Injuries and personnel moves have dramatically changed the Timberwolves' rotation.

With interim coach Sam Mitchell committed to a youth-oriented starting lineup, the team's bench has faded into the background.

Starting tonight, that may change. At least a little.

Over the last 15 games no team has used its bench less than the Timberwolves. Before that, with Kevin Garnett and Tayshaun Prince in the starting lineup, no team used its bench more.

KG remains sidelined with a knee injury, Nemanja Bjelica with a foot injury. Andre Miller and Kevin Martin are gone. Suddenly the Wolves bench is very young and very inexperienced. And, often in recent games, a big problem for the Wolves.

Mitchell will continue to give the young players in his starting lineup a lot of run, a lot of minutes. But he wants more out of the bench. "I want my kids to learn," Mitchell said. "But, if you look at our bench, we have a lot of inexperienced guys there. My main focus is making sure (Shabazz Muhammad) gets his minutes. But our bench just has to play better. It just has to. The thing that's amazing to me is the young guys hand in there. A lot of times we play other teams even with our starters. So we have to do a better job of getting a few more minutes for guys off the bench.''

That will be especially true in the coming days. Tonight's game against the Milwaukee Bucks at Bradley Center starts a stretch of four games in five nights.