Given how things have gone for his team, you might understand why Rick Adelman wasn't going to believe it until he saw it.
Adelman recently concluded his pre-game meeting with reporters, and he was talking about tonight's game with the New Orleans Hornets. Specifically the fact that Hornets coach Monty Williams had just confirmed that Eric Gordon, still working his way back from injury, would not play tonight.
Gordon returned to action Dec. 29. But, as he works his way back to 100 percent, the Hornets are not playing him on the second night of back-to-back games yet, much like the way the Wolves treated Ricky Rubio when he first came back from knee surgery.
But Adelman, joking, was having none of it. "I still think he's going to play," Adelman said. "I'm just very pessimistic. I think he'll play, probably, 40 minutes.''
No, he won't.
Here are a couple other pre-game notes:
--A big part of it was the zone the Wolves used against the Lakers Friday, but once again the Wolves were slammed on the boards. Adelman said a big priority tonight is rebounding. In a statistical oddity, Andrei Kirilenko played nearly 32 minutes Friday without grabbing a rebound.
--Luke Ridnour and Rubio will be the starting backcourt again tonight. But Adelman said he is trying to come up with a way for the Wolves to play teams with bigger backcourts that doesn't force Ridnour to guard off-guards much bigger than him.
