ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Swarmed on all sides by a group of cacophonous youngsters, Chase Budinger is in a peaceful place.
The deafening screams of excitable, youthful Timberwolves fans, though stringent on the eardrums, are welcome compared to the jaws of scrutiny that often accompany the club the small forward re-signed with this offseason. The unrest spiked again last winter while Budinger, Kevin Love and several of their teammates took turns watching from the Minnesota bench in street clothes during a season swept away by injury combined with lack of depth.
A lot has changed since then, including Budinger's transformation back to full health following surgery for a torn left meniscus. But in a sports success-starved metropolitan area, concern and, oftentimes, apathy will remain instinctive fan mindsets until some major franchise can tear down the walls erected by disappointment after disappointment.
The past nine years of postseason-bereft, misguided transaction-laced Timberwolves hoops haven't done much to quell the cycle of cynicism.
But here, on the first stop of the team's 2013 Summer Caravan, Budinger doesn't have to worry about any of that.
His only concern is which clamoring kid's miniature basketball to autograph next.
"It feels great, especially for me, because last year, I was kind of isolated in Minneapolis," said Budinger, who was traded from Houston to the Timberwolves before last season. "It feels great just to expand my knowledge of Minnesota and go to different cities and meet all the fans around Minnesota."
Especially the ones that don't require much convincing.
But preteen children running around community centers like the Rochester Area Family YMCA -- the first stop on the club's three-day tour -- aren't paying for tickets, merchandise and television contracts.
That would be the parents on the gymnasiums' peripheries, smart phones and tablets a-blazing as their offspring create lifelong memories with their idols.
Alongside the innocent beauty of a 5-year-old boy and his favorite player posing for an Instagram picture exists the practical reality of professional sports, or any business, for that matter: with every outreach project comes a potential point of sale.
This year's product, though, is one people around the organization believe can market itself.
"Like any sport, if you build it, they're gonna come," explained player development coach Shawn Respert, the emcee of sorts at each caravan destination. "If we make sure we concentrate on the type of team to be successful, period, then people enjoy watching good teams play.
"Our management has done a great job of knowing that there was some changes to be made, and they've made them, and now it puts the onus back on us to do a great job of coaching the talent we have."
Certainly, there's more of that present.
New president of basketball operations Flip Saunders maneuvered aggressively through free agency, re-signing Budinger and bringing in proven shooting guard Kevin Martin -- a projected starter -- and veteran reserve-types Corey Brewer and Ronny Turiaf. He's close to nailing down an extension agreement with stud center Nikola Pekovic, he says, and his relationship with pillar players Love and Ricky Rubio appears amicable enough to suggest they're happy in the Twin Cities for the time being.
That lineup sure makes a league-worst seventh straight 50-loss campaign (excluding the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season) look like a long shot.
"We should definitely be looking at playoffs, and nothing less," Budinger proclaimed.
But it takes more than a couple big-name signings to ignite an entire fan base with the enthusiasm of a 7-year-old girl watching Crunch trampoline over three of her peers and dunk a basketball.
"The community responds to what we, in general, what we have to take care of in the locker room first, and on the floor," Respert said. "We know what we needed to overcome."
That included a slew of injuries, misfortunes that both Budinger and fellow caravan representative Dante Cunningham say skew the outcome of the 2012-13 go-round.
"Last season, it was just tough with all the injuries that happened to us," Budinger said, "so I think our biggest concern this year is just to stay healthy."
Said Cunningham: "I feel that this community understands what we went through. They understand that, clearly, we started the year off missing Rubio, then we lose Kevin Love, and then a whole other mess of things happened."
Giving the Timberwolves' training staff and team doctor a break don't guarantee a good season, either, though. New faces need time to adjust, starting in October when players report for training camp.
There are new roles to be defined, personalities to mesh, and styles of play to mold together.
All in the name of producing decibel levels inside the Target Center comparable to what they were Tuesday morning in Rochester and can be expected Wednesday in Duluth and Thursday in Fargo, N.D.
"The core guys that went through it last year that are here, that built it, we need to be that rock," Cunningham said. "We need to be strong and bring the newer guys in. Even though they're older, mature guys that have been there, done that, we still have to kind of show them the way of the Wolves and how we do it here."
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