The Wolves today waived David Harrison, Blake Ahearn and Chris Richard, releasing three players who have non-guaranteed contracts to reduce their roster to the 15-player regular season limit. The moves were the most cost-effective ones the team could make. There’s still a chance they could re-sign one of those players if he clears waivers in 48 hours and if they make another roster move.

“Sometimes you just get caught in guaranteed contracts and numbers,” Kevin McHale said.

Expect the Wolves to try to trade Calvin Booth’s $1.14 million salary slot for some kind of draft pick. If they can do so, they could bring Richard back. McHale said he expects Harrison to sign with a team in China. They were swayed on the Ollie-Ahearn thing by Telfair’s season-opening suspension and by the youth of Telfair and Foye and the Ollie’s experience and mentoring ability.

Here’s one thing I heard on Thursday: Larry Brown was watching the waiver wire in Charlotte looking for Ollie’s name to show up.  Ollie played for him in Philadelphia. “That’s my guy,” Ollie said of the old coach. “My agent told me he was hoping to get me back.”

Opening-night rosters are finalized on Monday. The next key date after that is Oct. 31, when the Wolves must decide whether to extend qualifying offers for the 2009-2010 season to Randy Foye, Corey Brewer and Rodney Carney. Expect them to qualify Foye and Brewer and wait on Carney until next summer, when they can try to re-sign him as an unrestricted free agent if they so desire.

Some brief thoughts about the Wolves’ 95-76 comeback victory over Milwaukee Thursday in their preseason finale:

We had our first, and only, Calvin Booth sighting in preseason games, nearly five whole minutes.

Talk about efficient, look at Al Jefferson’s 19 points on 7-for-8 shooting in 25 minutes. The guy has been approaching his 20 point season average from last season in about two-thirds of his regular playing time.

Kevin Love followed Wednesday’s 1-for-10 game with a comeback night. Wittman stuck with him, particularly in the second half, and gave him 21:36 of time and Love had a double-double (14 points 10 rebounds, 2 steals). He reached the double-double when the official scorer gave him a late rebound, which in the next instant he had swiped from his hands. “I had never played that bad,” he said. “At least not that I can remember.”

The Wolves finished the preseason at 6-2 and open the regular season Wednesday against Sacramento at Target Center.

“November is a big month for us,” Jefferson said after Thursday’s game. “Especially after last year.”

The Wolves were 2-12 in November last season.

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