Well im sure weve all seen the breaking news. KLove out 6-8 with broken hand in practice. So where do we go from here? Dwill at 4 :/

Looks like Rubio and Love will be Twolves fans christmas present this year

Fuck

jconstant99 wrote:
And the lion is free for 6-8 weeks, it would seem...

This is the worst news I've heard in quite some time. Unbelievable. This franchise is like cursed.. Best case scenario he is back last week of November/First week of december. This is going to require a lot of people to step up

daddyfatsax wrote: Wooohooo hopefully we'll be able to trade him in 6-8 weeks then, at perhaps an even higher trade value than he's got now!

/Looking for Silver Linings...

This sucks

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BonK wrote: SIGH. Seconded.

ARARARARARAR JUST PLAY ON WHAT ELSE IS LEFT

heartbreaker and ballbreaker!

Sucks big time.

The only thing I will say is that the time without Love is going to allow others to step up into roles and hopefully gain confidence with minutes that normally wouldn't belong to them. It's really going to show us what Pek, Kirilenko and Roy got to offer us.

Additionally, just looking at the schedule, it would seem the absolute best possible time for Love to be hurt. I expect him to be back in late November. The only teams i think we get destroyed by without Love are Nets, Pacers, Denver, and if he's not back by November 28, the Clippers. But take a look guys. This really isn't that bad

Fri, Nov 2 vs Sacramento
Sun, Nov 4 @ Toronto
Mon, Nov 5 @ Brooklyn
Wed, Nov 7 vs Orlando
Fri, Nov 9 vs Indiana
Sat, Nov 10 @ Chicago
Mon, Nov 12 @ Dallas
Wed, Nov 14 vs Charlotte
Fri, Nov 16 vs Golden State
Wed, Nov 21 vs Denver
Fri, Nov 23 @ Portland
Sat, Nov 24 @ Golden State
Tue, Nov 27 @ Sacramento
Wed, Nov 28 @ Los Angeles
Fri, Nov 30 vs Milwaukee

Damn you Wallyworld, damn youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

roundhouse wrote: Bwahahahaha yep, I blame WW as well!

Article from ESPN Insider I thought you guys may want to read

How long can Wolves hold out?
Can Minnesota stay afloat until Love and Rubio return?
Updated: October 17, 2012, 8:45 PM ET
By Bradford Doolittle | Basketball Prospectus

Brace Hemmelgarn/US Presswire
In happier days, Ricky Rubio and Kevin Love were all smiles. Now they're nursing injuries.
The team's news release was short and term, and it's the exact kind of thing you hate to see pop into your inbox during preseason:

"The Minnesota Timberwolves today announced that forward Kevin Love suffered a fracture of his third and fourth metacarpal in his right hand. The injury occurred this morning while working out. Love is expected to be out approximately 6-8 weeks."

Heading into his fifth NBA season, Love was poised to become an MVP candidate. At 24, he's still at an age of ascension. SCHOENE, our projection system at Basketball Prospectus, had Love forecasted for the fourth-most WARP (wins above replacement) in the league, behind LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Chris Paul.

Perhaps just as important when you're talking about MVP candidacy, SCHOENE liked Minnesota as the breakout team in the league. This was the case even after accounting for the uncertain recovery of point guard Ricky Rubio from his torn ACL. With Rubio's playing time forecast slashed, SCHOENE still saw the Wolves as a 56-win team, slotting them third in the West.

Now we have to reconfigure those predictions.

Every game Love misses is going to be damaging to Minnesota's place in the playoff hierarchy because the Western Conference figures to be exceedingly jam-packed at the top. If you carry out the numbers out to a decimal point, there were just .7 wins separating the top projected seed (Denver Nuggets) and the fourth (the Los Angeles Lakers).

Based on the time estimate quoted in the release, we've downgraded Love's playing time projection from 74 games to 59 games. We don't know how much of a lingering effect the injury has on Love's effectiveness, but since it's hand injury, Love will be able maintain his condition and hopefully ramp up to full effectiveness fairly quickly.

That 15-game drop costs Love 3.5 wins off his WARP forecast. Instead of fourth in the league, he's now pegged at seventh. That doesn't sound so severe, but there was a big drop-off after the top four after our initial rankings.

The real question now is what impact will Love's absence have on the Timberwolves' hopes for a breakout season?

Second-year pro Derrick Williams figures to get a bump in playing time with Love out, with Dante Cunningham likely slated for a bit bigger role. Williams was the second pick of the draft just last year, but some of the shine has come off his star as he's struggled to find a positional niche in the NBA.

The biggest difference between Love and Williams is obviously in the rebounding department, but Love also has the advantage across the board. Overall, he's about 6.5 points per 100 possessions more valuable on offense, plus another 1.1 points on defense. That 7.6-point gap is enormous, and it gets worse when Cunningham is on the floor.

Williams could obviously smooth matters by getting better, and this would be a good time for him to make a second-year leap. Rick Adelman also has better wing options than he did last year, one of the joys of overseeing what might be the deepest roster in Timberwolves history. Adelman might opt to play Andrei Kirilenko at the 4 to spell Williams, with Chase Budinger getting the run at 3.

Projections before Kevin Love injury
Courtesy of Basketball Prospectus

W-L (West) Off. Rating Def. Rating
56-26 (3rd) 114.7 (1) 109.1 (14)
An early return for Rubio couldn't hurt anything either. We've got Rubio forecast to play 50 games, which would put him out until roughly the second week of January. That's the scenario considered by SCHOENE in its optimistic projection. Rubio has floated a possible late-December date, but Minnesota has pledged to be cautious with the Spaniard's rehab and nothing has come up in recent news to bump up his projection. If Love is out for eight weeks, he'll beat Rubio back in the lineup. So no boost there.

Projections after Kevin Love injury
Courtesy of Basketball Prospectus

W-L (West) Off. Rating Def. Rating
52-30 (5) 113.6 (3) 109.3 (15)
The bottom line is this: After knocking down Love's games-played projection and beefing up the same for Williams and Cunningham, the Wolves now project to 52-30 and finish fifth in the West. Even that might be a bit optimistic, because there is no way to know how much lag time will be involved with reintegrating core pieces at two separate times during the season. It's not an ideal scenario for a team with so many new faces.

There is a silver lining, though. If Williams were to blossom with the bigger role, it might portend a huge uptick in the production of Adelman's second unit. Williams won't have to play out of position with Love out, and while he'll go back to a swing role once the All-Star returns, it might just be possible that Williams finds his foothold in the NBA.

But make no mistake about it: Love's injury hurts, and a four-win drop in this year's Western Conference could be huge. Of course, Minnesota fans would be thrilled with 52 wins and no one (besides us) is really predicting that kind of season from the Timberwolves. If SCHOENE is right, Love and Rubio might be stepping into a feel-good story already in progress.

Bradford Doolittle is an author for Basketball Prospectus. Follow him on Twitter at @bbdoolittle.

I thought I was going to read "hallelujah!" here since we don't like him nor his game!

In all seriousness, knowing we were already waiting for Ricky, one of the things I was most looking forward to next month was seeing how Love would play and adjust with these better players around him. That has to happen on the court. Not sure how much Love will be able to wrap his mind around how to play with these guys from observation.

I guess it doesn't matter how capable he is at that, since he will only be observing guys who'll be hurt by the time he comes back...

College Wolf wrote:
WHAT?!?!?! This is obviously Kahn's fault.

Of note - Love got hurt at home? Christ, does he have an obstacle course with crowbar wielding midgets guarding each obstacle in his apartment? Who breaks their hand in a downtown apartment? Was it a masturbatory event? Was he lifting too many deep dish pizzas and coolers full of chocolate milk? I want an explanation. This is definitely fishy.

Here is where Love lives if anyone wants to know: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Carlyle

An aside: as I was typing the above I had NBATV on in the background and I hear the phrase "Randy Foye airballs a 3." True story.