Minnesota Timberwolves' Kevin Love hoping this trip to Oregon is better than last year's with UCLA
Kevin Love isn't sure what kind of reception he'll get tonight in Portland, Ore., but it has to be better than the one he got last year on his first trip back to his home state.
The Timberwolves' rookie forward called that Jan. 24 game, when he and his UCLA team played the University of Oregon in Eugene, an "awful, awful"
day.
"You almost had to be at the game to experience it,"
Kevin Love said after Friday morning's shootaround. "I'm hoping they just appreciate me being from Portland, growing up there, playing at Lake Oswego High School. Hopefully, they won't be bitter about it."
Upset that Love had chosen UCLA over his father Stan's old school, the Pit Crew, Oregon's 1,500-member student fan club, directed a steady stream of obscenities and verbal abuse at the freshman center and his family, including his grandmother and 13-year-old sister.
Then there were the death threats left on his cell phone.
"Probably 500-plus, I would guess,"
Love said. "It was a lot because it was over like a five-day period. I probably got a couple calls every 5-10 minutes."
Love got the best revenge possible that day, leading his Bruins to an 80-75 victory over the Ducks with a 26-point, 18-rebound performance.
He figures there will be some people in the crowd rooting against him again at tonight's game against the Trail Blazers, but he also will have plenty of supporters in the stands.
"My whole family will be there,"
he said. "Over half my high school will be there, all the teachers and everybody. A lot of people from U of O that are my friends will be there as well."
Just win, baby: Wolves coach Randy Wittman didn't announce his starters before Friday night's game, but he did discuss the thought process behind replacing struggling point guard Randy Foye with Sebastian Telfair.
"We've got to figure out ways to win games,"
Wittman said. "It's not a situation where I'm going to wait to let guys play through ups and downs and have other guys that are capable of playing. I don't want to do that this year. It's not about developing. We've got to start winning some games."
Asked if Telfair would have been the opening night starter if not for his three-game NBA suspension, Wittman declined to speculate.
"I have no idea,"
he said. "Knowing that he was out, it wasn't even in our thought process. That's a hard question to answer. Two weeks to go to the regular season, we knew what was going on."
Pluses and minuses: Love was a bright spot in the Wolves' 121-109 loss to the Kings, scoring a team-high 20 points and grabbing nine rebounds in his first NBA start.
Sebastian Telfair, starting at point guard in place of the struggling Foye, also had his moments, finishing with 15 points and seven assists.
Even Foye seemed to find his lost shooting touch, hitting 3 of 4 three-point attempts and finishing with 11 points.
At the other end of the spectrum was Corey Brewer, who went scoreless while playing just 19 minutes and missed all five of his field-goal attempts.
Inactive list: Wolves center Jason Collins was inactive for the fifth time in as many games, but Wittman said it was because of matchups, not his surgically repaired right elbow.
