The home crowd finally awoke from their boredom and their slumber and turned Minnesota nasty in the fourth quarter of tonight’s 107-84 loss to the Clippers at Target Center: Fans shouted out reminders to Kevin McHale that he once drafted Brandon Roy and O.J. Mayo, and then traded them away. Others stood and cheered in a mocking sort of way when the team, playing without injured Mike Miller and Corey Brewer, rallied from 29 points down to only trail by 20 to an opponent that entered the game with a 3-15 record.

Afterward, rookie Kevin Love, who had his third double-double in the last five games with a 13-point, 15-rebound night, said the team with this loss surely has hit “rock bottom.” Let’s hope so.

Usually chatty owner Glen Taylor, clearly unhappy, turned me down in a hallway afterward when I asked to talk him, surely knowing I wanted to ask if he planned any management changes. In the team’s locker room, you could look back into the training room and see Kevin McHale hugging both Al Jefferson and Randy Foye, an odd sight indeed.

You’ve got to believe something’s going to happen, probably with coach Randy Wittman, but who knows?…And perhaps as early as Sunday, or Monday, when the team resumes practice, at the latest. The right thing to do if they decide to fire him and still keep McHale is to make McHale coach this group. Asking, say, Jerry Sichting or Fred Hoiberg to do so is the ultimate cop-out.

The Wolves play again Tuesday against Utah at Target Center. Interesting tidbit. Tuesday, Dec. 9, is the 20th anniversary of Utah’s hiring Jerry Sloan, now the longest tenured coach in any pro sport. In their 19-plus seasons, the Wolves already have gone through Bill Musselman, Jimmy Rodgers, Sidney Lowe, Bill Blair, Flip Saunders, Dwane Casey, Kevin McHale and now Randy Wittman.

To whoever coaches them Tuesday, here are my two bits, for all that it’s worth: Except for rare exceptions, forget shaping the lineup and rotation due to nightly matchups. Put the guys you’ve committed yourself to out there and play them together, every night for 30 or 35 minutes or more for the next four months and see what they do. Then decide how to proceed.

Let Randy Foye play the point for the entire season. Keep him there and let him float or sink. (Yes, of course he’s not a true point, but see if he can become an effective “scoring point.”) Mike Miller’s  your 2 guard, Ryan Gomes your starting 3 man, Love your power forward and Jefferson your center, or vice versa. Let them go and see if any of them can fly. Telfair, Craig Smith, Jason Collins and Rashad McCants (if he doesn’t drive you completely crazy when he’s in there) are your guys off the bench.

If you get to April and you’re convinced there’s no way Foye can be a consistent NBA point guard but he can be score at the other guard spot, draft the best point guard you can get or make a deal for one next summer. Then try to trade McCants for something, anything or simply don’t make him an offer when his option comes up in July and make Foye your instant offense guy off the bench.

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