COAST TO COAST

Timberwolves fans aren’t showing Love

Minnesota may not be the ideal place for Kevin Love, and not because of the weather.

Local fans weren’t over the 2006 draft, when the Timberwolves traded Brandon Roy for Randy Foye, when Love arrived in this summer’s draft-day deal for O.J. Mayo.

Love is starting, but Mayo is burning up the league in Memphis, at the head of a hot rookie class.

“I can’t really pay attention,” Love said. “Most of them are at different positions. . . . [They’re] getting 15-17 shots a game and playing 40 minutes. I try not to look at them so much and just worry about myself.”

Also, Love, a 6-7 3/4 power forward, has to play alongside Al Jefferson, a 6-8 1/2 center.

Aside from that, it’s paradise.

The best team money can’t buy

My first reaction notwithstanding, even if Denver’s Allen Iverson-Chauncey Billups trade doesn’t work -- and the Nuggets are 4-1 with Billups -- it wasn’t madness for a team just trying to hang on to what’s left.

Unfortunately, owner Stan Kroenke’s budget is still strangling them.

“We don’t have no big men,” said Carmelo Anthony after backing up Nene at center in Denver’s win last week at Charlotte. “If there’s somebody out there we can get, why not?”

Here’s why not. Coach George Karl made a “request” to re-sign Juwan Howard, whom they waived.

Said Karl after checking with management: “Right now, I think it’s a no.”

Last days in Detroit

Pistons players never forgave Flip Saunders for not being Larry Brown, who flipped out on them often enough in two tumultuous seasons but took them to their 2004 title and their 2005 loss in Game 7 in San Antonio.

If it looked as if Rasheed Wallace mutinied annually against Saunders, there were more mutineers than that.

“I can’t say it was all Rasheed or it was only Rasheed,” said Billups, the former Pistons captain. “I just think problems, and maybe disbelief in Flip on a player or two’s behalf, cost us in some different series that I thought, had we been locked in, we could have won.”

Steph Update: Still toast

Gotham’s fascination with former pariah Stephon Marbury continued as he met with Knicks President Donnie Walsh.

Meanwhile, Coach Mike D’Antoni, down to 11 healthy players, still wouldn’t activate Marbury.

“Pretty soon that story isn’t going to be fun to read because it’s going to be the same old story,” D’Antoni told the Knicks press corps. “You’re going to be beating a dead horse.” Where D’Antoni’s from, that’s a bad thing. In New York, they stack dead horses like cordwood.

In other Knicks news, their 6-3 start is their best since 1999.

Bulls.com: the happening site

Former Chicago Tribune NBA writer Sam Smith (full disclosure: close friend) now appears on the Bulls’ website, giving them something new: an in-house columnist picking them to miss the playoffs.

Then there was this letter from a reader named Dan, who suggested the first thing the Bulls need is a barber:

“Drew Gooden appears to have part of a small black animal hanging from his chin. . . . No one can take them seriously while they look like this.”