NEW YORK (AP) Minnesota Timberwolves center Nikola Pekovic had surgery to remove bone spurs from his right ankle on Tuesday.

Pekovic’s sore ankle kept him out of eight games towards the end of the season. Dr. Martin O’Malley performed the surgery and Pekovic is expected to make a full recovery and be ready in time for training camp.

The big man from Montenegro enjoyed a breakout season before the ankle injuries started popping up in March. He averaged 13.9 points and 7.4 rebounds and his 56.4 shooting percentage was the second best in the league. He quickly supplanted Darko Milicic as the team’s starting center.

Pekovic finished third in the voting for the Most Improved Player award.

NEW YORK (AP) Minnesota Timberwolves center Nikola Pekovic had surgery to remove bone spurs from his right ankle on Tuesday.

Pekovic’s sore ankle kept him out of eight games towards the end of the season. Dr. Martin O’Malley performed the surgery and Pekovic is expected to make a full recovery and be ready in time for training camp.

The big man from Montenegro enjoyed a breakout season before the ankle injuries started popping up in March. He averaged 13.9 points and 7.4 rebounds and his 56.4 shooting percentage was the second best in the league. He quickly supplanted Darko Milicic as the team’s starting center.

Pekovic finished third in the voting for the Most Improved Player award.

Minnesota Timberwolves center Nikola Pekovic finished third in voting for the NBA’s Most Improved Player Award, announced Friday, May 4.

Pekovic became the Wolves’ starting center early in the season and finished with averages of 13.9 points and 7.4 rebounds per game after averaging 5.5 points and 3.0 rebounds in 2010-11, his rookie season. He shot 56 percent from the floor after shooting 52 percent the season before.

Pekovic received 10 first-place votes and 104 points in the voting. Orlando Magic forward Ryan Anderson (260 points) won the award, and Milwaukee Bucks forward Ersan Ilyasova was second with 159 points.

Wolves forward Kevin Love, who won the Most Improved Player Award last year, received one first-place vote and eight points this season.

Anderson led the NBA in three-pointers made (166) and attempted (422). He joins Rashard Lewis as the only other power forward to lead the league in three-pointers made. He averaged career highs in points (16.1) and rebounds (7.7).

Michael Beasley shoots his bajillionth free throw of the 2012 season (David Sherman/ Getty).

No one thinks that Minnesota Timberwolves forward Michael Beasley lacks natural talent. Instead, the knock on Beasley has always been that he lacks focus, work ethic and the mentality to become a star in the NBA. After four middling seasons split between the Miami Heat and Minnesota Timberwolves, that reputation is not undeserved.

Beasley now finds himself at a crossroads in his career. If the Wolves do not extend him a qualifying offer of roughly $8 million, he will become an unrestricted free agent this July. The good news, though, is that Beasley has a fantastic plan for improving his game this summer. In fact, he’s going to shoot a fake number of jump shots and dribble an impossible number of times every day. From Dave Campbell of the Associated Press:

His plan is to continue his summer work in Los Angeles with former Lakers standout Norm Nixon, who has become a mentor of sorts to Beasley, the second overall pick in the 2008 draft by Miami.

Work is the operative word, according to the grueling, ambitious plan he laid out.

”Shoot a zillion jump shots a day. Dribble a million minutes a day. Just work on being an all-around player, from rebounding to defending to blocking shots to stealing basketballs to scoring to playmaking,” Beasley said, then repeating for emphasis: ”Just working on being an all-around great player. Not just a scorer, not just a defender, not just a rebounder. Just being an all-around great player.”

He added: ”If anybody questions my conditioning I challenge them to come and work out with me for a day. It’s tough. I go four times a day. I go at 6 a.m. on the track. After that we do boxing, jujitsu, all that. Then ballet. Then basketball. Three or four days out of the week we run five, six miles on the beach. Barefoot. From Santa Monica to Venice. Back up to Santa Monica.”

That last paragraph makes it clear that Beasley has a real plan in place for his conditioning, but it’s still tough to get past his claims of shooting a zillion jumpers and dribbling for 694.4 times more minutes than there are in an actual day. In being so wild with his claims, he actually ends up seeming much less serious than he probably is. If he’d said he were taking 1,000 jumpers a day and dribbling for two hours, we’d be impressed without carrying the assumption that Beasley is still a goofy guy who spends his off-hours watching cartoons and eating junk food.

For all we know, Beasley’s offseason workout routine will transform his game and help him follow through on his massive potential. In the meantime, Beasley isn’t doing himself any favors. As long as he describes his plans in this way, he’s going to seem unserious. And if his image doesn’t improve, then literally dribbling for all 1,440 minutes of a day wouldn’t even make teams think he’d change his ways.

That change will eventually have to come on the court, but at this point in his career, he also needs to prove some semblance of maturity to potential teams. It seems simple, but using real numbers is a start.

The Minnesota Timberwolves clung to the eighth spot in the Western Conference playoff race for longer than anybody could have ever predicted. It was after the All-Star break, Minnesota was sitting at 21-19, and the youthful team seemed to have every chance at a playoff appearance. Then, the Wolves saw their season get turned upside down. Ricky Rubio went down with an ACL injury, and the Wolves finished out the season 5-21.

Let’s take a look at the “two seasons” of Minnesota’s 2011-2012 campaign (before Rubio’s injury, and after):

Minnesota’s “first” season: 21-19.

Fans should have known they would be in for something special when the Timberwolves opened their season with a close loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, one of the best teams in the NBA. After another close loss to the Milwaukee Bucks and a last-second loss to the Miami Heat, the Timberwolves delivered the first win of the Ricky Rubio era, a 17 point victory over the reigning NBA champion Dallas Mavericks. Wins against teams like the Los Angeles Clippers, San Antonio Spurs, Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers, and the Houston Rockets gave the rest of the NBA reason to fear the Wolves.

Kevin Love, Ricky Rubio, and Derrick Williams all took part in All-Star weekend, with all three players earning highlight time on ESPN. The Wolves looked cohesive, like a team on the rise.

Minnesota’s “second” season: 5-21. Ricky Rubio’s presence for this young team was crucial, but his importance quickly became even more apparent as the Wolves started falling apart. Despite valiant efforts by Kevin Love and Nikola Pekovic, the injury-riddled Wolves started dropping games and falling behind in the standings. Losses to New Orleans (twice), Golden State, and Sacramento were uncharacteristic of the “first season” team. Soon, injuries started catching up with the Wolves, and several players missed significant time, including Nikola Pekovic, Kevin Love, Ricky Rubio, Luke Ridnour, Michael Beasley, and J.J. Barea.

Although there was nothing too serious, there were a few spats between players that were publicized. Kevin Love and J.J. Barea had words on the bench during a game, and Barea was critical of the team after a dismal performance in late April. The team seemed to lose cohesiveness, and it showed in their poor finish.

If Minnesota can regain its health, and get one or two more players to fill the holes on the roster, they will be a force to be reckoned with next year in the Western Conference. Timberwolves fans are hoping that the team carries over the success from the first half of this season, and forgets about their second half collapse.

Jack Grunpe is an avid Minnesota Timberwolves fan. Follow him on Twitter at @MNSportsWriter1.