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