Jerry Zgoda/Star Tribune on NBA players and Twitter.
O’Neal’s Twitter name is The_Real_Shaq and his profile says, “Very quotatious, I perform random acts of Shaqness.” Madsen and Cardinal are a little less loquacious. Cardinal posted four updates Wednesday, when the Wolves played at New Orleans. On Thursday, he posted one that read: “Day off here in Houston … Drinking a venti americano from Starbucks and watching the Boilermakers … Go Purdue.”
“I don’t have much that the world needs to know,” Cardinal said, “but it [Twitter] is full of things you don’t need to know. I’ve got a bunch of friends on it, and it’s an amazing way to keep in touch with everybody. And for fans, it lets them know what we’re doing. It lets them into our so-called world of traveling, getting ready for games, getting to sleep at night. It’s how kids communicate these days.”
Fresh off an 0-3 road trip, the Wolves got home early this morning and hit the practice court a few hours later.
Sunday, they will play a 2:30 p.m. matinee against the Oklahoma City Thunder at Target Center before hitting the road again for another three-game trip to Atlanta, Philadelphia and Cleveland.
That’s a tough 36-hour turnaround so late in the season, but Wolves coach Kevin McHale wasn’t cursing the schedule.
“Nope,” he said. “You’ve just got to go play; that’s all.”
STAR TRIBUNE’S STAR OF THE WEEK
Kevin Love, F/C: Averaged 19.3 points and 14.0 rebounds in the week’s three games, and just think if he had done anything in the first half of the first two games. He had 14 of his career-high 19 rebounds and all of his 17 points after halftime at San Antonio, then had eight of 11 rebounds and 16 of his 23 points in the second half at New Orleans.
Don Seeholzer/Pioneer Press on Sam Mitchell:
Wolves coach Kevin McHale hasn’t committed to returning next season, even though owner Glen Taylor has said he expects him to, but Mitchell said it would be improper to discuss the possibility of coaching his former team.
“First of all, a whole lot of things would have to happen for me to entertain answering that question,” he said. “Kevin McHale is the coach and that’s going to be Kevin McHale’s and Glen Taylor’s decision. It has nothing to do with Sam Mitchell. I’m not going to sit here and try to speculate on what’s going to happen because I don’t know. If for whatever reason something like that happened, then it would an appropriate time for me to think about it and, if they were interested, talk to them about it. But right now it’s not even worth talking about because you have to assume and figure that Kevin McHale’s the coach. He’s going to be the coach until something different happens.”
From Marc Stein/ESPN:
The Wolves would have four first-round picks in the June draft — giving them an extra trade asset or two, if nothing else, in a draft no one is calling deep — should Utah’s late-season push result in a draft pick that winds up at No. 23 or lower. The Jazz retain the pick for this draft if it falls between No. 1 and No. 22. If it doesn’t, Minnesota adds it to its own lottery pick and first-rounders previously acquired from Miami and Boston.
The draft pick in question was actually sent by the Jazz to Philadelphia in the Kyle Korver trade on Dec. 26, 2007, in Ed Stefanski’s first deal as Sixers GM, then routed by the Sixers to Minnesota in July as an incentive for the Wolves to take on the contracts of Rodney Carney and Calvin Booth when Philly was trying to clear the salary-cap space needed to sign Elton Brand.
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