Tom Powers: Lady Luck doesn't like the Timberwolves http://www.twincities.com/timberwolves/ci_12406630?nclick_check=1 Contrary to the title of a 1977 song by Todd Rundgren, Love is not the answer. Another draft lottery, another hosing for your Timberwolves. This time, it was Kevin Love's turn to be crestfallen. He represented the Wolves at the NBA lottery, and his luck was no better than anyone else's. Minnesota finished the season with the league's fifth-worst record. The Wolves will get the No. 6 pick, dropping down a notch. God forbid they should ever move up. Not that we're shocked. Their luck runs from rotten to lethal. The ultimate example occurred in 1992 when the Wolves finished 15-67, 40 games behind division-winning Utah. No other team sported a worse record. Shaquille O'Neal should have been their consolation prize. Instead, the lottery crushed them. They didn't get the No. 1 pick. In fact, they didn't even get the No. 2 pick. So instead of O'Neal or Alonzo Mourning, they wound up with Christian Laettner. That pretty much says it all. (But I'll say more anyway.) The Wolves either they get exactly what they deserve or else get knocked down in the draft order. It never fails. One year, co-owner Harvey Ratner headed east to represent the franchise at the lottery. Fellow co-owner Marv Wolfenson noted that Ratner was "the luckiest man I've ever known." He further explained that, when they both were kids, Harvey was always finding shiny marbles. Not only did Harvey not get a favorable bounce of the pingpong balls, he also became seriously ill on the trip and was out of commission for quite a while. Another time Wolfenson took a turn because Ratner insisted that Marv was the real Mr. Lucky. And there was hard evidence to support that. "When we were kids," Marv said at the time, "movies were very popular. Three or four of us would go to the movies every other night. And I always got a parking place right up near the front of the theater!" Once again, the Wolves had horrible luck in the lottery, although we heard Marv found a parking spot right in front of the building. For the 2007 lottery, Randy Foye famously carried holy water from the shrine at Lourdes in France. This prompted a Catholic priest from the Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity to declare they might be better off carrying a statue of St. Dymphna. St. Dymphna is the patron saint of mental disorders. Bob Stein, the original team president, traditionally had lousy luck at the lottery. And I used to tease him because he'd sit under those hot TV lights and sweat so profusely that a stagehand would stand nearby with a squeegee. Everyone was afraid Stein would drip on an electrical cable and blow up the place. I used to call him Lucky Bob. Sidney Lowe, who was coaching at the time, called me up one day and told me to lay off. "It's easy to point fingers," Lowe said. "That's the problem around here. People need to feel good about themselves. Say something nice about Bob." Well, he was a sharp dresser. But even Lucky Bob got into the futility of it all after a while. He once called in from New York after another horrible lottery and said: "Things are going well. Nobody has gotten hurt. There haven't been any accidents. But I do keep a fire extinguisher in my pocket." Now that was funny. But seriously, what's it like getting hosed year after year? "You're feeling good, you make yourself think positively," Lucky Bob said. "And then you wind up with a sick feeling, like seeing that police light in your rearview mirror. You want to make them do it over again." Flip Saunders tried his luck one year. He stocked up on good-luck charms before heading off for the slaughter. "A lot of people have been sending me stuff," he said. "But this morning I got something really good." Saunders then told the story about the time his Continental Basketball Association team was facing playoff elimination. There was an old hockey net in the corner of the arena. One of Flip's assistants, a former goalie, took him over to the net and told him to touch both posts. Saunders' team came back to win the series. "Today, I got a picture of a goalie in the net from him," Saunders said. "The note said, 'Be sure to touch both posts.' " Cute, but the Wolves didn't catch a break. On Tuesday, Kevin Love met with the inevitable. It doesn't matter who goes out to represent the team. The Timberwolves have never caught a break at the lottery, and they probably never will. --

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