Kevin Garnett, Timberwolves Come Away Winners in Trade Back to Minnesota
If you were a diehard NBA fan during the early 2000s, you may want to get out the tissues, especially if the Minnesota Timberwolves were your team of choice.
Trust me. They'll be tears of joy.
As NBA.com's David Aldridge first reported, Kevin Garnett is headed back to his original team for the remainder of the 2014-15 campaign, giving him a chance to reunite with head coach Flip Saunders and finish his career where he started as a fresh-faced teenager out of Farragut Career Academy nearly two decades ago. Thaddeus Young, meanwhile, will be joining the Brooklyn Nets.
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To be clear, it's not about the on-court product here.
This is all about nostalgia and should be viewed as a major feel-good move. Even though the 38-year-old power forward is far past his prime, everyone involved on the Minnesota end of the equation is most certainly a winner.
Kevin Garnett
I understand if you're confused.
Normally, veterans on their last legs end up seeking out rings. They want to play for contenders that offer them one last shot at glory before they hang up the sneakers for good, even if it means sitting on the bench for the vast majority of each and every game.
So, how can Garnett possibly be a winner in this situation?
He's going from a Brooklyn squad that was at least hanging around in the Eastern Conference's lackluster competition for the final playoff spot to one of the West's bottom-feeding teams, a squad that has a distinct shot at securing the best odds for the No. 1 pick in this summer's draft. Making matters worse, he could potentially have agreed to a buyout and reunited with Doc Rivers in Los Angeles or gone to another contending team.
Well, Garnett had a no-trade clause, and he was traded to Minnesota all the same. By definition, he agreed to the deal, which means his biggest priority was putting on the old threads in which he began his career. He was more concerned with coming full circle than adding a second ring to his collection.
It's important to remember that Garnett held all of the cards here. No matter how mutually beneficial a deal between Minnesota and Brooklyn might have been, he could've put his foot down and held up the proceedings until the trade deadline passed.
Instead, he said yes.
Garnett got exactly what he wanted in this situation. How can he be anything but a winner?
The Minnesota Timberwolves
The big man is not going to be an impact player this season, nor do the Wolves want him to be.
With the Nets, Garnett has averaged 6.8 points, 6.8 rebounds and 1.6 assists per game while shooting just 45.5 percent from the field. According to Basketball-Reference.com, the 38-year-old has a 14.9 player efficiency rating, which is the second-worst mark of his career. The worst came last year, so it's not as if this is a fluky lack of production.
Getting quality minutes out of him is not the goal. Instead, Minnesota wins in this deal because it opens up more court time for the young players and gains a veteran mentor.
Garnett simply isn't going to play nearly as many minutes as Thaddeus Young did before the trade. For perspective, the new arrival averaged 20.3 minutes per game for Brooklyn, while the departed forward was at 33.4.
Now, there are more opportunities for Andrew Wiggins, Anthony Bennett, Robbie Hummel, Gorgui Dieng, Shabazz Muhammad and Glenn Robinson Jr. Better yet, the Wolves will have a chance to try out new combinations of up-and-coming players, allowing them to gain chemistry during a lost season at the beginning of a massive rebuild.
That stat from Jacob Eisenberg is insane. And since Muhammad and Wiggins are two of the central figures going forward, it can't stay that way.
More minutes—which leads to more chemistry-building opportunities—is never going to be a bad thing for a team bottoming out and letting the young guns learn on the job. Especially when they're going to be joined by a new mentor.
"Saunders remains close with Garnett and is said to covet a reunion to bring back the most popular player in Wolves annals as a mentor to the many youngsters on the current roster, headlined by 2014's No. 1 overall draft pick Andrew Wiggins," ESPN.com's Marc Stein reported when originally alerting the world with news that this deal was in the works.
Garnett may well be an ideal mentor for this team. Machismo and unrelenting intensity are no longer great ways to connect with some of the Association's younger players (some exceptions notwithstanding), but his leadership style has been much different in Brooklyn than it was in Boston. He's helped out Mason Plumlee significantly, for example.
"You see guys laughing; that's on purpose," Plumlee explained after an early-January practice, per Bleacher Report's Fred Katz. "KG makes a point to come in here and make sure guys are still enjoying it, because if you aren't enjoying coming in here, you're definitely not going to figure it out. Kevin, he controls the mood of the locker room."
Garnett has also been around the block a few times. He knows what it takes to win. He understands how to gain the support of the Minnesota diehards. He knows how to navigate the pitfalls associated with a long and rigorous 82-game season.
But most importantly—and this is what differentiates him from Young, as well as Mo Williams, Nikola Pekovic and Kevin Martin—he can give advice on how to deal with stardom. Someone on this roster, whether it's Wiggins, Zach LaVine or another player entirely, will eventually need that lesson.
For that moment alone, it's tough to complain about Garnett making his career a massive circle.
The Fans
The most obvious winner of all has to be the Minnesota faithful.
It can be tough supporting an organization that isn't winning games, and it's worse still when the franchise is mired in a lengthy playoff drought. The Wolves haven't advanced to the postseason since Garnett led them to the Western Conference Finals in 2004, which is now over a decade ago.
Since then, they've sniffed the portion of the season that comes after the 82nd game, but they haven't actually gotten there. And now, they're on pace to finish with less than 20 wins for the third time since Garnett departed for the Boston Celtics in 2007. In fact, with Young gone and replaced by a shell of the man who was once the best player in this franchise's history, there's a distinct possibility that the 15-win seasons in 2009-10 and 1991-92 may not stand much longer as the worst ever by Minnesota.
This season, there are a few bright spots.
Fans get to watch the immense, incalculable potential of Wiggins come to life as he runs away with Rookie of the Year. They have the privilege of cheering for LaVine's breathtaking slams and looking on as the other young players develop.
But they can still be thrown a bone, and that's exactly what Garnett is.
It's all about rekindling the nostalgia. The future Hall of Famer was drafted out of high school by the Wolves, and it was with them that he developed into one of the all-time greats, winning MVP during the 2003-04 campaign and leading them to all sorts of success, even if they always fell short of a title.
Though he's played elsewhere, he suited up 927 times before moving on to the Boston Celtics. Sam Mitchell—who, interestingly enough, is an assistant coach in Minnesota—is in second place on that leaderboard, and he's trailing "The Big Ticket" by 170 games.
For that matter, Garnett and Mitchell are in the same order for minutes played, and the former is over 17,000 ahead. He nearly has twice as many minutes played as Mitchell, and he actually does have over double what any other player in franchise history has produced.
Dominant as Kevin Love was on the glass, Garnett's rebound total with the Wolves is over twice as high. His 19,041 points in a Minnesota jersey give him nearly 12,000 more than anyone else in the franchise's annals. He also leads everyone in steals, blocks and even assists.
Want to look at advanced stats? Garnett gave his first team 138.4 win shares before he departed the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Love, Wally Szczerbiak, Sam Mitchell and Terrell Brandon round out the top five, and their combined total was 144.
His value over replacement player (VORP)? Garnett's total of 75.1 is only slightly lower than the combined product of the rest of the top 10, as Love, Szczerbiak, Tom Gugliotta, Brandon, Christian Laettner, Tyrone Corbin, Sam Cassell, Pooh Richardson and Ricky Rubio's numbers add up to 77.1.
When he was there, Garnett was the Wolves. In many ways, he still is.
The legendary power forward may no longer be capable of producing highlights like the ones you can see up above, but he can at least remind generations of Minnesota supporters of what he did for them in years past. Even those who support other teams can surely appreciate the sentiments in play here, as he was such a huge part of the NBA in general during the early 2000s.
By returning to where his legend began, Garnett gives himself a chance to end his career in a place that truly showered him with unabashed adoration during his first lengthy stint, and he helps out his original team in the process.
But in reality, we're all winners here.
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