Kevin Love woke up Sunday morning still feeling upset about Saturday's loss to Philadelphia. He was mad at the way the game went, not thrilled with the way he played.
But mainly he was mad at himself.
"I let the emotions get the best of me [Saturday] night," Love said after a rather long practice Sunday. "I felt like I'd taken a step back as far as maturity."
All of the above, he decided, needed to change.
"I let things bug me," Love continued. "I let missed shots bug me. I let different players on the offensive and defensive ends bug me. As a player who wants to be a leader, I need to step up and take that in stride and keep working through that. I don't think I did that [Saturday] night. So I wanted to come in and have a good attitude and work hard."
After a second consecutive loss in which the Wolves stopped moving the ball and let difficult stretches get the better of them, coach Kurt Rambis sounded familiar themes. It is a young team, still learning. Injuries have made it doubly difficult to get a bunch of young, new faces to jell. Inconsistency is the hallmark of young players, Rambis said. And the Wolves don't have that veteran leader to help pull them through trying times in games.
But Love, 22 and in only his third NBA season, is trying to change that. He is about to play in his first All-Star Game. With 40 consecutive double-doubles, he has proven to be a consistent performer whose words should carry weight with teammates.
To Love, the next step is to become more of a leader to a team that clearly needs one. Love said that was his role in high school, and at UCLA once his teammates saw his work ethic.
"Here it's a little tougher," Love said. "You play 82 games, you practice almost every day because we have such a young team. You have to bring it every day, do all the right things in practice and everywhere else, so guys will follow you. If you want to tell someone they're wrong, you'd better be sure you're doing most, if not everything, the way it should be done."
To Love, it's a necessary move, because he and his teammates are getting pretty tired of losing.
"These past two have bugged me more than any the whole season," Love said.
The Wolves had two lackluster games against Philadelphia and Indiana after playing well in consecutive road victories in New Orleans and Houston.
"I felt we had started to play some good basketball," he said.
The Indiana loss was especially difficult to take.
"I just don't like Indiana," Love said. "I don't like anybody on their team. I only like [his former UCLA teammate] Darren Collison. They're just a team that bugs me. I felt we should have beat them. [Saturday] night, against the 76ers, they played good defense, but they were playing their fourth game in five nights. We should have been the team that played harder, and we weren't."
Rambis said he noticed Love's dedication to doing everything right in practice Sunday and is glad Love wants to be more of a leader.
"In a lot of ways, it's probably unfair to ask young players to be leaders," Rambis said. "But that's the makeup of our team right now."
And Love said he's ready for the challenge. Saturday night, by his own description, he couldn't get outside of himself and do the things to help the team.
"I was out of it, mad,'' he said. "I haven't felt that way in a long time."
http://www.startribune.com/sports/wolves/116136264.html
