Wolves guessing Garnett experiment lasts longer than five games
MINNEAPOLIS -- Seated on the edge of a waste receptacle and slouching forward in the corner of Minnesota's locker room March 2, Kevin Garnett for once looked comfortably human.
The Twin Cities yesteryear hoops hero had just dragged his 38-year-old bones up and down the Target Center floor for 21 minutes, 56 seconds. Scored 12 points on 6-of-10 shooting to go with three rebounds. Afterward, he told the Timberwolves media throng of mentorship by demonstration, of leadership by living the practices he hopes to instill.
"I'm not just telling them but showing them how," Garnett said, referring to Wolves rookies Andrew Wiggins and Zach LaVine -- who, at 19 years old, both entered the NBA at the same age as Garnett. "I think when you have this raw talent like you have here, it's important to give instruction and demonstrate. These kids have a skill level that got them here, and I'm just trying to give them the little things, the small things that only basketball players or players who have been in the league only know."
Distracted from the doldrums of an eventual 16-win season and supercharged with the kinetic energy only Garnett and a select few others can bring into an arena -- "the hair stands up on your arms," head coach and president Flip Saunders says -- 18,239 fans filled the old barn on 600 First Avenue North that night. It wasn't quite the sellout crowd that graced Garnett's trade-deadline return two games earlier, but it was the kind of environment Saunders and Garnett grew used to during a decade here together.
A Red Bull for the weary Wolves fan. But the crash came quickly.
Garnett played two more games after that tooth-and-nail, 110-105 loss to the Clippers. Aging knees and a vicious stomach bug, Saunders said, kept The Big Ticket out of Minnesota's final 21 games.
But he practiced whenever he could. Continued coming to the gym for early-morning lifting and condition sessions -- the same way he has for 20 years. Tried to rub off on the youngsters. After an April 10 loss at the Lakers, Garnett stayed on the team bus with Wiggins and LaVine, talking shop for half an hour, Saunders said.
"He brings a different type of energy to the team," said Wiggins, a near-lock for NBA Rookie of the Year. "He had a huge impact on everybody here. Not only the players; people that are working, staff, everything. Even when he's not there on the court . . . you still feel his presence."
A short-lived gimmick? A needed veteran presence whose experience and knowledge offset his shortcomings? A ticket-selling business strategy? A charade masking behind-the-scenes moves toward, one day, a new ownership structure? Depends whom you ask, and none of those explanations is mutually exclusive. But in any case, Saunders' decision to trade Thaddeus Young -- gleaned, essentially, for Cleveland's first-round pick in the Wiggins-Kevin Love trade -- was an experiment. For a 20-year veteran with 1,567 games on the odometer, pretty much everything is -- an annual test of the gap between scraping out more games and finally entering the next phase of professional life.
The results this time: five games, 98 minutes (19.6 per game), 38 points (7.6) and 26 rebounds (5.2).
Garnett spoke with reporters only one more time after his Clippers postgame scrum. Publicly, the pending unrestricted free agent hasn't given any indication as to his future plans, kickstarting what's become the annual carousel of speculation regarding the future Hall of Famer's retirement.
Someday soon, Garnett will hang it up. He'll put together an investment group -- one in which Saunders, currently a minority owner, hopes to be included -- and try to buy the team he led to eight straight playoff appearances.
But for the moment, the experiment is ongoing. Those within the organization traded for Garnett in February with an understanding he'd help -- on the floor -- beyond this season. That hasn't changed.
"If I had to guess -- and that's what it would be, because I haven't talked to him -- my guess is that he'll want to come back, because I just think that I saw his spirit and how he's working with the players and his love for the game," current owner Glen Taylor told FOXSportsNorth.com earlier this month. "I think, if he doesn't, it'll just be something with his knees or something that he just says 'I just can't go.' But I think his mind will want to come back. I think his heart will want to come back."
Saunders took the fact Garnett didn't return toward the end of a lost season as evidence he's leaning toward playing at least another year. What else would he be saving himself for?
"He's given an indication he'd like to play another year. If he does, we hope it'd be here," said Saunders, who rejoined the club in 2013 as president of basketball operations and appointed himself head coach last summer. "If he didn't want to play, I thought he would've played some games down the stretch. Where his leg was at and just the soreness, I believe he didn't want to take any chance, and the reason he didn't is because he indicated wants to get his body right. If he gets his body right, he wants to play. I think that's the avenue that he's trying to go towards."
That would require a new contract. Garnett made $12 million this year and is thought to be willing to take a pay cut; the veteran minimum for next season is a mere $1.5 million, but a player of Garnett's prestige would likely command more than that. Depending what else happens in free agency, the Wolves could use a CBA-granted exception to keep their all-time franchise face in the fold.
Saunders doesn't expect a decision from Garnett's camp until the free-agent negotiation period opens July 1, but if he intends to play, Saunders said, it won't come long after that.
"He's going to know early," Saunders said. "He's doing things right now to get ready to play. . . . He's been in this league 20 years. He knows his body better than any doctor. He's not going to put his body in harm's way."
Excluding whatever figure Garnett would glean if he comes back, the Wolves have about $10 million to spend in free agency, plus a top-four pick in this year's NBA Draft. Their free agency plans hinge almost solely upon Garnett's decision.
And no matter how much they pay him, it'll be for a sage teammate whose worth extends far beyond his increasingly limited production.
That's why Minnesota dealt Young to Brooklyn for him, Saunders said. And even though Garnett joined Ricky Rubio, Nikola Pekovic and Kevin Martin on the squad's elephantine injury report, Saunders says there's no buyer's remorse.
Just because he's out injured doesn't mean Garnett is not doing what he was brought here to do.
"He definitely had an effect because he was there every day," LaVine said. "He was on the bench, he was in the locker room, he was at practice. So you still see his routines, still practicing, getting up early before shootarounds.
"It's great to have a dude like that because he's a Hall of Famer. That's what we all want to get to. He has this aura about him that's just so uplifting. He definitely keeps our morale high."
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