EL SEGUNDO, CALIF. - The way his season is going -- very much like his last couple of NBA seasons -- Timberwolves forward Andrei Kirilenko sounds ready to adopt a custom from the old country if it'll keep him healthy.
Kirilenko's strained calf sustained early in Tuesday's 84-83 overtime loss at Phoenix follows back spasms and a strained quad that caused him to miss more than a week each time earlier this season.
He will not play in Thursday night's TNT game against the Los Angeles Lakers at Staples Center and made no predictions about when he might be back, like he correctly did with his first two injures.
"So frustrating when you got something like this again," he said. "Somebody cursed us. Too many people missing games, like something wrong. If we would be in Russia, we go to church and put out the candles. I hope it would be that easy."
Without Kirilenko, Wolves coach Rick Adelman will have to rely upon Mickael Gelabale, Alexey Shved and perhaps go with a Dante Cunningham-Derrick Williams' frontcourt tag team to compensate for Kirilenko's size and defensive game.
"I don't know how long, but he'll be out for a while," Adelman said. "And that will really hurt us again because we're just so small offensively. It just makes it hard. The hardest thing for us is [to] keep these guys going. It gets old listening to the same thing and we have to find a way to win until we get people back. Hopefully we might get Chase [Budinger] and Kevin [Love] back. We still have to find a way to compete and win."
Mr. Clutch The Wolves showed up at the Lakers practice facility Wednesday afternoon, but concluded after about 30 minutes when Adelman challenged J.J. Barea to make a half-court shot and Barea canceled practice by making it on his first attempt.
The Wolves whooped and hollered almost as much those Mississippi college kids did when a cheerleader made a somersaulting half-court shot that became a YouTube sensation last week.