Wizards' Booker one-ups the team that sent him away

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Timberwolves forward Kevin Love this season has produced the kind of rebounding numbers not seen around the NBA in decades, including three consecutive 20-point, 20-rebound games on a three-game trip that ended Saturday in Washington.

But it was two he couldn't reach that helped turn Saturday's game in the fourth quarter from a six-point advantage into a 103-96 loss to the Wizards at Verizon Center.

Love has made coaches -- his own and opposing ones -- marvel at his positioning, his strength and his instincts while delivering a double-double streak that on Saturday reached 50 games as well as a string of 30/30, 30/20 and 20/20 not achieved in the association since Moses Malone and Kevin Willis played.

On Saturday, his 20-point, 21-rebound night couldn't prevent Wizards rookie forward Trevor Booker from transforming the game with three consecutive slam dunks, including two rising putback dunks right over the top of Love midway through the final quarter.

"He's an athletic dude," Love said. "He's the type of guy who, you see the mascots jumping off the trampoline? It felt like that's what he was doing out there."

Booker's name never will strike such regret in the hearts of Wolves fans as Brandon Roy or, in a bit of revisionist history, Ray Allen do.

But yet on Saturday, he still became just one more fleeting Wolves pick who came back to beat the team that selected him on draft night and then traded him away.

All that mattered on Saturday was that he rose over Love twice and reached balls that Love seemed ready to snatch and turned a game between two shorthanded teams that Love said "we definitely should have won."

Washington coach Flip Saunders called them "highlight dunks that got us emotionally into the game, got the crowd into the game."

Love himself put it a bit more evocatively.

"It's just that I got off at the 10th floor," Love said, "and he got off at the 12th."

Still, Love maintained Booker's dunking exhibition didn't determine the game's outcome.

Then, with the Wolves leading by a point, Booker went slam, slam, slam and the Wizards suddenly led 90-85 with four minutes left.

The Wolves never recovered.

"Somebody should have hit him coming through the lane," he said. "I'm kind of known for my rebounding. I probably should have tipped the ball. But you say what want about Booker's putback. We had the lead, we had our game rolling, but it's not about the first three quarters.