The Minnesota Timberwolves finally put an end to their long losing spell, and they did it against a team that had owned them over the last three years.
Ryan Gomes scored 27 points, the most by a Timberwolves player this season, and Minnesota snapped a 15-game losing streak with a 106-100 victory over the Denver Nuggets on Sunday night.
“Man, you don’t know how much a weight is off our shoulders right now,” Gomes said. “It was tough for us, but we had to battle. We knew it was going to break one day.”
The shock was it came against the Nuggets, who had won their previous 10 meetings against Minnesota and had been dominating at home, where they’d won 17 regular season games in a row dating to last spring.
It appears the Timberwolves are making progress in Kurt Rambis’ classroom.
The first-year Wolves coach often has said his top priority this season is to educate players on his system and what it takes to become an NBA contender.
After two weeks of practice and two exhibition games, Rambis is ready to put his teaching to work. Rookie point guard Jonny Flynn and his backup, two-year veteran Ramon Sessions, will have more freedom to call the team’s plays — a sign of confidence that starts with tonight’s exhibition game against Chicago at Target Center.
The move has a significant impact on Flynn, who will get most of the minutes in running the Wolves’ offense this season.
“Jonny is getting a greater grasp of what I want out there on the floor,” Rambis said of Flynn.
Kevin Love and Al Jefferson are trying to help Timberwolves coach Kurt Rambis make an early lineup decision.
Rambis isn’t sure how much he will play Love and Jefferson together this season, but both forwards would like to pair up more to give the Wolves a strong inside tandem.
“I’ve thought about it a lot,” Jefferson said. “Kevin has improved his game in a lot of ways. He can score, pass and rebound. He makes it a lot easier on me. From my understanding, me and Kevin are the future big men of this team.”
Love and Jefferson started only eight games together last season. Jefferson’s knee injury, which kept him out of the final 32 games, ended possible plans of former interim coach Kevin McHale giving the duo an opportunity to tune up for this season.
In a parting conversation Tuesday morning in Barcelona, Timberwolves vice president of basketball operations David Kahn gave Ricky Rubio no guarantees about his status with the NBA club in two years.
The 18-year-old Spanish phenom had an opportunity to start his NBA career this season but changed his mind 48 hours later, a decision that gives rookie Jonny Flynn a significant head start on becoming the Wolves’ long-term point guard.
Ricky Rubio plans to part ways with Spanish basketball club DKV Joventut even if the Minnesota Timberwolves cannot reach a deal to bring their first-round draft pick to the NBA.
Timberwolves president David Kahn was in Spain this week to try and help the fifth overall pick negotiate a buyout of his contract with Joventut. Rubio is at odds with his boyhood club over a buyout clause that could cost the 18-year-old point guard as much as $6.6 million. The NBA’s collective bargaining rules limit the Timberwolves’ contribution to $500,000. Regardless of whether Rubio makes the trip across the Atlantic next season, he won’t be playing at Joventut.
The Wolves traded for Quentin Richardson, reducing the glut of power forwards and point guards on the team in the process.
While he changed planes in New York on Monday bound for Spain, Timberwolves boss David Kahn completed a 3-for-1 player trade with the Los Angeles Clippers and trimmed his list of coaching candidates down to as few as three people.
Kahn dealt point guard Sebastian Telfair and power forwards Craig Smith and Mark Madsen for veteran swingman Quentin Richardson’s expiring $9.35 million contract in a move intended to balance the team’s roster previously loaded with power forwards and point guards and create roster spots that could allow Kahn to make additional moves yet this summer.
The Minnesota Timberwolves cannot do much financially to help Ricky Rubio with a multimillion-dollar buyout of his contract with DKV Joventut in Spain.
So team president David Kahn is heading across the Atlantic to meet with the team personally in hopes of lowering the $6.6 million price tag that has threatened to keep the wunderkind point guard in Europe for at least next season. Kahn confirmed his plans to travel to Spain in a text message to The Associated Press on Thursday but declined further comment, including when the trip will take place. It was first reported by YahooSports.com.
Ricky Rubio seems as confused about where he’ll be playing next season as the team that drafted him last week, the Minnesota Timberwolves.
“I have more uncertainty about my future now than before the draft; every minute I’m in a different place,” the flashy point guard from Spain told the El Periodico newspaper of Barcelona in today’s edition. Rubio, 18, and his father were to quietly fly to Minneapolis last Saturday for conversations with Wolves president of basketball operations David Kahn.
