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Game previews:
True. When Love’s knee slammed into Corey Maggette’s with three minutes to play, dropping him to the ground writhing in pain while he held his left knee, there was an immediate hush in the Target Center. The words “season-ending knee surgery” must have occurred to just about every ticket-holder in the place.
But not to Love. “I knew it wasn’t anything serious. It’s happened to me before,” the second-year forward said. “But when you bump an elbow or a knee, it hurts so bad, you don’t want to get up for a minute.”
Love says he was limping a little at practice on Thursday. But he expects to be ready to play the Indiana Pacers on Friday at Target Center.

Coach Kurt Rambis says the collision caused no structural damage to Love’s knee.

From John Hollinger/ESPN: Top under-the-radar performers
Kevin Love, Minnesota
Love missed the start of the season with a broken bone in his hand, but he’s been ridiculously efficient since returning 18 games ago. For starters, he leads all power forwards in rebound rate — and only Dwight Howard and Greg Oden outrank him leaguewide. Additionally, he’s shown himself to be a capable scorer. Love’s 19.5 points per 40 minutes make him a solid third option in Minny, especially since he’s nearly doubled his assist ratio from last season.

Sum it all up, and his 23.37 PER ranks fourth among power forwards and is just 0.21 from being second. He won’t make the All-Star team because his team is bad and his D remains suspect, but at age 21 Love already is an All-Star caliber player.

Wolves president of basketball operations David Kahn denied speculation that former NBA player Trent Tucker is being considered for a position with the organization.

Tucker attended Monday’s practice and sat with Kahn during Wednesday night’s game.

“I was just trying to spend some time with Trent to get to know him and get his insights on things,” Kahn said. “Trent’s been in the league and he’s well respected. Why not talk and listen to a guy with his experience?”

From Benjamin Polk/City Pages: Timberwolves bow to Warriors
Bad news is the Wolves lost again but I insist that things are getting better. Wednesday’s 107-101 loss might make some of you scoff at my suggestion, but it’s true. These Wolves are not the same team that got pummeled then with the worst loss in franchise history. But even with Al Jefferson taking over with help from Corey Brewer in the third period, even with increased offensive production from Brewer (nice season high of 27 on December 27) and even with the recent lift provided by the return of Kevin Love, the Wolves still aren’t doing the little things that will consistently get them past some of these losses.
The adjustments have been slow to come, and the frustrations have been easily seen on Flynn’s expressive face.

“It’s tough learning this system because it takes your instincts out of it,” Flynn said. “You have to do a lot of reading and a lot of reacting to what the defense dictates.”

Through it all, Rambis has tried to keep the lines of communication open, and their relationship is still a work in progress.

“We talk,” Flynn said. “I wish our relationship was a little better, but we talk, though. He’s a guy that I always go to and talk about anything I want. He pulls me to the side and talks to me. We definitely have a player-coach relationship.”

Eventually, he’ll ask more, but the 51-year-old coach is almost Zen-like — wonder where he learned that — in his patience with his mistake-prone team.

“He corrects us, he points out what we did wrong, but he doesn’t get mad at us,” guard Ramon Sessions said last week. “He wants to teach us, not yell at us.”

Good thing, because as Rambis points out with monotonous regularity after every demoralizing defeat, the Wolves’ defining characteristic is their just-learning-to-crawl basketball adolescence.

In an interview with the French newspaper L’Equipe, Ricky Rubio explains his choice to sign with the FC Barcelona and stay in Europe: he wants to win everything here before coming to the NBA. But is he really sure to come? Maybe one day…

“Ultimately, I preferred to stay in Europe. When I stand back, I know I made the right choice. We’ll see if I’m going to the NBA one day, when I feel ready,” Ricky Rubio said. Asked if his choice to stay in Europe has a link with the fact that he was drafted by a weak team like Minnesota, he denied: “No, otherwise I didn’t enter the draft. Simply, there were many reasons … The clause, but also the feeling that I had not done everything in Europe. For example, I have never been Spain’s champion. I have never won the Euroleague either. That’s why I signed with Barcelone, I want to win everything.”