Thursday Therapy: Hangover

That headache you feel? Sensitivity to bright lights and loud sounds? That's what happens after the Minnesota Timberwolves take a loss like they did last night, to a Denver Nuggets team with an interim head coach on a back-to-back in Minnesota. It was a bad night last night, so let's work our way past it together. News, notes, links and shenanigans like a good morning cup of coffee. Shall we?

• Yes, the Wolves lost last night, 100-85. It wasn't pretty. John has a recap on the site that you should investigate. Away media roundup's short and sweet today: Denver Stiffs recap | Denver Post recap | Denver Stiffs on Melvin Hunt, the Nuggets' interim coach | Denver Post on the mismanagement of Brian Shaw's firing. They're also quite interested in Kevin Garnett's comments about the Nuggets quitting on Brian Shaw.

• Let's go right ahead and be done with that. Although you've almost definitely read the pieces already on this site, I want to highlight John's excellent work on Breaking Down the Wolves so far: Part I | Part II | Part III. If you've missed any, get caught up before parts IV and V drop.

• Adreian Payne's had some time to get settled in with the big kids and people are starting to take a look. Zach's extremely detailed look from earlier this week is very high quality, and the folks over at Upside & Motor also took a look at the Payne game. Payne's actual basketball game has really started to grow on me the more I see of it, and I'm excited to see what he can turn into over the rest of the year.

• Other basketball writing and such from around the web that I've taken great delight in recently: Michael Beasley singing Vanessa Carlton | Brad Rowland of FanSided re-drafted the class of 2012 | Matt Dollinger of SI's 50 NBA notes and anecdotes from the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference | Marc Spears of Yahoo catches up with former Ole Miss star Marshall Henderson in Iraq.

• Around the league last night: Russell Westbrook is on an unbelievable individual tear | Chris Paul freaked out, and the Clippers lost to the Blazers in OT | Marc Gasol beat the buzzer to lead the Grizzlies over the Rockets | Mo Williams is playing out of his mind for the Hornets, who stomped the Nets.

The Wolves have two days off before their next game (against Portland on Saturday), which should be good for Kevin Martin and Nikola Pekovic to move closer to health, as well as all the other more long-term injuries on the roster. Stay happy this morning, and thank Michael Beasley for your song of the morning. I couldn't resist. (Also, this song is 15 years old (!))