Rinse and repeat: Wolves falter down stretch again, lose 96-93 at Boston

Monday night's game ended in a way you've seen before this season.

Seven times before.

The Wolves lost a double-digit lead for the eighth time this season, but, well, not quite exactly like this.

For one thing, never before Monday night could you find Luke Ridnour peering into a computer screen in the team's locker room afterward, watching over and over footage of a traveling call whistled on him in the final nine seconds.

He turned back to his locker room stall convinced he hadn't traveled -- even though you probably thought otherwise after seeing a replay -- in a play that certainly didn't cost the Wolves a victory because they once again did enough on their own in the final seven minutes to do so.

Once again, the story was too many missed shots, untimely turnovers, flustered shots and too little Michael Beasley that denied the Wolves their fourth victory in the last five games.

He scored 19 points in just 23 minutes because of foul trouble.

The three minutes before -- just after the Wolves led 85-77 with about 6:40 to go -- he barely touched the ball.

Part of that was Paul Pierce's defense.

Part of that was just not getting the ball to the guy they've deemed their go-to guy.

"I think we need to get the ball to him," Kevin Love said. "He was hot down the stretch for us."

Beasley made some awfully tough shots over Pierce down that stretch, but those eight points weren't quite enough, not after the Wolves went scoreless for more than three minutes just before that, not after they had enough defensive lapses to allow Pierce and Ray Allen three threes made in the final seven minutes and not after Ridnour was called for a travel on his free romp down the lane where he forgot to dribble and which ended with Allen swatting his shot out of bounds anyway.

"You're the reporter," he said. "You write how you saw it."

Well, when Corey Brewer's shooting and Beasley's not...

Kurt Rambis praised his team afterward for getting that double digit lead and then again mentioned how young this team is, how far it has come in such a short time, how much more room there is for growth, even though he did say, "Some of the things we were doing were a little odd for some of our players, but I thought they did a really good job."

He gave me a bit of a glare when I asked how difficult it is to see these games end the same way every time and he said, "It may be difficult for you, but I'm very proud of our guys to get that lead."

I told him I wasn't speaking for myself, but for all the folks watching on television back home.

Ridnour got free on a cut to the basket after the Celtics overplayed the inbounds pass.

Trouble is, he appeared to take about three strides without dribbling. When I asked for help on Twitter tonight because I didn't get a real look at the play, many Twitter follows responded that it was definitely a travel, although a few questioned whether an NBA star like Pierce would get whistled for it in the same circumstance.

One person tweeted that Ridnour traveled so much, he earned elite Delta status for it.

I particularly liked that one.

Allen's block ensured that he never got to the rim anyway, but without the travel, the Wolves would have had the ball still and wouldn't have had to send Nate Robinson to the line or had to rely upon, after they ran out of timeouts, Beasley's desperation three at the buzzer that would have tied the game but missed.

Right...

"The fact that we're there at the end of the game against one of the best teams in the NBA, that we're there, I do see growth," Beasley said. "I'm just tired of being there. I want to win. I'm used to winning."

Love basically said ditto to what Beasley said.

"It's real frustrating, I don't really don't know what to attribute it to by this point," Love said. "It's just losing games in the manner we have because we show we can play with anybody. We're beyond that (moral victories) now. We've been up on good teams. You can say that about the San Antonio games.

"We don't really look at that now. We need to play better down the stretch. That's part the coaching staff, part us....

A few other things:

* Love outrebounded the entire Celtics team missing injured Kevin Garnett for nearly the first three quarters, but Boston rallied and kicked his butt, 30-24 total.

"It was a Love fest," Rivers said. "Love's terrific. He's tenacious. You know, it hurt having Baby (Glen Davis) in foul trouble because we wanted his big body on Love's big body. But, hell, I think he had 10 in the first quarter, if I'm not mistaken (he's not). He gets a ton of them.

"The five offensive rebounds are the ones to me that stood out. The defensive rebounds, someone's going to get the defensive rebounds. Those aren't a big deal to me. But the offensive rebounds are the ones that hurt you."

Love outrebounded the Celts 15-14 in the first half alone.

He went 3 for 11 and scored 12 points. That extended his double-double streak to 21 games, dating to that scoreless Nov. 19 game against the Lakers.

* How concerned are you getting about Jonny Flynn?

Monday's game was his second consecutive scoreless game -- sandwiched around that missed game Saturday against the Nets -- and it looks like he's making even the easy plays look hard, such as when he turned away from a path to the basket on the break tonight and opted for a backward bounce pass to Corey Brewer that went astray.

That's all from Boston here Monday night.

The Wolves flew home after the game.