http://0rz.tw/n10lr The Timberwolves accomplished two things Monday you might never have imagined possible: With one patient, well-executed move by owner Glen Taylor and basketball president David Kahn, they convinced Rick Adelman to be their next coach and they got Kevin Love to talk more optimistically about his future in Minnesota. According to three league sources, Adelman agreed to replace the fired Kurt Rambis, more than two months after Adelman likely was first approached about the job. He will lead a team that is thick with young talent but has won a total of 32 games over the past two seasons. Terms of the deal were not immediately known, but Adelman was believed to have sought a five-year contract worth at least $25 million. He will be introduced at a Target Center news conference later this week -- where he won't be allowed to discuss the team's players because of the lockout -- after contract details are finalized and the agreement is signed. An experienced, proven winner in 20 seasons as a NBA head coach, Adelman's .605 career winning percentage is by far the best of the six other candidates interviewed for the job. He also, perhaps not coincidentally, has a relationship with Love that dates to his junior-high school days in suburban Portland, Ore. Until Monday, Love promised he was an impartial observer in his team's coaching search, even though he has been to Adelman's home many times and still calls the household's matriarch "Mrs. Adelman." By Monday afternoon, however, Love admitted he did secretly have a horse in this race and answered "absolutely" when asked if Adelman's presence will impact his decision about signing a contract extension with the Wolves. Whenever Love was asked last season about his future with the team, he said he would wait and see how the franchise's rebuilding work progressed. "I always said one of the things we'd have to have is a great coach," said Love, who under the NBA's old labor rules could be a restricted free agent next summer. "Now, we've got a great coach." Endorsed by Rockets players After last season, Houston chose not to renew the four-year, $16.25 million contract Adelman signed in 2007, when he accepted the Rockets' job from among other offers because he envisioned a future with the team's inside-outside combination of Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady. At the time, he said he still wanted to coach and still believed he could coach. He also noted that three times in his career -- jobs with Portland, Sacramento and Houston -- he inherited a team with talent and succeeded and once took over a Golden State team with little talent and failed. "I figured it out that talent is pretty important," Adelman told reporters in April. That fact led many league observers to doubt whether the Wolves had any chance to sign a future Hall of Fame coach who now has reached retirement age and whose family has continued to live in Portland while he coaches elsewhere. Players Kevin Martin and Kyle Lowry lamented Adelman's departure when the Rockets decided to part ways with him. Martin at the time said, "I think we lost one of the greatest coaches of all time." Lowry called Adelman a "great motivator" and "great player's coach" who is "one of the best coaches I've ever had." --

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