J.J. Barea: 'Won't happen again'
— -- J.J. Barea said Kevin Love's critical comments earlier this week were valid and that his actions in Wednesday night's loss "won't happen again."
"I wish Kevin would've just came up to me, face to face, man to man, and just said it," Barea said after the Minnesota Timberwolves' shootaround Friday morning. "But it's no big deal. We're over it. We're done with that. We learned from that. If we want to win, we have to play as a team and stay together as a team. We're done with that and we have a game tonight."
Love called out Barea and Dante Cunningham (although not by name) for their body language in the fourth quarter of Wednesday's loss to the Phoenix Suns. He took issue with their sulking on the bench because they were disappointed with their minutes.
"We can't have two guys sitting at the end of the bench that play good minutes just sitting there and not getting up during timeouts," Love said. "We all need to be in this together. That kind of pisses me off. We're supposed to be a team."
Cunningham was a little more tight-lipped about the situation Friday.
"We've all got to learn and we're all learning together and we move as a unit," he said. "That's where we are right now."
Timberwolves president Flip Saunders was supportive of Love, having conversations with Barea and Cunningham about their behavior and downplaying the star power forward's comments. However, coach Rick Adelman seemed to take issue with Love delivering the message through the media instead of talking with his veteran teammates.
"In this day and age, you have to figure out how you say it," Adelman said Friday night before the team's 119-92 win over the Charlotte Bobcats. "Because it's going to be there forever. We dealt with it yesterday. We talked about it. Just trying to figure out how we're going to win the game tonight."
Love kept his answers short and plain at the shootaround.
"Keep it internal," Love said. "We all like each other. We had a great time at shootaround today, and we'll be ready to go at 7 o'clock tonight."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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