Wolves assistant GM Fred Hoiberg is taking a stuffed bear with him for good luck in Tuesday’s draft lottery.

The bear belongs to a 12-year-old Brooklyn Park boy whom Hoiberg has befriended the past two seasons. The boy is a big Wolves fan who has had more than 100 operational procedures — a few big, including a liver transplant, and many small — and he always takes the bear with him into surgery.

The boy, Matthew Gamber, attended a game two seasons ago at Hoiberg’s invitation and the Wolves ended Phoenix’s 17-game winning streak that night. He attended three games last season — two against Phoenix and one against Utah — and the Wolves won them all, in a 22-victory season.

“He’s always brought us a lot of luck when he’s in the building,” Hoiberg said. “Hopefully, he can help us out with this lucky bear.”

Somebody asked Hoiberg Thursday if he considers himself a lucky man.

“Well, I’ll tell you, I feel I’m lucky to be alive right now,” said Hoiberg, who underwent open-heart surgery to correct a life-threatening condition in 2005. ” I was lucky to find out about my heart condition when I did. So, if you look at it that way, I do feel like I am a lucky person.”

Hoiberg on a variety of other lottery-related topics…

On the possibility of landing one of the draft’s top two picks and the chance to take either Memphis guard Derrick Rose or Kansas State forward Michael Beasley: “This is a big year to move up. There are a couple of players who I think could really help accelerate the building process. But even if we don’t get one of the top two picks, I still think there are some players who’d fit in well with the players we have.”

He said he has a good idea who’d the Wolves pick if they land the No. 1 pick, although the team’s basketball staff still must interview and bring in players for workouts and continue to do their background checks.

NBA teams for the past decade and more have almost always (Allen Iverson being the one big exception) selected size when it doubt. On Thursday, somebody asked Hoiberg if the playoff impact Chris Paul and Deron Williams have provided this spring has changed how NBA teams value potentially great point guards.

“I think with the way the rules are now — not being able to touch anybody on the perimeter — it really has turned into a guard’s game,” he said. “You want a guy who can score on the low block and we’ve got that in Al Jefferson. He’s as good as anybody in the league right now on the block. So if we get a guy on the perimeter to go along with Randy to go out there and make plays and create and defend, that’s big in today’s game.”

The Wolves can pick no lower than sixth and Hoiberg said he thinks there are seven players in the draft who can make an impact in their rookie seasons.

“Even if we pick sixth, I’m confident we can get a player who can come in and make an immediate impact on this roster,” he said. “There’s a couple of big players we could put on this team who’d help us right away. There’s some playmakers who we could come in and take some pressure off in the fourth quarter.”

The big players he’s referring to are Stanford center Brook Lopez and perhaps LSU freshman forward Anthony Randolph or maybe UCLA freshman forward Kevin Love. The playmakers likely are Pac 10 freshman guards O.J. Mayo from USC and Jerryd Bayless from Arizona or maybe Indiana’s Eric Gordon.

Two things to remember if the Wolves pick third or lower — their best chance is to pick fifth (29.05 percent) or fourth (23.82 percent) — and must make a decision on Mayo, likely the subject of a forthcoming NCAA investigation for allegedly accepting thousands of dollars of gifts and cash from a sports agent while he was in high school and college: The agency who allegedly paid up in return for the future right to represent Mayo is run by Bill Duffy, Kevin McHale’s former college roommate. And Mayo’s college coach was Tim Floyd, who coached Hoiberg at Iowa State. Hoiberg said he has talked “a lot” with Floyd recently about his USC players.

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