Giving the ball away

Greetings for a final time tonight:

Kent Youngblood here. I covered tonight's game, with Jerry writing a sidebar on Knicks phenom Jeremy Lin.

Well, the Wolves, coming off back-to-back games and headed to Orlando, won't practice tomorrow. But I bet coach Rick Adelman wishes they could. And I know what he'd work on if they did:

Taking care of the ball.

After getting to a point where opponents had to earn their victories over the Wolves, Minnesota has returned to the habit of giving the ball-- and games -- away.

In Friday's loss to Dallas, the Mavs scored 30 points off 28 Minnesota turnovers. While coming back from six down to beat the Wolves Saturday, New York turned 23 Wolves turnovers into 29 points.

There were a lot of other storylines Saturday -- Jeremy Lin vs. Ricky Rubio, Kevin Love's continued mastery of the Knicks. But it all came down to the Wolves self-destructing on offense when it mattered. The Wolves made one field goal while turning the ball over three times in the final 9 1/2 minutes of the game.

1. Lin is darned quick. In the first half, while he was scoring 15 of his 20 points, he was everything he was advertised to be. The Wolves went into the game with the plan of forcing him to his left hand when he attacked the basket. They did a better job of that in the second half, limiting Lin to five points on 1-for-12 shooting. I think he is going to be a very productive player, but I bet he struggles a bit as teams learn his weaknesses. But then, as long as Tyson Chandler is allowed to move on his picks, Lin will probably be OK.

2. Kevin Love played 43 1/2 minutes. He scored 32 points and had 21 rebounds. And the Wolves lost.

3. Nikola Pekovic had 21 points and a career-high 13 rebounds, getting his fifth double double in the last 10 games. But numbers like that will be hard to match against Orlando's Dwight Howard.

4. Minnesota made eight of its first 10 shots, but missed 16 of 19 in the fourth quarter.

5. In an effort to cut down on offensive dysfunction, Adelman went to his three-point-guard lineup down the stretch. It didn't help.