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_{Photo copyright 2008 NBAE (Photo by David Sherman/NBAE via Getty Images)}

Game #1, Home Game #1: Timberwolves 98, Sacramento 96

Record 1-0

1. Love Rises, Bails Out Wolves Vets

It won't always be this way. Kevin Love won't always be matched up against willowy neophytes like Spencer Hawes and overpaid journeymen like Mikki Moore and lower-drafted rooks from the same class such as Jason Thompson. He won't usually have his game-time jitters quelled by his man forgetting to box out on a missed free throw, giving him an easy putback.

Okay, cavaets duly noted. It's opening night and there are some definite causes for concern about the Wolves needing a horrid shooting performance from the normally accurate Kevin Martin to eke out a home win against the least talented team in the NBA. But the play of Kevin Love is a silver lining, a warm spot, a legit reason to smile. Yeah, the competition was sub-mediocre, especially with Kings' mucker Brad Miller serving a suspension. But Love still had to maintain his poise and fit in with his teammates in his first-ever NBA game.

In my Wolves preview written just before the opener, I said that Love would have games that got folks excited, games that had people putting their heads in their hands, and, most of all, games where Love simply wasn't that big of a factor. Well, this was an excited-about-Love game. It wasn't the raw numbers--12 points (5-8 FG, 2-2 FT), 9 rebounds, 2 blocks and 2 dimes in 18:31. Better yet, it was the knowing when to exert maximum individual effort (going for offensive rebounds and putbacks) and when to blend in (passing, moving without the ball, rotating on defense). Best of all--and yes, the competition is a major cavaet here--it indicated that smallball with Jefferson and Love will be considerably larger than smallball with Jefferson and Gomes, which is why Gomes was a game-worst minus -19 in his 29:59 and Love was a game-best plus +20 in his time on the court.

Love's best stint occurred right after he and Jefferson were paired for the first time, with Big Al replacing Craig Smith with 8:34 to go in the second and the Kings up 38-37. After the teams traded baskets, Love rebounded a John Salmons miss, then hit the boards on Jeffersons wayward layup for a putback plus-one on the foul by Hawes. It was Love's third putback in his first 7 minutes of NBA action (albeit one was a followup of his own shot getting blocked). Following a Kevin Martin travel, Love dribble-penetrated and laid off a nice dime to Jefferson for a slam; 14 seconds later, he'd reversed a Kevin Ollie steal into one of his patented outlets to a breaking Corey Brewer for another slam. After being behind for almost the entire game, the Wolves suddenly had a six-point lead.

After the game, I enjoyed Love's level-headed poise in the face of batshit-crazy deadline media sensing the obvious opening-night feel-good story. He correctly noted that his defense needs work, and that he "definitely might be a little undersized" matched with a seven-footer like Hawes, who sealed him and spun past him in the paint twice. "Team defense, that's what I'm going to have to do," Love said, meaning that at 6-8, he better know how to rotate and how to move his feet quickly, because he's not standing up the leviathans of the game in the low block--he needs to know how to help others and how to effectively be helped. He acknowledged that the game is faster and the talent better in the pros but said the real adjustment has been "speed in general, going from a 35-second clock [in college] to 24, how often people quickly get into their sets." Asked if he can imagine an 82-game NBA season at this pace, he replied, "I can imagine 82 games but what I can't imagine is the four or five games in seven nights. I'll just have to experience that to know what it's like."

For the record, going small with Gomes at power forward still doesn't work. He was minus -8 in 4:02 paired in a tiny frontcourt with Chris Smith, even paired with Love for 1:00 and minus -11 paired with Jefferson for the remainder of his 29:56. In the first half alone, Hawes was 4-5 FG, Mikki Moore hit all three of his shots, and the rookie Thompson was 6-7 FG, making the Kings' bigs 13-15 FG while the rest of the team went 6-25 FG.

2. No 4th Quarter Foye

In terms of substitution patterns, the game's most noteworthy development for Wolves fans was Wittman's decision to ride with Kevin Ollie for 10:05 of the 4th quarter of a nip-and-tuck contest, allotting starter Randy Foye--famously nicknamed "4th Quarter Foye" for his crunchtime heroics during his rookie season--a mere 2:28 of burn (there was obviously some overlap when the Kings went very small in the last minute of the game). "I thought Kevin played good--it had nothing to do with Randy," Wittman demurred, when asked why a guy who just barely made the roster at the end of preseason would get the nod over the guy who is arguably the team's biggest X factor heading into this season.

Well, there is no question that Ollie played well, getting others involved, stimulating ball movement, making three assists and not registering a turnover, and shooting only once in 16:36 (0-1 FG) while generating a second-best plus +13. What's more, on the crucial last possession where the Kings had 24 seconds to tie the game and yanked big men Moore and Thompson for guards Bobby Jackson and Udrih, Ollie was matched up with Martin, the Kings' most potent scorer, while Witt blanketed the very hot Salmons with his shutdown man Brewer. Wittman gushed about the total team effort on the game-deciding sequence, where none of the Kings seemed anxious to put up a shot, in part because the Wolves were scrambling so effectively. Eventually, Martin did launch and miss and Salmons grabbed the offensive rebound and came closer on the followup. The carom off that second miss was still being contested when the buzzer sounded. "On defense at the end, we've got a vet like K.O, out there, who knows how to switch out on guys and not leave his feet," Gomes said.

Actually, I agree with Wittman that riding with Ollie shoujld be viewed as more a tribute to the vet than a vote of no-confidence in Foye, but, considering the circumstances, that doesn't diminish the surprise. Witt did concede that he felt like the offense occasionally "became to predictable," and that in particular he noted that when the Kings compelled Minnesota to "push the pick and roll down, you don't try to run through them...Randy got an offensive foul in there...that's whnere we have got to improve. The numbers aren't kind to Foye--he was 5-12 FG and 2-5 3pt FG with the same number of assists (3) as Ollie in 15 more minutes, and all of Foye's were in the game's first 9 minutes. Foye also committed four turnovers while Ollie was blemish-free, resulting in Foye being a minus -10, second-worst behind Gomes on the ballclub. But half of those 4 turnovers were actually flubs by Gomes on nice interior passes by Foye, and Randy also had three steals to tie him for the lead with Brewer.

What bothered me most was that after hitting a trey off a right-handed dribble in the third period, Foye came back and almost immediately chucked up a heat-check jumper on the next possession, On a team of shooters, the starkest difference is that Ollie tried one shot in 16:36 while Foye launched 12 in 31:57, then said after the game that the Kings were giving the Wolves everything on offense--"I could pretty much do what I wanted." I wish he'd wanted to pass more, a la vet Mike Miller, a sharpshooter who went only 4-7 FG in 31:02 and didn't have an official shot in the entire second half, but did get to the line 6 times (inexplicably converting only half of them, a shock for someone like Miller) and led the entire team with 6 assists.

Meanwhile, Beno Udrih of the Kings, who the Wolves got in a salary cap trade with San Antonio just before the onset of last season and waived away for nothing, played 35:24 at the point and scored 10 points (4-9 FG, 2-2 FT) with five rebounds and 5 assists and 5 turnovers . And Mario Chalmers, the rookie from Kansas who the Miami Heat selected with the Wolves' second-round draft pick in a casual giveaway on draft night last summer, had 17 points (7-13 FG, 2-4 3ptFG. 1-2 FT), 7 rebounds, 8 assists and just one turnover in 35:46 of plus +2 basketball during the Heat's opening night loss to the Knicks.

3. Quick Hits

Corey Brewer had a good night, defending Martin well while getting his team's second-best assist total of 4 in just 26:31, combined with 7 rebounds and 8 points (4-9 FG). Brewer still has a tendency to play out of control--he had two particularly ugly layup attempts tonight, Rube Goldberg-like flailing of the appendages as he arose outj of rhythm and either unsuccessfully tried to draw the foul or was intent on winning a silly game of HORSE with his awkward missives, which either airballed or barely grazed the iron. It is fitting to notice that all of Brewer's four baskets came on open dunks off steals in transition or driving layups in the half court.

Rashad McCants, on the other hand, did not have a good night. Forced into the game with the starters when Mike Miller got in foul trouble, Shaddy ignored them and went for his, executing beautiful bursts and dribble-contortions through traffic that registered neither a basket nor free throws most of the time--he was 3-9 FG in the first half, almost all of them from point blank range inside the paint. Instead, the ball tantalyzingly bounced and rolls around the hoop and casually fell out. Nevertheless, Shaddy finished 7-18 FG and plus +7 overall--not putrid numbers for an obviously subpar performance.

Finally, Rodney Carney got some nondescript but not injurious burn for defensive purposes, and Mark Madsen was the only healthy DNP.