I sat down with Flip Saunders on Thursday afternoon to do reporting for my Sunday draft preview story and pieces that will run next week leading up to next Thursday's draft.

I'm saving all the Kevin Love and draft-specific stuff until then, but here's a bunch of this and that from our conversation:

* I asked him if he's going to need to move players other than Love because, with players still to be added through a Love trade and the draft, of a surplus of players at, say, small forward.

"It depends," he said. "Is Luc Mbah a Moute a small forward or a power forward? The other small forward basically are '2' guards: Corey, Bud, Shabazz, Kevin Martin and then Luc slides over (to power forward). You look at Alexey. He can probably play both (guard spots) and you have the two point guards. I don't think our roster is overly unbalanced now. We've got three guys who are basically centers."

* He said he envisions centers Gorgui Dieng and Ronny Turiaf both playing some at power forward and said he thinks Nikola Pekovic and Dieng can play together some, with Pek at center and Dieng mobile enough to defend out on the floor at the power-forward spot.

"I think you can play them (together),' he said. "I think that's probably something we've work on a lot this summer, to see Gorgui's ability to play out on the floor a little bit more. I always say what position you are is who you can guard and I think he can guard 4s."

* Saunders said he expects Dieng, Shved and Muhammad to play at Vegas Summer League next month. He also wants Chase Budinger to come to Minneapolis for three days of practice before and possibly even play a couple games in Vegas so Saunders and his staff can see how Budinger's knee rehab is going.

"We've had a long talk about things," Saunders said. "As I told him, we probably did him an injustice. Everyone was so anxious to get him back (from October knee surgery, his second in 11 months), Rick wanted him back. We probably should have put him in the D League for a couple weeks because what happens is, he came back and the other team was running the 220 (yard) sprint) and got around to the 110 (mark) and Chase was at a standstill. They went by him and he could never catch 'em. We needed to put him where he could get his confidence going and when he did get it going, then the next game he sprained his ankle the last couple weeks of the season."

* Saunders said Dieng has gained weight -- some 10, 15 pounds -- and Muhammad has lost some (7 or 8 pounds) and he'd like to see both continue to progress in that area.

* He said he hasn't decided who will coach the Vegas games, but added they'll probably switch the duties around. That could mean just-named assistants Sidney Lowe and Sam Mitchell could coach a game or two, as could Saunders' son Ryan, who hasn't been officially hired yet.

He said David Adelman, who has a year left on his contract, will be on the staff but hasn't decided yet whether Bobby Jackson will be back as player development coach or who might fill that role or roles.

* He did confirm he went to Chicago Tuesday to watch Creighton small forward Doug McDermott and Michigan guard Nik Stauskas work out and said he has gone to see other prospect(s) work out but wouldn't say who.

* A bit more about when I asked him if there's a chance he'll trade that 13th overall pick.

"No," he said. "I shouldn't say no. Let me put it this way: You can always trade a pick. That hasn't entered my mind. I didn't think I was going to trade me pick last year (when he swapped No. 9 for 14 and 21 and took Muhammad and Dieng). Things can happen. I do think there's more of a box now (of possible players to pick) than I did before. This morning I got something from somebody that (top 3 prospect Joel) Embiid broke his foot and (European prospect Dario) Saric is going back to Europe for two more years. If Saric goes back, he maybe falls and keeps on falling. You never know what will happen."

* He appears to be targeting shooting -- I hear McDermott, Stauskas and Adreian Payne all are high on his list -- but reiterated that he feels the team needs to add two-way players -- i.e. guys who can play defense, too -- most to this roster.

"You still need to add shooting, you can never have too much shooting," he said. "I mean, you can look at it different ways. We had trouble shooting last year but we scored a lot of points. We may have had trouble shooting, but we rebounded the hell out of it and we got to the free-throw line. You want to find that balance. I don't think you totally want to substitute shooting where we have one-way type players, though."

* One last thing from me: If Wolves try to clear roster spots and decided to do so by finding a new home for Shved, don't be surprised if Cleveland is such a home. The Cavs were one of the finalists to sign him in 2011 and chosen coach Dave Blatt coached him with the Russian Olympic team in London in 2012.