Robbie Hummel has been coming to Minnesota every summer since he was born because his grandparents are from Blue Earth, he has many relatives in Brooklyn Center and his great-grandfather built a lake home in northern Minnesota that he still visits.
But now that he's the Timberwolves' newest small forward, the former Purdue star might miss a family reunion held in Minneapolis every Fourth of July because he has other commitments, namely preparations to join his NBA team in time for Las Vegas Summer League play.
"It's coming up," he said about the reunion. "I don't know if I'm going to make this one."
Take away one February night at Williams Arena more than two years ago that he would rather forget and Hummel loves everything about Minnesota, including the fact the Wolves took him 58th overall, three picks from the end of Thursday night's NBA draft.
"It's kind of perfect," Hummel said. "Waiting that long was hard. I started getting worried it wasn't going to happen."
Hummel watched the draft from a West Lafayette, Ind., restaurant and heard name after name called before his did.
Many of them -- international players Izzet Turkyllmaz, Kostas Papanikolaou, Ognjean Kuzmic, Furkan Aldemir, Ilkan Karaman -- he had never heard of before.
"When you see so many players, especially the foreign players -- they're probably really good players, but you've never seen them play," said Hummel, who would have become a free agent able to sign with any team if he hadn't been drafted. "It's hard to understand that sometimes. My agent was keeping me calm, telling me to be patient. That's hard when you've been waiting there for four hours. It ended up working out for the best."
