Three months have passed since Milicic, acquired Wednesday in a trade with the New York Knicks, appeared in an NBA game. The 7-foot native of Serbia struggled with his conditioning Saturday but showed enough potential to help the Wolves (13-43) once he gets in shape.
“He was scoring on all of us in the post,” Wolves forward Kevin Love said of Milicic. “When he didn’t score a couple of times, he got upset. That’s the kind of thing you like to see.”
A Yeah, that’s one of the best things I like about him. He’s an honest guy. I really believe he would tell me and be honest about it. It’s a business. Everybody in the league, except for maybe one or two people, could be traded. David Kahn was brought here to do a job. … But I know for a fact that he’s an honest guy, and if something was going down I’d be the first to know.
In February, he has reached that 30-minute mark once in seven games and has three double-doubles.
So … what’s the deal?
Wolves coach Kurt Rambis calls the disparity mainly a matter of circumstance, a combination of factors that include nights such as Friday’s loss to Chicago when Love hasn’t played well and others like Tuesday in Detroit when a blowout loss caused Rambis to save Love’s legs for the next night’s game at Washington.
“Money always seems to be the main thing,” Taylor said. “Other things may have to do with the coach. Some players like a coach’s style, so we have to find a player who believes in our coaches and (thinks) they’ll be a better player under our coaches than they presently are.”
Taylor said his patience for rebuilding the team “has been better than I thought. I was hoping we would be making more progress than we have, but after talking to (the coaches), I have a lot of confidence in what they’re doing. I know they also wish we were moving ahead a little faster.”
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