Thursday (Wolves defeat Hawks -- the fake game story) edition: Wha' Happened?

The 2011-12 Wolves season -- certainly the most highly anticipated year since KG's departure -- would have began Wednesday night if big-ego folks could figure out a reasonable business model for the NBA. Instead, we found a lot of grieving people on Twitter -- folks genuinely sad that the NBA should be happening right now ... people perhaps staring longingly at empty arenas or blank TV screens.

A few of them took solace in a few fake tweets we put out there describing last night's "game." So we decided to string some of those updates together into a game story. None of this, of course, happened. Here we go:

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The new-look Timberwolves brought plenty of bad old habits to Target Center on Wednesday for their season-opener against Atlanta.

They turned the ball over at crucial moments. They built a big lead only to see it shrivel in the fourth quarter. And their offense seemed mired in quicksand during key possessions.

But there was one key difference: Minnesota won.

After winning just 32 combined games the past two seasons under then-coach Kurt Rambis, the Timberwolves held on for a 96-95 victory over the Hawks on Wednesday after Derrick Williams harassed Al Horford into a bad shot in the closing seconds and Kevin Love sealed the game with his 15th rebound (to go with 19 points) at the buzzer.

"It wasn't pretty," Love said. "But it would have been even uglier if they had made one more basket. Like a baby, a win is always beautiful in some way."

The Wolves made a habit out of late-game collapses under Rambis. New coach Rick Adelman tried everything from different combinations to different defenses in an attempt to keep Minnesota from suffering a similar fate.

All was well early, as the Wolves jumped to a 26-20 lead after one quarter over Atlanta -- which advanced to the Eastern Conference semifinals a year ago -- on the way to a 48-43 edge at halftime. Minnesota expanded the cushion to as much as 14 points, leading 73-59 late in the third quarter before things unraveled a bit.

Horford had 10 of his game-high 25 points in the fourth quarter, helping the Hawks pull within 89-85 with three minutes to play. It was down to one before the final possession, and Target Center fans were murmuring. They had seen this all before.

"I know they've been burned in the past," Adelman said of his players and the fan base. "But I don't care about history."

"Coach stressed team defense on that final play," Williams said. "The way the crowd reacted, it felt like maybe they hadn't seen a whole lot of that. They should get used to seeing more."