Houston Rockets Blast Minnesota Timberwolves Despite Kevin Love's Season-High 39

A weakened Timberwolves lineup faced former Minnesota coach Kevin McHale and the Houston Rockets Monday night. Despite Kevin Love scoring a season-high 39 points and grabbing 12 rebounds, the young team appeared frustrated and disjointed in a 107-92 loss. Kevin Martin led the Rockets with 31 points.

Target Center fans dispelled any notion of "Minnesota nice" when they booed McHale upon entering the arena. A native Minnesotan and once-beloved athlete, McHale didn't react to the brutal welcome. "I stopped worrying about getting booed 30-some years ago," he responded postgame.

Regardless of opinions on McHale, his coaching scheme worked against the Wolves. Taking advantage of a stunted Minnesota lineup (Michael Beasley, JJ Barea, Malcolm Lee, Brad Miller, Martell Webster and Wes Johnson were all sidelined due to injury or illness), McHale implemented a rare four-guard lineup for an explosive seven minutes in the final quarter.

"They play four guards at once!" Ricky Rubio said. "Kevin Martin at the four? That was weird."

Minnesota started the game with cold shooting, and the players appeared lethargic and out of sync. They battled back, however, in the third quarter, and fans were on their feet for a few big plays. Love came up with a slam dunk, narrowing the Rockets' lead to one point. He added a free throw in the following play to tie the game, and it was yet another three-pointer from the All-Star that gave the Wolves a lead at the 3:58 mark.

However, the young ball club couldn't hang on.

“We got our (five)-point lead in the third quarter, and then we just stopped,” Adelman said. “I don’t know if we got tired. We turned it over at the end of the third quarter, they took a five-point lead and they kind of stretched it out, and that was it. We just didn’t have enough energy at the end of the game.”

The Wolves had 20 turnovers, 10 of which were committed in the fourth quarter alone. Rubio tallied five turnovers personally, and his shooting game collapsed. Over the last four games, the rookie is only 9-of-41 from the field.

However, Rubio continues to show leadership on the floor, and he dished out an impressive 12 assists.

As a team, Minnesota missed 16 layups—not a statistic to be proud of. Rookie Derrick Williams—who started at small forward in place of Johnson—shot 33 percent, and center Darko Milicic landed only 28 percent of his attempts.

In the end, Love summed up the disappointing game:

“Obviously we miss Wes, we miss Martell, we miss JJ, we miss Mike. We miss everybody that’s out,” Love said. “When we’re at full strength, we’re a lot better. We just didn’t have it. We turned the ball over, we made too many mistakes. We had our opportunities to put them in a hole, but it was the other way around.”