Winning ballgames in the NBA isn't as easy as it is in the video games.

A lot has to come together as the right kind of talent needs to complement each other while teams "learn to win." The catch-22 of it all?  To gain experience and eventually win with a young roster, the youth needs to get playing time (and, unfortunately, typically loses games).

In other words, the common belief is that losing is a part of the process towards winning when you've got a young team.

For Minnesota Timberwolves' forward-center Al Jefferson, though, that isn't the way it should work.

"I don't really look at it like that – young is crap," Jefferson told HOOPSWORLD this week. "I think that it's not going to be an excuse no more because yes, we're young, but we've been in the league a while now. It's my fifth year, a lot of guys going into their fourth year, third year. We've been here long enough to know what it takes to win."

Although Big Al remains optimistic about the team's ability to procure victories, the team still finds itself with a 4 – 13 record.
 
"It's part of life, man, really. Most teams that are winning right now had to go through this point. It's up to us to turn it around. That's the good thing about it."

Their roster features talent that has won on many levels. Out for the season with a knee injury, Corey Brewer won two straight NCAA titles at Florida. Kevin Love had only lost a handful of games in his entire basketball career before joining the NBA, first as a dominant high school player from Lake Oswego, Oregon and then with UCLA, leading his college team to the Final Four. Even little-used Mark Madsen has won a few championships with the Los Angeles Lakers earlier this decade.

So Big Al might have a point – the Wolves do have "winners" on their roster. Perhaps experience isn't an excuse after all.

"When we play together and play hard every night and play consistent, we get what we want," Jefferson added.

"That's the only problem – we're just not playing the right way all the time. We do it when we're down 20 – we do it too late when we should be doing it from the jump."

The consistency factor Jefferson speaks of can be – ironically – attributed to youth, but Jefferson believes the issue is some kind of mental barrier the squad needs to overcome. Although head coach Randy Wittman's job seems safe (Wittman was given a vote of confidence from ownership last week), Jefferson did say the team needed a gut check and some added leadership.

"The funny thing about it is we do it when we want to do it," he said. "You've just got to want to do it, man."

It may seem as though Jefferson is calling out his teammates' effort, but that's not really the case. He's simply calling attention to – perhaps demanding – that his teammates and the coaching staff play with the same kind of urgency as him. Jefferson has come a long way as a basketball player, starting his journey in Mississippi as a little-known high school player from Prentiss before earning his now near-All-Star status.

Averaging 21.2 points and 10.1 rebounds per game, Jefferson's game is speaking for itself despite the fact that he doesn't necessarily believe his teammates are doing the same.

Despite the seemingly negative tone, Big Al does still believe that he and his teammates can right this ship and get hot late in the season, maybe even making a playoff push in the same fashion as the Atlanta Hawks or Philadelphia 76ers did last season. "Yes we can – but it's like I said, it's up to us. That's the good thing about it, it's up to us to do it. We got to be the ones to do it; we ain't got to wait on anybody else to do it, it's got to be us."

And he does have some help with Love next to him. "Kevin's a very smart player as a rookie – I'd never tell him that to his face," Jefferson admitted. "He knows the game. What he knows right now – it took me to my third year to get what he knows right now, so that says a lot about him.

"He can rebound, he can score, and he's a great passer. When you've got a guy like that on the side of you, that can always help."

Although the two don't get all that much playing time together, that trend will almost certainly change in the near future. The question is whether the rest of the Timberwolves will wake up – and if they do, they could be a potentially tough team in March and April.