Tuesday night, the Wolves' five-game winning streak came to a halt. The Miami Heat, a good team, were more efficient over the final 30 seconds to win a nail-biter 99-96. It was a very entertaining game. Minnesota played better in defeat than it did during its occasional rare victory earlier this season.

Here's all I'll say about their recent good fortune: They appear confident and unselfish, and the emergence of Rodney Carney, out of nowhere, has been a boon. Carney has become an effective sixth man in the grand NBA tradition.

A non-factor through December, he's been a key player over the past couple of weeks. He scored 15 points against the Heat while playing a season-high 31 minutes. Carney has taken over the minutes that used to go to Rashad McCants, who didn't get off the bench again Tuesday night.

"Well, it's a great feeling to get some playing time," Carney said. "And it's a great feeling helping the team the way I play, which is to play defense first. I'm very grateful that the coach has confidence in me."

The Timberwolves acquired Carney from Philadelphia over the summer in one of those weird NBA salary swaps. Kevin McHale agreed to take on Carney and Calvin Booth in exchange for Minnesota's $2.8 million salary exemption. The Sixers, desperate to clear salary space so they could made a run at free agent Elton Brand, also threw in a conditional first-round draft pick while the Wolves tossed in a conditional second-round pick.

That's the short version of the deal. The full version would require pages and pages of text, hundreds of footnotes and at least four certified public accountants. But you get the idea.

It probably doesn't boost a player's confidence to know that he's been traded simply to get rid of his salary, and that no actual players were swapped in return.

"Actually, I did think about that," Carney said with a smile. "But I got traded for Elton Brand, and nobody can tell me different. I got traded for Elton Brand!"

Booth has played exactly one minute this season. It wasn't a particularly memorable minute, either. Anyway, I don't remember it.

Meanwhile, if you go to the games at Target Center, Booth is the very tall, really skinny guy in the suit sitting behind the bench. For the longest time, I thought he was a very tall, really skinny security guard. And I didn't feel safe.

Carney, in his third year, hadn't been doing much, either. In his rookie season with the Sixers, he missed games because of a stomach virus, injured shoulder and twisted left knee. In his second year in Philly he averaged 5.8 points and 2.1 rebounds. Not much for the No. 16 overall pick in the draft.

Clearly these guys were born to be Timberwolves, right? But not so fast. Carney has blossomed. At first, he got minutes because of injuries. But he did so well that he's locked himself into the rotation at the expense of McCants.

McCants, who prepares for games by oiling up his shooting elbow, has been biding his time on the bench over the past week or so, rarely even stepping on the court. He's been sitting quietly, too. But I have a feeling that if this goes on much longer, something very loud is going to happen. That's just a hunch. We'll see.

Carney, a 6-foot-7 forward out of Memphis, scored 22 points, 18 in the second half, as the Wolves won their fifth straight game on Saturday against Milwaukee. He had 14 the game before that against Oklahoma City. Since the first of the year, his minutes have gone up, up, up, culminating in 30:51 against the Heat.

"You can wait patiently and try to get better," he said. "That's what I did. I waited and waited, and finally I got an opportunity."

I don't know if there's a strong connection between Carney's emergence and the Wolves' recent run. But I'm not going to think about it. It's nice seeing a good Basketball game at Target Center for a change. Let's leave it at that.

Tom Powers can be reached at tpowers@pioneerpress.com