Currently 5-4 on the road going into Friday’s game against New Jersey, the Wolves hope to secure the win and get home to start improving their record at Target Center.

At the moment, that stands at a disappointing 5-8, a mystery coach Rick Adelman doesn’t quite understand. “I’ve always had teams that won at home,” Adelman told TwinCities.com.

While any team is glad to win no matter where the wins come, the Wolves are in rare air this season, flirting with a .500 record for the first time in the post-Garnett era. One has to trip back seven years to happen upon the last time the Wolves were at or above .500.

It’s nice to get road wins, but winning at home in front of your own fans helps sell tickets, naturally; Adelman and his team hope they can start turning their home-court luck around starting Saturday against the Houston Rockets, before their thin selection of home-court victories starts getting compared to the HCG diet Austin.

Meanwhile, the Wolves’ hopes are just to avoid being the worst team on the NBA again. Especially considering their draft pick isn’t their own, this season. The sins of the Kevin McHale era are still coming home to roost, on that one.

So, out with the eyelash enhancers and the excuses; it’s time to win some game and make a solid step toward being a playoff team.

There’s talent on this roster, a much better coach atop the heap, and a long-awaited Rubio to lead the point. Time to win some games.

First, Adrian Peterson suffered a really bad ACL injury, and perhaps more damage, and it looks like he’ll be out for at least six months. That means Toby Gerhart needs to finally live up to his potential, not only next week but possibly for the early part of next season.

Second, QB Christian Ponder was knocked out of the game one play later, replaced by Joe Webb, who led Minnesota to a come from behind victory. Credit the Vikings’ secondary for finally showing some signs of life, I guess.

The third reason the win is bad news is that it takes the Vikings completely out of contention for the top pick in the NFL Draft, which they might have had a chance at if Indianapolis were to win next week. Now it’s out of the question.

And if the Vikes win next week, they might not even end up with the second pick, which they need if they intend to use the pick themselves, to restock top-flight talent on their offensive line. If they intend to trade their pick for multiple picks, it would be even better if they had the second overall pick than if they slip down a bit; the lower the pick, the less value it has in a trade.

At worst, the Vikings will pick sixth overall in April.

Even so, the Rick Adelman-coached Timberwolves won by one point over the Milwaukee Bucks.

Too bad Glen Taylor can’t lobby the NBA to get both preseason games to count. But perhaps with Adelman in charge, that won’t be as critical to reaching a half-decent number of wins this season.

Sure, preseason games are pretty much meaningless. It’s not like K-Love is in need of any Philadelphia wedding photography over this. But man, the Wolves have been so unsuccessful for so long, even two decent preseason wins are enough to get a person fired up a little.

Adelman is hoping to feature the talents of Kevin Love, Michael Beasley and Derrick Williams on the floor at the same time as the team’s three big men up front, with Love shifting to center. But for that to work, he says, the three need to be capable defenders, not just guys who can score in bunches.

Sure, like any good Durham maid service, Kevin Love can clean up on the boards; he led the NBA in rebounds last season. But good defense is more than cleaning up after an opponent has taken a shot. It includes blocking a few of those shots, applying pressure, and forcing them to take off-balance, poor shots that are less likely to go in.

The Wolves’ inability to play defense has flustered many a Wolves head coach; it completely destroyed Kurt Rambis, once believed to be the second coming of Phil Jackson. So it’ll be interesting to see how Adelman handles it.

It’s taken six years since then, with growing pains including the trade of Kevin Garnett, five different head coach terms prior to Adelman’s arrival, and a complete roster makeover, but finally there seems to be a new, solid nucleus in place.

With Adleman as coach, the Wolves have a lot of interesting looks to toss at teams. The power trio up front appears destined to become Kevin Love, Michael Beasley and Derrick Williams, while the most dynamic back court combo could be a double-point-guard combo of Ricky Rubio and J.J. Barea. That would leave plenty of talent coming off the bench, including Wes Johnson, Anthony Tolliver, Luke Ridenour and Martell Webster, among others. The addition of veterans like Brad Miller are sure to help, as well.

Anyway, the Wolves won the preseason game against Milwaukee by a comfortable margin and will face them one more time, in Milwaukee, before the regular season begins.

For the first time in a while, it seems like a good season to be a Wolves fan.

But the NBA Lockout may cost the Wolves if a resolution isn’t reached soon. Point guard Ricky Rubio, who finally signed an NBA contract last summer with the team that drafted him two years ago, may head back to Spain in order to keep playing and growing his game, unless a settlement on a new CBA is reached soon, according to several online reports.

That could mean that even if a later agreement is reached, the Wolves will be without Rubio’s services for a third year since drafting him. Boy, things just keep getting better in the Nausea Battle Association, don’t they?

Duane Bennet ran for over 100 yards, Kim Royston had a career-high 16 tack les on the game and Marquis Gray looked solid, scoring a touchdown run himself in the victory.

It’s good news for a program in need of some; Minnesota has twice seen Coach Kill leave the sideline with seizures and wins have been hard to come by as he’s begun the task of rebuilding a team left in shambles by the previous regime. If they can add a few more wins, maybe then can even hire a Houston web design company to spruce up their home page.

Christian Ponder started, made the Packers sweat despite falling short of a win, and somehow managed not to get charged with a felony, or released. Such was not the case for some of his teammates.

Cornerback Chris Cook has been charged with felony domestic abuse, and while the details aren’t worth going into, his future with the team is certainly pretty doubtful, at this point.

Already released, as of this week, is WR Bernard Berrian, who certainly had it coming after going 25 games without a touchdown catch. He was four years into a six-year deal and spiraling downward quickly.

Without a proven receiver to replace him, the Vikings hope Ponder can make due with Percy Harvin, Michael Jenkins, Greg Camarillo, Devin Aromashodu and Stephen Burton. Of those, Harvin, Jenkins and Burton are the folks in the purple’s three-wide set, but with only Harvin a real threat, you can bet that if the season continues to go dismally for the Vikings, they’ll be hoping Notre Dame’s Saint Paul-native star WR, Michael Floyd, is available when they draft.

He’s projected to go as high as second overall; that’s a position this year’s team has a shot at, as coach Leslie Frazier begins the work of rebuilding the team from the shambles Childress left it in. Rumor is, Brad didn’t even keep the team’s rv insurance up-to-date.

Okay, maybe he wasn’t quite that bad… but he left the team pretty messed up, for sure.

Sure, it’s a tall order. Nebraska is immediately the class act of the Big 10 in its first year immigrating from the Big 12. Looking competent in a loss would certainly help the new coaching staff with recruiting.

Can they do it? It’s gonna be tough.

The biggest sticking point remains the division of millions between players and owners. The previous CBA guaranteed players 57 percent. Owners originally wanted to reel that back for 43 percent. Now owners have conceded ground enough to offer a 50-50 split, a seven percent move up.

The players, meanwhile, claim they won’t settle for less than 53 percent, a mere four percent move.

It’s clear that the owners have moved more than the players; a 50-50 split would seem to make sense to most average fans, so the ball appears to be in the players court. If they can move to the middle with owners, this whole thing could be settled soon. If more of the regular season is cancelled, it will be the players who look selfish.

Of course, the players have LeBron James on their side of the table, so maybe that’s inevitable.

Ponder responded well in a hopeless situation. He completed his first two passes and finished the game completing nine of seventeen passes for 99 yards. Not bad considering it took McNabb three quarters to compile 15 of 19 passes for 138 yards. While Ponder was in the game at a point where the running game had to be abandoned, more or less, it became clear during his time on the field that he’s at least no worse than McNabb while being more sound mechanically, as well as a bit more mobile.

No diamond rings are being given out just yet, but his performance was solid enough that the Vikings are definitely going to be headed for a QB crisis if McNabb comes out as the starter next week.