MINNEAPOLIS — New Minnesota Timberwolves boss David Kahn predicted turbulence and preached patience on the night he drafted Spanish teenage sensation Ricky Rubio 67 days ago.

Spanish media reports have had Rubio staying in Spain with his DKV Joventut team or a new team nearly a half-dozen times already this summer and still his future remains undetermined. But that situation finally looks on the verge of resolve, perhaps in the coming hours or at least days.
Kahn traveled to Spain late last week — believed to be at least the third such trip since July — with what is likely an enhanced creative offer to get the 18-year-old point guard signed before the European Championships begin a week from Monday and in a Wolves uniform by the time training camp opens a month from now in Mankato, Minn.
It is an outcome that still makes — and always has made — the most sense.
Rubio will never make more money in endorsements than he will as an internationally marketed NBA player.
His American agent, Dan Fegan — the man behind this mysterious negotiating dance since the Wolves chose Rubio fifth overall in the June 25 draft — also well knows the NBA landscape will be decidedly changed by 2011.
That’s the summer the league’s current collective bargaining agreement expires, and with it would go the current rookie pay scale that would pay Rubio nearly $3.3 million this season.
That’s also the soonest Rubio could end up in the NBA if he decides to stay in Spain this season. Any Spanish team that’s going to satisfy Joventut’s demands on that $8 million buyout — even if it’s negotiated down appreciably — will want Rubio guaranteed for at least two seasons before an NBA buyout is possible.
And all that is why it still is most likely Kahn returns from Europe not with boots of Spanish leather but with another point guard to join fellow rookie Jonny Flynn in the backcourt.
Kahn, Fegan and Joventut’s president reportedly met for dinner Saturday night. Before that, Rubio was quoted in a Spanish media report as saying he wasn’t surprised Kahn had arrived to make another offer.
“I’ve always said the NBA is my first option,” Rubio was quoted as saying. “Right now, everything is open.”
European teams can pay Rubio’s current team as much as they choose to solve that buyout issue, which always has been and remains the all-important sticking point. The latest Spanish media report last week had Regal Barcelona ready to pay $5.3 million to buy Rubio out of his current contract, which has two seasons remaining.
The Wolves, by NBA rules, can only pay $500,000 of those millions, but that doesn’t mean Kahn can’t get creative.
He arrived in Minnesota in May with a reputation among those who have known him for decades as a very smart guy who acts like he knows it, and already he has established himself as a cerebral sort of manager.
In only three months on the job, he already has overhauled the roster with successive moves — more than one aimed strictly at salary-cap maneuvering- reminiscent of a fantasy football team owner. He has remade the coaching staff and appears on the verge of cleaning house in the front office.
He signed head coach Kurt Rambis to a four-year contract earlier this month in a move Kahn called the most important he’ll probably ever make as president of basketball operations, and the Wolves will announce an eclectic coaching staff that includes Dave Wohl, Reggie Theus and Bill Laimbeer.
But if Kahn returns home with Rubio signed, it will be the most telling example of his expansive thinking yet.
Any deal likely will include not only the $500,000 the Wolves can pay but also a tapestry of other creative financing expected to include endorsement deals for Rubio (most of the buyout money technically will come from his own pocket) and the promise of a Timberwolves exhibition game or games against Joventut in Spain (Oct. 10, 2010, already is a targeted date).
It also could include such “out of the box” thinking as this: On draft night, Kahn used a second-round pick to select Henk Norel, a European prospect whose selection had at least one ESPN draft analyst puzzled.
Norel also plays for DKV Joventut.
Might Kahn offer Rubio’s Spanish team $500,000 to buy out Norel’s contract, too, invite him to training camp and thus, in essence, fund $1 million of the buyout that way?
Such maneuverings obviously will get attention from the NBA office, especially given the illegal 1999 Joe Smith signing fiasco that cost the Wolves three first-round picks. That’s why the league’s chief lawyer, Adam Silver, was involved in initial meetings between Kahn, Wolves owner Glen Taylor and Fegan in Las Vegas in July and why the league office almost certainly has been consulted in every step of this process.
“We will do everything we can, within the rules,” Kahn said the day after the draft.
Just what “everything” means might soon — and finally — become very clear.