Kevin Love is getting closer to returning — and teasing us for a few weeks with what might have been this season in Minnesota — but he’s not quite there yet.
Love had surgery on his hand back in January and it was expected to take 8-10 weeks to recover. It looks like it could be more the back end of that estimate based on this tweet from Mark Remme (the official Timberwolves Web site reporter).
.@kevinlove had a checkup in NY today. Hand is healing properly & will continue to increase conditioning program. Re-evaluated in 2-3 weeks.
— Mark Remme (@MarkRemme) March 13, 2013
Love first broke his hand in preseason, working out doing knuckle pushups at home. He returned and played 14 games — with a brace on his hand and not looking himself — before re-injuring it and needing surgery.
Throw in Ricky Rubio coming back of ACL surgery and needing time to be himself, Nikola Pekovic and Andrei Kirilenko missing a number of games and the list going on and on, and you get an Minnesota team that finished well behind expectations this season.
But it feels more like just a bump in the road, that next season the Timberwolves will come back and join Golden State, Denver and the list of up and coming team in the West. And if Love can get back for a few games this season, maybe we can get a little taste of that.