Timberwolves’ Kevin Love Injures Non-Twittering Hand

Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Love broke a fractured a bone in his left hand Friday in a preseason game against the Chicago Bulls.

Fortunately, it’s not his Tweeting hand.

Love had a solid rookie season last year, leading all rookies in rebounding and earning a spot in the Wolves’ starting five. But let’s get real. Love made his biggest splash in the past year by amassing almost 40,000 followers on Twitter, and using it to communicate very, very important messages to each of them individually. Like who he’s eating dinner with.

To be fair, Love has made much better use of Twitter than most Twits, talking about trade rumors and keeping fans up to date.

Kevin Love is also responsible for the second-most famous tweet in NBA history.

Love inadvertently broke the news of Kevin McHale’s departure from the Timberwolves as head coach. The Minnesota front office had decided to not offer McHale a new contract, and Love’s followers on Twitter knew before the news had reached major news outlets:

“Today is a sad day…Kevin McHale will NOT be back as head coach next season.”

Love’s Twitter account has been silent, sadly, since August 14th. “I got shut down by the boss man,” said Love in an interview, talking about Minnesota President David Kahn. “I’ll be back on Twitter when the season starts. There are so many rules now: You can’t Twitter at this time, can’t Twitter at that time, don’t Twitter about the team. They just kept calling me, telling me don’t do this and don’t do that.”

After the McHale incident, I can’t imagine why.

But while the broken hand will keep Love off the court for six weeks, pegging his return to playing at late November or early December, there’s a good chance we’ll see him lighting up his Twitter box score again well before then.

The most famous use of Twitter by an NBA player was clearly by Charlie Villanueva, then of the Milwaukee Bucks. Villanueva kicked off the Twitter hubbub in the league, which has since spurred an official NBA social media policy, by tweeting during halftime of a March 15, 2009 game against the Boston Celtics:

“In da locker room, snuck to post my twitt. We’re playing the Celtics, tie ball game at da half. Coach wants more toughness. I gotta step up.”

Clearly, that was a message that needed to be communicated. Immediately.

Report indicate that Love’s injured hand is also his non-shooting hand.