It’s good to be back after a week-long blog hiatus and report Stephon Marbury is on a plane to Minnesota as we write to visit cousin Sebastian Telfair amid an ESPN.com story suggesting the Celtics would be the top candidate when Starbury is waived. Marbury was planning to check out Wolves-Warriors tonight and see Telfair vs. Jamal Crawford live, then head to Detroit for a business meeting..
During his short stay at UCLA, Love was able to get advice from UCLA alum Bill Walton. One would think that Walton would give him advice on basketball, but it didn’t exactly go that way.
“He really didn’t talk about basketball. He mainly talked about going out there and having fun, seeing the women, going to the beaches, and that sort of the thing. Just enjoy Bruin life and everything that it had to do with UCLA.”
But McHale’s greatest attribute as a coach was intact — he can look players in the eye and unflinchingly dissect the game, and their games, as if he still were wearing that green-and-white No. 32 jersey, along with the three rings — and the Wolves sandwiched victories at New York and in overtime against Memphis around a loss to Orlando last weekend.
Spirits were high in Dallas, too, when Minnesota jumped out by seven after one quarter and 46-30 when Carlisle got tossed. It’s hard to say that the Mavericks had the Wolves right where they wanted them, what with the gap growing to 22 by halftime and eventually to 29 points early in the third. But the circumstances seemed so ripe for Casey that, in hindsight, you wondered if the assistant offered to pay Carlisle’s fine for the technicals.
The Suns’ Shaquille O’Neal is 668,151 votes behind Houston’s Yao Ming for the starting Western Conference center spot in next month’s All-Star Game at US Airways Center. But the NBA’s most-recognized player can lean on his game instead of his fame this time…
Yao is a lock to start for the West, but no other West center besides Minnesota’s Al Jefferson (22.6 points, 10.3 rebounds per game) has better season averages than O’Neal (17.2 points, 8.9 rebounds).
Jonah Ballow/Timberwolves site posts shootaround audio with Al Jefferson and assistant coach JB Bickerstaff talking about tonight’s game.
Wolves coach Kevin McHale says Mike Miller will be a game-time decision again for tonight’s game against Golden State.
Miller, who has missed the last five games because of a sprained right ankle, says he’s playing.
“It’s a go,” he said after today’s morning shootaround. “It’s not going to be 100 percent yet, but it’s as close as it’s going to be. It’s going to be sore for a little bit, but it’s all right.”
Hoiberg spoke about making healthy decisions. He, Nisleit and four of her friends posed for photos sporting their milk mustaches.
And then Hoiberg joined an unscripted part. One of Nisleit’s friends was making a film for a class project and asked Hoiberg to do a cameo. He agreed.
“He was so nice about it,” Nisleit said. “He’s a great guy. It was a blast.”