Rambis is finally warming to his Love Machine

By John McMullen

Philadelphia, PA - "System coaches" aren't real popular in the Twin Cities these days.

Over in the NFL, Brad Childress has turned a team loaded with talent into one of the NFL's worst with a coaching style that can best be described as Authoritarian. A weak-kneed owner, Zygi Wilf, has given Childress exclusive, unaccountable, and arbitrary power with the Vikings but a lack of people skills have turned the locker room against the Napoleon-wannabe. Instead of commanding respect, all this football despot gets from his players is guffaws and snickers behind his overmatched back.

Things aren't quite as bad with the Timberwolves but Kurt Rambis has certainly been a slave to the Triangle Offense he learned while sitting next to Phil Jackson in Los Angeles.

Problem is, Rambis didn't bring along Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan when he arrived in Minneapolis before last season and let's just say Corey Brewer and Wayne Ellington weren't reasonable facsimiles.

But, the cupboard wasn't bare for Rambis last year. Then-rookie point guard Jonny Flynn had the quicks to give any perimeter defense headaches, while Al Jefferson and Kevin Love were talented bigs -- the kind of guys that are daily double-double threats that other coaches crave.

None of those players proved to be a good fit for the Triangle, however. Flynn and Jefferson should have been playing pick-and-roll basketball, while Love should have been handling the dirty work and crashing the boards like a David Lee.

Instead of taking advantage of the talent he had on hand, Rambis insisted on pounding the square peg in the round hole, alienating his "star" players in a process that resulted in a dismal 15 wins.

You could play apologist by saying Flynn was a young point guard that needed to be harnessed and taught a proven system, while Jefferson has always had his warts. Today, the jury remains out on Flynn, who is about to return after offseason hip surgery, while Jefferson is excelling in Salt Lake City now playing ... big surprise ... pick and roll basketball.

All that said, the handling of Love was always strange. An effort player with strong fundamentals and skill, KLove should be just about every coach's dream.

During his first two NBA seasons, the Wolves managed just 39 wins but, according to the stat geeks that have polluted our world, 21 of them were directly traced to the production of Love, yet the UCLA product was unable to garner 30 minutes of playing time a night.

Early this season, despite a productive summer playing with the gold medal- winning USA Basketball world championship team, things didn't change all that much. Minnesota was getting trounced by 17 points a night and Love was only toiling 27 minutes a game.

The question of why Rambis would not give Love more minutes puzzled even the most seasoned of NBA observers.

"You have to be on crystal meth not to give Love more minutes on that team," one scout told ESPN's Chris Broussard. "It makes no sense."

I'm not ready to accuse Rambis of doing bumps during timeouts. In fact, I think the T-Wolves coach is blinded by what he was as a player, a high-energy, defensive-minded power forward on four Lakers championship teams.

Rambis simply can't believe a player that exudes the type of effort Love does on a consistent basis has that much ability, so he harps on the occasional forced shot instead of allowing Love the rope a player with his skill-set normally receives.

After playing just 24 minutes and sitting out the final eight of the T-Wolves' opening-day loss against Sacramento, the classy Love left the locker room without speaking to the media.

According to various reports, Minnesota received over 100 phone calls and e- mails after the game from fans complaining about Love's lack of playing time. A few front office sources leaked that they were even dumbfounded by Love's lack of playing time.

Like Childress with the Vikings, the hard-headed Rambis was seemingly blissfully unaware of any criticism, secure in the knowledge that being a slave to his system was not only the answer -- it was the only answer.

Whether it was the specter of a pending trip to the unemployment line, Rambis all of a sudden gave Love 38 minutes to work with in his return to the Los Angeles-area last Tuesday. The results were 23 points and 24 rebounds as the Wolves hung tough in a 99-94 setback to the defending two-time NBA champion Lakers.

The second night of a back-to-back in Sacramento turned into the Michael Beasley show and KLove was back under 30 minutes of playing time as the Wolves won just their second game of the season.

With the chance to cobble together the team's first winning streak of the season versus New York on Friday, Love decided to play Moses Malone, compiling the NBA's first 30-30 game in 28 years with 31 points and 31 boards against the Knicks in a 112-103 Minnesota triumph. His encore was a 22-point, 17- rebound performance against Atlanta in Dixie on Sunday.

Eleven games into the season, Love leads the NBA in rebounding with 14.8 per game and even the obtuse Rambis is starting to realize its time to ride his Love Machine.

Who knows -- it might even save his job.