Timberwolves forward Kevin Love will play in his second consecutive All-Star Game, later this month in Orlando.

Western Conference coaches picked Love as one of seven reserves for the Feb. 26 game in voting announced tonight on TNT's Thursday night pre-game show.

From Jerry Z

EDIT: The other reserves are:

West - LaMarcus Aldridge, Russell Westbrook, Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker, Steve Nash, and Marc Gasol

East - Chris Bosh, Joe Johnson, Roy Hibbert, Paul Pierce, Deron Williams, Luol Deng, and Andre Iguodala

First, see here for the Ricky Rubio draft board.

After 26 games Ricky is looking pretty solid amongst his peers.

Hey T-wolves fans! Just finished a breakdown (a few adv. statistics) comparing Slick-Rick to Kyrie Irving.

Let me know what you think! Also, congrats on having such a damn awesome team to watch.

I can't stop laughing.

"It's slightly counterintuitive, particularly since the Timberwolves are a young, rebuilding team and have already dealt their 2012 first-rounder. The pick they have now is the lottery-protected pick acquired from the Utah Jazz. With no shot at a top pick, Minnesota knows it isn't about to acquire a franchise cornerstone. The question then becomes, how much solid young talent is too much solid young talent?

...

Rookies represent great potential and great value to franchises, but only if they have the time to learn. Game time, mistakes and failure all provide great learning and development opportunities for a young player. When a rookie does not play much that first season, the chances that he'll become a good player diminish significantly.

Minnesota is poised to become a relevant playoff team soon and doesn't have available minutes to properly develop all its young players. Instead of adding another, it should get good value for the pick by trading it and addressing a need.

Certainly the roster might change a great deal by June, and if it does, perhaps a draft pick makes more sense. If not, it would not be surprising to see Minnesota target a player on another team's roster rather than one in the draft."

David Thorpe ESPN (Insider)

I've never been a huge fan of Smith, and I also don't want him taking the ball out of Rubio's hands, but if the price is 2.5, it seems like a pretty good deal.

Thoughts?

I like this. You will too. Unless you're visiting from another blog.

They basically say that Minnesota is cold, bad contracts like Darko and Ridnour have screwed up their cap situation, and Love will leave at the end of his contract. The Wolves lack the "organizational know-how" to compete. A surprisingly lazy analysis by Ford and Hollinger...I would have expected more out of them.