Rookie forward Kevin Love will assume the role of a Starbucks barista Tuesday morning, serving drinks to customers at the downtown Minneapolis City Center from 9-9:30 before heading off to practice.
Bill Ingram/Hoospworld lists the Wolves as one of the 4 sleeper teams in the West.
Believe it or not, the Timberwolves are playing very good basketball through preseason and could make things interesting when it comes time to determine the final playoff seedings in April. The arrival of Kevin Love spells a new era of big man basketball in Minnesota, and the Mike Miller addition will pay huge dividends. Rashad McCants seems to be ready to realize his potential, and Al Jefferson was a force in the paint as the Wolves finished preseason with a 6-2 record. Don’t be surprised if Minnesota becomes a tough stop on a Western Conference road trip.
The team will unveil its new Target Center floor Tuesday afternoon and it is said to be very different from its predecessor.
Some other pregame notes: About 1,000 tickets remain and the first 5,000 fans will receive a free Wolves hat courtesy of US Bank.
Tom Ziller/Fanhouse has Wittman on his list of those most likely to get fired this season.
Shockingly, the Wolves are building some expectations this year. No one dreams of 40 wins, but the team will at least need to be competitive throughout. There’s a lot of room for error here: Wittman’s roster is littered with special cases that need to be put in the right position to succeed, from Randy Foye to Ryan Gomes to Kevin Love. Something about Wittman’s last 120 or so games at the helm doesn’t provide encouragement, for some reason. Fall below Oklahoma City and say good night.
The Wolves held six of their eight opponents under 90 points, which was something that coach Randy Wittman and his staff stressed from the start of training camp on.
“It was a good preseason for us. We laid some parameters down of what we wanted to try to accomplish and it started on with our defense and I thought our guys bought into it. I thought our defense for the most part this preseason was pretty solid.”
All Shook Down and Locksmith Sports post season previews.
From Jay Weiner/MinnPost:
One sexy element of Target Center’s renovation plans has been an environmentally friendly green roof, which would become one of the nation’s biggest tree-huggable tops and the largest in Minnesota at 113,000 square feet.
Eighteen months ago, when arena and city officials began discussing this, a price tag of about $2.2 million was assumed, or perhaps $400,000 more than a standard roof. Energy savings were expected to pay off the capital cost difference within about five years.
Wrong again…
It appears as if the difference in costs between the standard one and the “garden” variety is nearly $4 million, not $400,000. This would shoot the costs sky high into the $5 million zone.
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