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PRELUDE TO A MELTDOWN

So the heart of Kevin Garnett pumps red stuff after all. This comes as a crushing disappointment to the dwindling legion of people who call themselves diehard fans of the Minnesota Timberwolves. They have seen Garnett take a franchise that was a league-wide joke, a gulag of ineptitude on the remote, frozen plains, and remake it in his image by compiling the most productive career prior to age 30 of anyone who has ever played pro basketball. Through last season and this one, Wolves faithful have clung to the not-very-likely hope that KG's patience and perseverance would prove as exceptional as his court skills. The deal he signed on October 1, 2003 suggested as much, after all.

On that day, Garnett agreed to a five-year, $100-million contract extension, the longest allowed under league rules, with an option KG could exercise to stay in Minnesota for the rest of his career. "At the end of the day, man, I'm a Timberwolf," KG proclaimed. "I bleed blue and green. That's in my veins."

But Garnett was seeing red when he opened a vein and vented his frustration after the ugliest victory in Timberwolves history on March 26. Minnesota was up by 23 points with less than 13 minutes to play against the pathetic Knicks, who loath their coach and had already lost 30 more games than they'd won. In the waning minutes, the Wolves nonetheless managed a choking act that very nearly cost them the game. Coming shortly after a winless two-week road trip that saw the Wolves leading at halftime in all six of their losses, Minnesota's toxic cocktail of no grit, no cohesion, and no potential finally corroded KG's legendary sense of loyalty.

KG's patience and perseverance would prove as exceptional as his court skills. The deal he signed on October 1, 2003 suggested as much, after all.

"I've always said I'd be in Minnesota as long as they want me here," he acknowledged, sitting in front of his locker stall. "[But] I don't think I can take another one of these rebuilding stages." Speaking in clipped sentences, he declared that he deserved a chance to be on a team that could compete for a championship. "At the end of the day, they should at least give me that. And if it is anything different than that, then that's a discussion we have to talk about. Because I don't want to go through another season like this." Translation: Make it better—much, much better—or punch my Big Ticket out of here.

In retrospect, the 30 months between KG's contract signing and his post-game rescue flare seem tailor-made to induce claustrophobia. First, Garnett got a fleeting glimpse of the heights that can be achieved when he is surrounded by a decent supporting cast. The acquisition of a pair of aging but still relatively healthy, capable, and motivated veterans, Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell, propelled the Wolves into the Western Conference finals and earned Garnett the NBA's Most Valuable Player award for the 2003-04 season. Always one to share acclaim, KG made sure that Spree and Sammy joined him on Craig Kilborn's talk show and the cover of Sports Illustrated.

 

Then the bottom fell out. Sprewell and Cassell started bitching about their contracts shortly before the start of the 2004-05 season. Riven by dysfunction, the team finished out of the playoffs for the first time in eight years. And the front office fell prey to an impulse that haunts the management of every struggling sports franchise: the temptation, after a while, to do something just to prove you're doing something, addressing the problem. First they fired longtime coach Flip Saunders with 31 games left in the '05 season. Come 2006, when the team began underperforming after a fast start, the Wolves executed a monster trade with Boston that promptly sent the club's winning percentage even further south.

Even before this year's Wolves went into the tank, though, every lazy pundit on the NBA beat was bleating about Minnesota's obligation to trade Garnett. The rationale was that the Wolves lack the means to surround KG with sufficient talent to contend for a championship, leaving it in the best interest of both the superstar and the franchise to unload him and rebuild from scratch.

Two things about this stink to high heaven if you enjoy pro hoops in Minnesota. First, almost all the people in the "trade KG" chorus are far more concerned about getting one of the NBA's most charismatic and versatile performers back in the spotlight, preferably in a marquee market like New York or L.A., than in improving the Timberwolves. Second, although people have chattered about Garnett leaving town since his first contract was due to expire in 1997, the subject has been raised with unremitting frequency this season. No matter how much you like your employer, listening to everyone ask if you wouldn't really rather work somewhere else can wear a person down. In mid-January, Chicago Tribune sportswriter Sam Smith, a flagrant ass who has been clamoring for Garnett to play in his city for nearly a decade, actually wrote, "If Garnett doesn't demand a trade, one might assume he doesn't really care about anything but the money."

But regardless of how specious or cynical the campaign has been to pry KG away from Minnesota, it wouldn't have caused a ripple if bad luck, penalties from an illegal contract, and a long string of idiotic personnel moves hadn't combined to sabotage the future of this franchise—with or without Garnett on the team. Because the dispiriting bottom line behind all the trade talk is that, now and for the next three to four years, the Timberwolves are screwed whether they trade KG or keep him. What follows are the gory details. Read them and weep.

 

DAMNED IF THEY DO

The supposed strategic rationale for trading Garnett is to collect $20 million or so in expiring contracts—i.e., future cap room to bid for free agents—and a couple of draft picks. Thanks to a series of horrendous moves by Wolves VP of personnel Kevin McHale, however, that approach is dead on arrival. McHale's last two trades essentially doomed it. Last summer, he dealt Cassell, whose contract expires at the end of this year, to the L.A. Clippers for Marko Jaric, but only after working out a six-year, $38-million contract with Jaric and throwing in a first-round draft choice to boot.

Then, as part of the sprawling seven-player trade with Boston in January, McHale swapped center Michael Olowokandi and his expiring contract for center Mark Blount, who is owed $28 million for the four seasons after this one. (He tossed the Celtics another first-round pick in the deal in exchange for two second-rounders.) Thus, even if Minnesota doesn't sign point guard Marcus Banks and forward Justin Reed when their contracts expire this season (and McHale has claimed Banks was a key player in the Boston deal), they are spending slightly more money in each of the next two years on Blount and Ricky Davis than Boston will owe ex-Wolves Wally Szczerbiak and Dwayne Jones. And, of course, they lose that first-round pick.

Throw Jaric's and Blount's long-term abominations on the money pyre beside the $25 million being paid to Troy Hudson over the next four years, subtract the two first-round picks lost to the Clippers and Boston, and you've got a team that can't start from scratch. Without signing any free agents (meaning Jaric and Hudson are your point guards), or picking up any existing options on contracts in the future, the Wolves owe more than $34 million in guaranteed salary to players besides KG next year, and $35 million for non-KG personnel in 2007-08, $27 million in 2008-09, and $24 million in 2009-10. The salary cap this year is only $49.5 million, and doesn't figure to rise sharply in the near future.

Even if you essentially give KG away—for the expiring contract of a permanently injured player like the Knicks' Allen Houston or the Magic's Anfernee Hardaway, plus a bevy of draft picks—what's the sales pitch to free agents once you've got the dollars in hand? With just enough money under the salary cap to sign one maximum-salary free agent, how do the Wolves convince a cornerstone player to throw down with them after they couldn't make the playoffs two years running with Garnett? The scenario conjures visions of the post-Jordan nightmare in Chicago, when Bulls general manager Jerry Krause couldn't bring home any free agents due to the fallout over his breakup of the Jordan-Jackson-Pippen dynasty. A management team in chilly Minnesota that caused the likes of Kevin Garnett to flee the premises would likely encounter a similar boycott. As for the value of any draft picks the Wolves might acquire, consider that any team receiving Garnett for little more than draft picks is going to finish high enough in the standings to make those picks relatively worthless.

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