Kevin Love: Star Forward Makes Huge Mistake Signing Extension with Minny

Kevin Love, like most other athletes, has two main goals: Play on a championship team and sign a contract worthy of his contributions on the court.

The jury is still out on whether or not the Minnesota Timberwolves can accomplish the former in the near future, but Love most certainly didn't accomplish the latter by re-upping with Minny.

According to the proverbial sources, Love has signed an extension with the Wolves, with one very important caveat in the deal. From ESPN:

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The Minnesota Timberwolves and star forward Kevin Love have at last reached terms on a contract extension, according to sources close to the situation, beating Wednesday's midnight ET deadline.

To do so, Minnesota had to grant Love a player option in the final year of a four-year deal worth in excess of $60 million, sources said.

"

The player option was put in place for a simple reason—Love doesn't want to stay in Minnesota if he doesn't see a concerted effort to build a championship team, and can become a free agent in the summer of 2015 if he so chooses.

There's reason for optimism in Minnesota, with promising rookies such as Ricky Rubio and Derrick Williams pairing with Love to form a young core fans are excited about. It's hard to blame Love for at least wanting to stick around and see where this team is headed.

But if Love didn't sign the extension, he would have become a restricted free agent and could have fielded larger offers. While Minnesota could match any offer in the 2012 offseason, Love could have taken the $6.1 million player option for next year and hit free agency in 2013.

In other words, he could have put a lot more pressure on Minnesota to prove how serious they were to win, and hit free agency a whole lot sooner if he didn't sense success in the Wolves' future.

And once Love hit free agency, well, let the bidding war begin.

Instead, Minnesota keeps Love for the next three years and can offer the five-year max rookie extension to either Rubio or Williams. It's a great day for the Timberwolves front office and fans in that regard.

For Love, it was a questionable business decision.

And if Minnesota doesn't make the playoffs consistently over the duration of this extension, it's a terrible basketball one as well.

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