Kevin Love has agreed to a contract extension with the Timberwolves reportedly worth $62 million over 4 years. Ray Richardson of the Pioneer Press was the first to report from what I saw. More to come on this excellent day for the Wolves. 

UPDATE: NO DEAL yet sccording to ESPN. Wolves unwilling to budge from the 4 year maximum. This will play out in dramatic fashion. No need to jump to conclusions yet.

UPDATES: Deal official. Love agrees to 4-year deal with opt out after year 3. Not sure what to make of this yet, other than Rubio and Love could be free agents at the same time. Yikes.

Anyhow. Very glad this is complete and official. Great day for Wolves fans. Now get that man some help, Kahn!

Burke Nixon (sounds like a name of a future mid-1st round draft pick) of Dear Dikembe was kind enough to share a link with us to his open letter to Ricky Rubio. His blog is very creative and is operated under the concept of open letters to players, GM's and the like. Everyone loves open letters! 

Here is a link to the letter.

A brief excerpt (but click above to read the real thing) and read/comment on his blog!

Dear Ricky Rubio,

First of all, I'm not gonna worry about the language barrier here. You speak decent English, judging from this strange clip I saw on YouTube where you get interviewed by Drew Gooden (?) on what appears to be the set of a fake news show while wearing some sort of sweater that only a Euro could pull off. And anyway, the subject I wanna talk to you about knows no language barriers. I'm talking about delight, Ricky. Or we might refer to a related term: beauty. You know as well as anyone that the most consistently delightful, purely beautiful action in basketball is a nice pass. When people fall back on that old metaphor of basketball-as-jazz, they're not thinking of dunks or blocks or Carmelo holding the ball for almost the entire shot clock and then taking a jumper. They're thinking of nice passes. There’s nothing better than a nice pass, nothing more delightful than watching a great PG improvise beauty. And ever since news came across the Atlantic about a Spanish kid playing pro ball in Europe at the age when we get driver's licenses in the States, we'd heard that you, my friend, were a purveyor of nice passes.

Congrats on beating the Miami cHeat, you guys deserved it!

Corey Brewer and Brian The Custodian Cardinal... all they do is win championships.

I had the opportunity to head out to Mankato on Thursday morning to check out day 3 of the Timberwolves training camp. Check out some audio from Wolves PG Jonny Flynn and Head Coach Kurt Rambis:

Note: This article is a solid three-weeks out of date.  I could chalk it up to a busy schedule, but mostly, it took so long because it was so difficult to write.  Nothing I wrote down just seemed to compare with the actual magnitude of the moment.  This is my best effort at trying to put into words what that fateful night in June meant to me.  It's probably not my best piece, but it's from the heart.

I was twelve years old when Kevin Garnett put on that Minnesota Timberwolves cap on draft night.  Over half my life later, my favorite player finally won an NBA Championship. To an outsider, that may not seem like such a phenomenal event.  Championships are won in sports multiple times a year, and the story of a long-suffering player or fan base finally getting a taste of glory is certainly nothing new. But to dismiss what happened on June 17th, 2008 as something common-place or meaningless would be an incredible mistake.  To those of us Timberwolves fans who stared wide-eyed at the television screen as a lanky teenager stumbled across the stage and shook David Stern's hand, that night meant everything.
 
As sports fans, we spend an inordinate amount of time and money discussing the team, attending games, buying merchandise, and obsessing over every single move our front office makes. Somewhere along the way, most of us convince ourselves that we matter as much to the team as the team does to us.  We trick ourselves into thinking that our favorite players will be as delighted to meet us as we are when we encounter them.  The fact that we do this to ourselves is not surprising at all.  After all the investment we make into a team, it's psychologically devastating when we actually stop and realize the people we're adoring don't even know we exist. Instead, we just block those thoughts from our mind and continue our charade.

"Continue Reading"

WARNING:  Hilarity ensues...

Worst. Possession. Ever. Recap:

1. Randolph, a (nearly) seven-footer, receives the ball outside of the three-point line.

2. He attempts to break down his defender by dribbling the hell out of the ball, sort of like Isiah Thomas circa 1989, only without the mad handles.

3. He totally loses the rock like somebody abusing the freestyle control on NBA Live and has to run almost out to halfcourt to retrieve it.

4. Then, instead of passing the ball to a teammate, he runs it to the arc and launches an airball...with 7 seconds left on the shot clock! (Thanks, herman).

The announcer even says:  "I don't even know what he's doing."

Hilarious video that should not be lost in the annuls of time.

P.S.  Isiah Thomas was the same nutjob then that is he now.

He's the hottest property in Brazillian football. A great freekick taker, and has an amazing ability in balancing a ball on his head. He's only 17 years old and plays for Cruzeiro. Touted to enherited the number 10 from Ronaldinho in the coming years.