Pre-game update

Greetings, Kent Youngblood here.

I'm curious how the Wolves play tonight, given what happened to them on their three-game road trip to Memphis, Miami and Orlando.

Wolves coach Kurt Rambis flat-out said the team should be embarrassed, especially by the back-to-back whippings administered by the two Florida teams. "I don't know how you could not be (embarrassed), when you get beat by the number of points we got beat by," Rambis said moments ago. "It doesn't sit well with anybody."

Rambis said the team responded very well in a high-intensity, aggressive practice Thursday. Rambis thought it was going to be a short session, but the team was so energetic and competitive he let it go. "I finally had to cut it off," Rambis said. "They could have come out and felt sorry for themselves. But it was an aggressive, a very high-energy practice."

How will that carry into tonight's game with Atlanta? The Hawks are unbeaten, but they haven't played a very tough schedule. The Wolves will have Michael Beasley back. I would expect at the very least the Wolves, back home, would play a competitive game.

Other items:

--Beasley is sore, but he will start. Other starters are Darko Milicic, Kevin Love, Wes Johnson and Luke Ridnour.

--Here's one final note. Rambis was asked about the trash-talking story involving Kevin Garnett and Detroit's Charlie Villanueva in which Villanueva tweeted alleged trash-talking comments that Garnett made during a game. Rambis was asked his opinion of trash-talking in general. His reply: Rambis doesn't want his players trash-talking when it's taken off the court. On the court? "We haven't done anything to trash talk about yet," he said.