Love, Wolves limp away from lopsided 111-92 loss to Miami

Kevin Love limped to his locker after Friday's 111-92 loss to Miami with an ice bag strapped to his upper thigh/groin and sure looked and sounded like a guy who might not play Saturday in Memphis.

"I don't know," he said after playing 35 minutes. "I got to wake up and see how I feel. I don't know yet."

He will wake up Saturday morning in Memphis and then decide if he can play, although after a week like this and with just six games remaining what's the point of pushing such an injury.

As down as he seemed, Love probably was optimistic about his injury compared to how he was feeling about a game in which the Wolves led by a point at halftime and then surrendered a 25-1 run to start the second half.

He only had one word to describe this one, and that was a one-word profanity I won't repeat her.

"That's some...," he said. "You can write that."

A big Friday night audience at Target Center got what they came to see, namely Dwyane Wade and LeBron James running, jumping, dunking and, of course, winning.

The Heat came out after halftime and blew the Wolves away. Wade had four dunks in that seven-minute stretch alone.

"They have a pretty good team of vets that know what to do in a situation like that when another team is hot," Love said. "They came out and had a huge run on us. That was the story of the game. We never came back. They hit us first in the second half. They outworked us, got a lot of fast-break opportunities and dunks.
"I wish we had come out in the second half like we ended the first half. It didn't work out that way."

Here's some other stuff from Friday's game:

* The loss was the Wolves' ninth straight. They haven't won since beating Utah on March 11.

* Believe it or not, but Darko Milicic didn't make it through the first quarter in this one before he sprained his left ankle and was done for the night after playing just fewer than 10 minutes.

* Martell Webster looked better than he has in weeks, although he again maintained afterward that he's not thinking about his back.

Webster defended James much of the time he was on the floor. He scored a season-high 22 points -- he made 8 of 12 shots, including 4 of 5 threes -- and played nearly 29 minutes, his most since he played 40 minutes Feb. 16 against the Clippers.

He bristled when it was suggested he found his shot or his offense on Friday night.

"I haven't been lost, I've been here the whole time," he said. "When you get more (shot) attempts, you begin to build a rhythm. I got that chance tonight and I made the most of it.

"I haven't been anywhere. I wasn't lost. My jump shot wasn't lost. I just wasn't getting a rhythm. Tonight, I just forced the issue. It worked out to my benefit. You could always play better. I felt I let LeBron get too many shots I could have contested.

He has been saying for weeks that his back is fine, but there sure have been a lot of grimaces from him almost every night in that time.

"Nobody in this league is 100 percent," he said. "Everybody has got some nagging injury. It's how you push through it and play. That's how this game is. That's the game was built and that's the way this game will always be. You've just got to play with what you have."

* I talked to assistant coach Reggie Theus before the game about him possibly heading back to UNLV to take the head-coaching job now that it looks like Lon Kruger is headed to Oklahoma.

He said it's too soon to know what the chance of that is, but he, of course, is interested. In fact, it's probably his dream job considering he was a member of Jerry Tarkanian's first Final Four team there in 1977 and has maintained some ties there ever since then.

The Las Vegas Sun today listed Theus and BYU associate head coach Dave Rice, who also played at UNLV, as two possibilities.

That's it from Friday night's game.

The Wolves flew to Memphis after the game and play the playoff-bound Grizzlies Saturday night. After three tough games against Boston, Chicago and now the Heat this week, this one could get ugly for the Wolves, who haven't played well in Memphis the last couple years.

Kent's got Saturday's game and I'll be back with the team next week for games against New Jersey, Phoenix and Denver.