Kevin Love will not be forgiven by Wolves fans, Saunders says

Flip Saunders is already stirring the pot.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, as the Wolves player personnel boss and head coach bit his tongue throughout and immediately after Kevin Love was traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers as the focal point of a three-team trade that also included the Philadelphia 76ers. Saunders likes to hear himself talk, and this is a good chance to take a slight jab at the Wolves’ former superstar power forward.

"“Minnesota people are pretty loyal. You turn on Minnesota, they don’t forgive you,” Saunders said after practice on Monday. “So I think people probably appreciated him while he was here. But you leave under the terms that he did, just the way Minnesota people are, they’re not pretty forgiving along those lines.”"

It’s not too outlandish of a comment, but it’s a bit of a broad generalization and it’s a tough comment for many of those “loyal” Wolves fans to get on board with, no doubt.

On the one hand, there is a level of an…inferiority complex that comes with being a native Minnesotan. Being endlessly called a small-market by the major four-letter sports network among other things helped to build this complex, but it’s an ever-present, prevalent theme in Minnesotan fandom.

And it’s not necessarily all bad, either. The toughest thing about Saunders’ above comments is that he feels the need to speak for everyone. Love’s attitude and eventually his comments, coupled with how he’s apparently acted behind the scenes in regards to playing in Minnesota for the rest of his prime didn’t endear himself to Wolves fans, and at times seemed somewhat childish and unnecessary.

But the theme that I keep coming back to is that it simply wasn’t Kevin Love’s fault that the Wolves weren’t a playoff contender. Sure, last year’s 40-win team was a big disappointment, but first Kevin McHale, then David Kahn, and finally Flip Saunders failed to put the proper players around Love to allow him to drag the team to the playoffs. The lack of faith that Kahn showed in Love when it came time to talk extension is a fair thing for Love to hold onto, but the inability to put enough pieces on the roster to simply win more games then they lost is the bigger issue.

Because of that, it’s hard for to get too upset about a young athlete who is just entering the prime of an All-Star career wanting to play for an organization that could potentially demonstrate competency. (Insert joke about that alternate organization happening to be in Cleveland, because that couldn’t have worked out more perfectly.)

I mean, the Wolves didn’t just make a few bad decisions, they have been nearly entirely incompetent for a decade. And that’s not Love’s fault. Far from it, in fact.

While Love didn’t go about things the right way, he wasn’t wrong, either. Saunders can draw on the Kevin Garnett experience, and if he’s going to do that, well, the only parallels between the two are their first name and the struggles of the Timberwolves organization to support them with decent role players and secondary stars.

All that said, I think it’s likely that Saunders is right. The general populous of Wolves fans and casual sports fans in Minnesota will boo Love when he makes his return, and won’t be able to get past the fact that he angled his way out of town for greener pastures.

But methinks that many die-hard, “loyal” Wolves fans will understand that the Wolves did Love wrong, not the other way around. And while Love made some mistakes, the Wolves made many, many more, and Saunders may not be the party to side with in this instance.

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