Rick Adelman retiring at the end of the season? Kevin Love leaving the Wolves by the trade deadline next season? That's the "educated guess" from Portland Tribune columnist Kerry Eggers.

Obviously, Portland is a long ways away from Target Center. But it is the home of Adelman and where Love grew up. And Eggers, a former Oregonian beat writer, wrote the book on the Adelman-era Trail Blazers' rise to NBA royalty and obviously knows Adelman well. They spoke before the Wolves lost to Portland on Saturday.

Adelman's only words on the topic of his future were "We'll take a hard look at it after the season," citing the travel. And Eggers and Love didn't talk about long-range plans, because Love is "smart enough to keep his thoughts on that to himself." (Of course, Love's had some experience in how well that has gone over.) So, consider the source.

Adelman did have some revealing quotes that talk about some frustrating aspects of the Wolves:

"When I took this job, I thought we could turn it around," Adelman says. "The first year was just weeding people out. The second year, we had so many injuries. This year, we've made changes, and it looks better. It is better. But how much better can we be?"

"We're just not that good defensively," Adelman says. "We're more of an offensive team. We get to close games, and we've broken down at the end, not getting stops at the right time.

"We need our perimeter people to be consistent offensively, and we just haven't done it in close games. We've turned it over, we haven't made shots when we needed to.

About the same time, Yahoo Sports was throwing cold water on speculation that the Boston Celtics would trade for Love, citing Love's defense:

"Love can't stop anybody. The gaudy stat line he puts up every night looks nice, but it doesn't make a winner. Minnesota continues to plod under .500 this season with Love, a top-five distributor in Ricky Rubio, an efficient scoring banger in Nikola Pekovic, and Kevin Martin playing out of his mind. What makes you think Boston would fare any better with Love, [Rajon] Rondo and [Jared] Sullinger?"