MinnesotaSportsScene.com

Well, the game ended and Garnett and company did the unlikely; they erased an 18-point half-time deficit and came back against the odds, on the road in Los Angeles, to win Game 4 and return to Boston up 3-1 against the Lakers, winning by a final margin of 97-91.

Believe me, if Boston wins the next game and takes home the trophy in five games, there will be plenty of small business opportunitites in celebrating the Celtics’ return to glory. From a Minnesota perspective, it’s the second-best possible news for the former home state of Kevin Garnett.

The best-possible news, of course, would be if he’d been doing all this as a Timberwolf.

Former Timberwolves coach Flip Saunders has been fired by the Detroit Pistons. His crime? Only that he took the team to the Eastern Division championship series in all three of his seasons in Detroit. I guess that’s not good enough for some folks; it’s an NBA title or you’re gone.

Of course, with all the blinds on management’s eyes in Detroit, I suppose it’s hard to blame them; all they want to see is championship gold or nothing. Never mind that Flip’s teams have been among the top four every year in the last three years.

I wouldn’t worry too much about Saunder, though. He’ll be well-paid for the year left on his contract, and he’ll have his pick of NBA jobs once he’s ready to jump back into the fray.

There’s only one thing I wish the local sports press would shut up about, already: Stop wishing Tubby Smith would move away from Minnesota so that Flip can coach the Gophers.

I guarantee you, Tubby’s a better college coach than Flip will ever be, because Tubby’s been a college coach all his career! For the long-term good of the Gophs, now’s not the time to start pushing Tubby out the door. Personally, I hope he coaches the Gophs for at least the next decade, and retires at Minnesota.

Then, perhaps, Flip can have the job. In the meantime, Flip should continue coaching in the NBA. Unless the Wolves rehire him, he’ll be able to go through another couple NBA jobs and still be available 10 years down the line, when Tubby retires from college basketball after taking the Gophers to at least seven Sweet 16s, four Final Fours, and at least one NCAA championship.

The Minnesota Timberwolves will return to their original radio home, AM 1130 KFAN, beginning next season, just in time for the team’s 20th year of existance. The Wolves spent 17 years on KFAN before jumping ship to BOB 106 FM, a country music station, the past two seasons. Arbitrons suffered greatly, and in returning to KFAN, the Wolves return to a station that has an all-sports format.

While the station has not yet named a Wolves broadcast team, it is widely believed that Chad Hartman, a KFAN mainstay and longtime broadcaster with the Wolves, will play a central role. No longer the pimply-faced kid he was 20 years ago, Hartman is now an industry vet with no need for acne treatments.

We’ll be listening closely throughout the franchise’s 20th anniversary season.

After a dozen years in Minnesota and a trade to Boston, Kevin Garnett has finally made it to the Big Dance. While most Timberwolves fans would have loved to see The Big Ticket reach this goal in a Wolves uniform, I can’t imagine anyone begrudging him this long-awaited career accomplishment.

He’ll be cashing in a lot of flight deals during his series against the LA Lakers, which recalls all the classic Lakers-Celtics matchups of the 1980s, when Wolves GM Kevin McHale was in a Celtics uniform, rather than rebuilding Minnesota’s franchise, as he is these days. Ironically, it was McHale’s trade of Garnett to Boston that reignited the Boston franchise enough to re-fuel this decades-old Finals rivalry.

I’ll be enjoying every minute of it; I long to see Garnett finally prove, on the biggest stage on the NBA, that he and his Celtics are far better than Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.

ESPN.com is batting about the latest possible trade rumor in the NBA: that Miami is so taken with O.J. Mayo, they may be willing to work out a trade with Minnesota to swap the second pick for Minnesota’s third pick in the draft, which would allow Miami to take Mayo and give the Wolves a chance to draft 6-9 big man Michael Beasley.

Another possibility could be that Miami would draft Beasley and Minnesota could draft Mayo, with the intent to work out a trade on draft night, after both selections have been made. Mayo, who is more of a combo guard in the mold of Randy Foye, would be a welcome addition, but Beasley is a legit big man who could take some pressure off Wolves ace Al Jefferson in the front court.

While the cost of such a trade would help determine the Wolves’ willingness to swap picks with Miami, it’s hard to imagine the Wolves wouldn’t want a shot at Beasley, though they haven’t exactly resorted to GPS tracking in anticipation of this rumor becoming reality just yet.

Also, there’s still no guarantee Chicago will draft Memphis PG Derrick Rose, and may opt for Beasley instead, which would throw the whole trade scenario into chaos.

Tubby Smith’s University of Minnesota Gophers men’s basketball team still ranks high following a spring signing period in which no additional talent was added. Maintaining a high ranking while other Big 10 and top national schools added players is a testimony to the quality of the five recruits Smith put together last fall.

HoopScoopOnline ranks the Gophers the highest, at 13 nationally and second in the Big 10. Rivals.com ranks the Gophs 23 nationally and third in the Big 10. Scout.com ranks Minnesota at 26 nationally and third in the Big 10. That’s not much slippage, especially considering the job Tom Crean has done at Indiana, recruiting top talent in the spring period, including Verdell Jones III, the talented pure point guard who narrowed his choices down the Minnesota, Indiana or Kentucky before settling on the Hoosiers due to the greatest opportunity for starting minutes.

A late rumor, however, is that Smith may exercise one more 2008 scholarship after all, rather than saving it for the class of 2009. No, he’s not going after Kentucky transfers PG Derrick Jasper or seven foot center Mike Williams - even though both might make nice additions. Instead, rumor has it Jones is eye-balling California SG Malik Story. At 6-5, Story is a solid shooter, boasts an NBA-archetype body, knows how to play defense and possesses a solid basketball IQ.

However, Story has been all over the place, playing at three different high schools in Virginia and California over his high school career, and word is he has some off-the-court and academic concerns. Still, Story is a big enough talent that Smith might be willing to take a chance on him, rather than reserving an extra scholarship for the Class of 09.

Whether the Gophers add Story to the Class of 08 or not, though, it appears that next year’s team will be a much more talented group, ready to shake everyone’s home theater sconces with some impressive play; and considering the Gophers were already close to being a 20-win team under Coach Smith with the leftovers from Coach Monson’s worst-ever Gophers team, it appears the Gophers might just be ready for the Big Dance next season, if not quite stocked yet for a run at the Big 10 championship.

Gophers 2009 basketball recruit Royce White just proved to be a better “get” than coach Tubby Smith may have thought when he landed White’s verbal commit last month. According to the latest Rivals.com poll of the top 150 prospects in the 2009 class, White moved up several notches to 18 overall.

White’s pal, Rodney Williams, Jr., also move up in the poll, to the 28 spot. Williams is considered a strong Gophers target, especially since he is White’s summer league teammate in the Howard Pulley tourney. Glen Rice Jr. and Daniel Miller, two kids from Georgia, have also been offered scholarships by the Gophers. Rice is another Top 100 prospect and could provide some insurance at guard if Williams doesn’t sign with Minnesota. Miller’s not Top 100, but has good numbers and is said to have impressed Tubby Smith, who knows a thing or two.

Georgia has been a strong target state, recruiting-wise, for coach Smith, who landed 2008 post player Ralph Sampson III from the Peach State. Must be offering them Kohler faucets in their dorm rooms or something! (Not really… I just like Kohler faucets.)

It may not be happening as quickly as some might like, but it appears Fred Hoiberg, the former Minnesota Timberwolf forced into retirement by a heart condition, who has become involved in the front office of the Wolves, is still being groomed to take over Kevin McHale’s role when he finally decides to step away from the team. When that will be, no one is sure, but Hoiberg is the heir apparant.

“We’re getting him involved in all parts, and this coming year, we’ll get him some more responsibilities,” owner Glen Taylor told TwinCities.com columnist Charley Walters recently.

Let me be your travel guide to at least one degree, Fred: despite the tendencies of your predecessor, there are a lot of other teams to make deals with other than the Boston Celtics.

On a related note, if the Celtics win it all this year, I nominate the man most responsible for Boston’s return to glory, Minnesota GM/team VP Kevin McHale, as the NBA GM of the year.

New Gophers recruit Royce White, himself ranked 32 in the nation by Rivals.com, commited to Tubby Smith’s Gophers recruiting class of 2009 a couple weeks ago, and is convinced that he can be a big factor in getting lifelong friend and fellow Top 100 recruit, Rodney Williams Jr., to also select the Gophers. Williams is ranked 43 overall by Rivals.com.

While many folks were wowed by Tubby’s Fab Five recruiting class for 2008, if he can add Williams along with White to his 2009 recruiting class, Minnesota could easily see the 2009 class surpass Tubby’s 2008 recruiting class. Although coach Smith’s 2008 class ranks no lower than Top 15 nationally, and is ranked Top 10 by some services, none of his recruits rank higher than 100 individually.

With Royce already in the bag for 2009 and Williams a strong prospect to join him, the 2009 class would easily boast two Top 50 recruits, making it an even stronger recruiting class with those two players alone. The biggest risk with White and Williams are the academic concerns they pose; White seems to have dealt with his issues, but Williams needs a strong senior year academically to secure his academic eligibility for the Gophers.

Here’s hoping the pair will overcome the academic challenges and secure their future in the maroon and gold, rather than the alternative, which could be hawking the best acne treatment in commercials, or something like that, which certainly isn’t a goal anyone wants to see them reduced to.

As we all know by now, heavily recruiting pure PG Verdell Jones III last Monday chose playing time over playing for one of the most prestigious coaches in all of college basketball, when he selected Indiana and Tom Crean over Minnesota and Tubby Smith.

The loss of Jones is by no means a tragedy for Smith, who will simply move the scholarship he’d reserved for Jones to his recruiting class of 2009. After all, his class of 2008 is already in the Top 10 of the nation in most polls, and with five recruits already signed, it’s not as great a loss as it might have been were it not for the presence of the five recruits Tubby already had nailed down.

The Gophers recruit class of 2009 is already off to a top-notch start when Smith signed Royce White, a Top 100 prospect, who gave his early verbal commit a couple weeks ago. Adding an extra available scholarship to the pool of players who will come in with White could help Smith secure yet another Top 10 recruting class, which would make a 2009 recruit a best buy compared to adding a sixth or seventh player coming in at the same time as Tubby’s Fab Five class next fall.

Although the Minnesota Timberwolves have been anything but as reliable as car insurance this season, I have to give them credit for not losing out, even when it endangered their lottery position. The team won two of its final four games when it might have been easier to lose them.

The final game of the season against Milwaukee was a fine example. They led early, let it slip away, then fought back to tie it up at the end, take it into overtime, and ultimately win the game. That’s not a team that’s giving up in order to improve their draft position, and they still wound up positioned in third-worst in the NBA, so they didn’t hurt their lottery chances by winning two of the final four, either.

With Al Jefferson now established as the franchise player, the Wolves go into the off-season with at chance at a Top 5 pick, and, I believe, perhaps another first-round pick in the coming draft. The team has a very talented young core group of players, though most must keep improving to make the Wolves a playoff-contending team, and with more young talent headed the Wolves’ way, they can let some of the undertalented older players go.

Along with Jefferson, I believe the Wolves will want to keep Ryan Gomes around. Keeping Sebastian Telfair, however, will ride on who the Wolves draft in July. Telfair’s a solid backup PG, and filled in nicely the first half of the season while Foye was out. But if the Wolves land a draft spot to pick the Memphis point guard who’s coming out, Telfair, a restricted free agent, will likely be allowed to sign elsewhere.

There’s plenty of talent on this team, and plenty of draft picks in this future. A 22-win season is a downer, but the future is bright. What a contrast to last season, when they won more games, still missed the playoffs, Garnett’s contract prevented them from acquiring free agent help, and they faced the propsect of losing two of their next three draft picks.

As a makeover team, rebuilding from the ground up, I’d have to say this year’s Wolves, while a work in progress, as much better to invest some hope for the future into, than last year’s edition.

Minnesota Timberwolves big man Al Jefferson, who pivots between power forward and center depending on the lineup coach Wittman sends out on the floor each night, admitted to local media sources this week that his conditioning isn’t where it needs to be for the Wolves to make the post-season and perform well in the playoffs.

This is likely a result of the trade from Boston to Minnesota; in Boston, as a younger player, Jefferson was not used quite as much as the Wolves have played him this year as a full-time starter. Jefferson’s numbers have been stellar most of the season, but in the Wolves’ six-game losing skid at the end of the season with four games to go, Jefferson’s numbers have suffered as well.

“I feel like if we were to start the playoffs in two weeks, I’d have a mental breakdown,” Jefferson told the PioneerPress earlier this week. “That’s why I’ve got to do a better job this summer of getting my body in great shape, because I plan on being in the playoffs real soon. I really feel like if we started the playoffs this year, my body would break down and I would have a mental breakdown, too.”

It’s a surprising bit of honest, but not uncommon among young players adjusting to the demanding NBA schedule; even Kevin Garnett went through it. In high school, a regular season schedule is usually about 20 games long, thought that varies from state to state. That rises to an average of about 30 games in college. But in the NBA, the schedule is 82 games long, nearly three times as many games as are played in college in the regular season.

The crowds have been sparse in this 19-win season at Target Center, but the Wolves have a young, talented roster that’s only going to improve after this summer’s draft; soon they’ll need a Bose home theater system scaled up to arena-size in order to capture the roar of the crowds, once this team hits its stride in another season or two.