Flip Saunders remains optimistic that the Minnesota Timberwolves will eventually reach agreement with Nikola Pekovic on a new deal.

“Yeah, I’m still optimistic,” said Saunders.

Saunders will meet with Pekovic's agent in New York in the near future.

“Right now we’re going through maybe an education process [with] Pek and his people of where we’re at with our organization and his importance to us and where we feel we’re at with what our offer is and why we’ve offered him what we’ve offered,” Saunders said. “There’s nothing that has been adversarial, it’s more of an education situation right now, and I’m optimistic that we’ll sign him. Right now we’re in a situation where he’s a restricted free agent and so he can go out and get an offer sheet from anybody and get a contract, but we have the ability to match any offer that he can get.

“So we are pretty much in a good situation, and I do believe that Glen [Taylor, Wolves owner] and our organization, that we’ve presented a very fair, more than fair offer to Pek and we’ll just see where it goes and how soon it gets taken care of.”