 team. And it is as unusual a man-bites-dog NBA story as exists right now.

You could argue that, when the 2008-09 season began, only Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Dirk Nowitzki and a few other stars had greener lights to shoot the ball than Miller. The Wolves acquired him on draft night last June, swapping the rights to O.J. Mayo for Miller and rookie Kevin Love, in the belief that the shooter's demonstrated range and frequency would make their offense more efficient. Miller would pull defenders out of the paint, where they too often sagged to help against low-post load Al Jefferson. That also would open lanes to the rim for Randy Foye's dribble-drives or some other teammate cutting through. Meanwhile, Miller would be putting up points at something approximating his 40 percent career rate of three-point success or his 50.2 field-goal percentage overall in 2007-08.

Projection vs. reality? Miller is shooting 49.5 percent overall. He's at 36.5 percent from beyond the arc, but he'd be right around 40 percent if a half dozen of his misses were makes. And yet, he is averaging a career-low 9.9 points because he routinely, oddly, passes up shots. Game after game after game.

The guy Wolves coach Kevin McHale has described as a "world-class shooter'' ranks sixth on the team in field-goal attempts and 10th in terms of shot frequency. That is, on a per-minute basis, Miller's one hoist every 4.27 minutes he's on the floor is lower not only than acknowledged scorers Jefferson (1.88) and Foye (2.50) but also Ryan Gomes (2.89), Rodney Carney (2.94), Craig Smith (3.07), Sebastian Telfair (3.17), Love (3.24) and injured Corey Brewer (3.41). Even newcomer Bobby Brown (2.06), an undrafted fringe guy acquired from Sacramento, is out-launching Miller since arriving at the trade deadline.

Worse, Miller isn't playing like the Upper Midwest product (Mitchell, S.D.) the Wolves coveted during his years in Orlando and Memphis. Over his first eight NBA seasons, when his scoring ability earned him the Rookie of the Year award in 2001 and the Sixth Man trophy in 2006, Miller shot the ball 6,482 times in 18,229 minutes, an average of once per 2.81 minutes. Now he's at 4.27, representing a 50 percent decline in his scoring attempts. What gives?

"We get in trouble when we don't move the ball,'' Miller said, offering what has become his boilerplate answer on the topic. "My job on this team is sometimes to pull up and sometimes to move the ball. We don't play well when we don't move the ball. If we just play on one side of the floor and take two, three dribbles and shoot, we're in a lot of trouble.''