Razzle-dazzle on the Web: It's lore of a rookie legend

For a guy who professes to be such an old-school basketball player, Timberwolves rookie Kevin Love sure has become something of a modern pop-culture phenomenon.

He's the cover boy on EA Sports' new college-basketball video game, and his freakish full-court practice shots and alley-oop passes are all over YouTube.com, that 21st-century videoed bastion of everything superfluous and silly.

Late Monday night, after he played his first NBA preseason game in Milwaukee, he was the top "news" story on yahoo.com, which teased a video clip in which Love makes a succession of amazing three-point trick shots by bouncing one in, kicking one in and making shots backward over his head and behind his back.

The King of the Trick Shots?

Fact or fiction?

"That's an urban myth," Love said with a smirk after Tuesday's practice. "It is open to interpretation."

Love demonstrated three-point range, made a little jump hook and scored on a couple of dunks, including a powerful put-back slam, while scoring 13 points in nearly 23 minutes on Monday. But he didn't bounce a single shot in, nor did he make one from behind his back. He shot the promotional video for Topps Trading Cards at its rookie-card photo shoot in New York City in August. It features a hyper-caffeinated, annoying announcer who spasms with each made shot.

Funny, though, the video was taped with a wide-screen format in which every shot disappears from view as it nears its apex. It reappears on screen as it falls through the basket.

Three of the four times, the ball passes through the net exactly the same way, banking slightly off the back of the rim.

He tells the announcer that he's unbeatable, the "king" of the shooting contest called H-O-R-S-E.

Asked Tuesday whether he or Love would win such a game without that 16:9 aspect movie screen, Wolves sharpshooter Mike Miller laughed and said, "I like my chances."

Said coach Randy Wittman: "In a game of H-O-R-S-E? Mike Miller. He's a veteran. C'mon, you can't go with a rookie. Kevin's a rookie."

True, but can Miller make full-court shots with regularity, as Love did in a YouTube.com clip from an NCAA tournament practice last spring? Those clips are real, although Love hasn't shown his new teammates his wrist strength and aim in practice yet.

That skill gave him credibility when Topps sought a player to provide some publicity with a video snippet that's too good to believe. (Just FYI: Love said he did the video shoot in about three minutes and nearly made each shot except for the one on which he threw the ball backward over his head, when he missed badly).

"I guess people believe it because I was the guy shooting the full-court shots," Love said before the Wolves flew to Billings, Mont., for tonight's preseason game against Oklahoma City.

He's also the guy who wears jersey No. 42 because it was old-timer Connie Hawkins' number, the guy whose father showed him videotapes of the 1980s Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers when he was a child in the 1990s.

YouTube? That's not really old school, is it?

"Everything you do ends up on YouTube, it seems," Love said. "You've got to be real cautious what you do. You could be at practice, you could be at your house and it could end up on YouTube. You saw what happened with Josh Howard, didn't you?"