The Wolves have gone back to work for two days of practices — Saturday and today, with an off day on Sunday — after Friday’s lousy 112-97 loss to Toronto with what is becoming standard for new coach Kurt Rambis:

Long practices.

Wayne Ellington hurt his left ankle in today’s scrimmage and sat out the end of practice. Rambis called it a sprain, didn’t seem all that concern about it but doesn’t yet know if Ellington will be available to play Wednesday against Chicago.

Oleksiy Pecherov, coming back from that broken wrist, participated fully in the scrimmage and made a couple of nice long range shots, but Rambis wants to wait another day before declaring him ready to make his preseason debut Wednesday at Target Center.

Rambis called the practice work “good for the players.”

“It has cleared up some confusion in their minds about how we want to play and who we are as a team and what we’re trying to establish here,” Rambis said. “We’re still in a learning, growing mode and we will be for a long time. Despite how we started the ballgame, we were relatively OK after the first quarter. But it was how we started the game that set us so far back and got us doing the wrong things because we got frustrated. It set the tone for the rest of the ball game.”

Trying to teach a new way to play, Rambis found his players reverting to old habits when things went badly, and quickly, in Friday’s opening minutes. The Wolves trailed 37-14 after a quarter.

“The further we got behind in the first quarter, the more frustrated and anxious guys got,” Rambis said. “The more they started reverting back to what their comfort level was and what their instincts were telling them to do. But the more they did that, the deeper the hole they all dug for themselves. Everybody did. They tried to make it better in their mind, but they just made the situation worse.

“The aggravated all the things we were doing wrong. They put their heads down. They stopped passing the basketball. They allowed the defense to get set. They held the ball. They tried to force the ball where it shouldn’t be forced instead of swinging and moving it. Those types of things caused them problems and only frustrated them more.”

“Defensively, we’re not a team where we have five individuals who are just going to be able to shut their team down,” said Rambis, whose team plays Chicago Wednesday at Target Center. “They’ll have to do things collectively as a team and we had two, three guys sometimes who didn’t do their job correctly. That’s still part of learning. When something happens, their minds all have to think the same way, that certain things have to get done and certain peoples have to get to certain spots.  Certain things have to be covered.  When that light turns on, that’s when we’ll start to grow as a defensive team.”

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