MINNEAPOLIS – The "nine" jokes will persist, for at least another week.
The Timberwolves announced Tuesday that both Andrei Kirilenko and Nikola Pekovic will miss the team's next three games – Wednesday against Washington, Saturday in Denver, and Sunday against Dallas – before being re-evaluated ahead of next Tuesday's game against the Spurs. Kirilenko suffered a calf strain in the first quarter of the team's Feb. 26 game against the Suns, and Pekovic strained his abdomen two nights later in Los Angeles.
With the center and forward out, the Timberwolves' numbers have dwindled to nine, which at this point is providing a kind of sick humor around the locker room. There's little more anyone can do when coach Rick Adelman says he needs all nine of his guys to step up – all nine, indeed.
In the two most recent games that both have missed, Adelman has gone with a starting lineup of Greg Stiemsma, Derrick Williams, Mickael Gelabale, Luke Ridnour and Ricky Rubio, and that's likely to continue, as it gives the coach his best options off the bench.
Monday's Rubio scare: Ricky Rubio went to the Timberwolves locker room between the third and fourth quarters on Monday, emerging a few minutes later and re-entering the game. As with anything Rubio does that even so much as hints at an injury, the exit was a cause for worry, but the point guard said postgame it was a false alarm, and Adelman confirmed that at Tuesday's practice.
Adelman said that he didn't even ask what was wrong when Rubio left – mostly because he didn't want to know. You can't blame him, either, not when he's coaching half a team posing as a full one.
"I didn't even ask him what happened," Adelman said. "I really didn't. I saw him leave. I saw him go to the locker room, and I didn't even want to ask."
The coach said that Rubio was fine at practice, and that the whole thing was just a scare. Rubio said that it was the first time he'd felt a certain instability in his left knee since returning from his ACL tear, which was why he was somewhat alarmed, but everything turned out just fine.
"That would scare me, if I tweaked that and I had that injury before," Adelman said. "I'd be a little bit concerned, too, but he seems to have gotten through it."
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