HIBBING'S FINEST STRIKES AGAIN _ Kevin Garnett soon will be gone, meaning a great, if flawed, player has been unconscionably wasted in Minnesota. Shame on the Wolves. It is nothing short of basketball sacrilege that Kevin McHale, the Ostrich, the miserable excuse for a basketball executive, the guy who drated him and then failed him, was the guy who got to trade him.
Ridiculous. In no other city, with no other franchise, would this trade opportunity have been afforded to a guy who never deserved the chance.
Worse yet, in return, because McHale does not know how to deal creatively with any other team than Danny Ainge's Celtics, the Wolves get, yes, five more Celtics to use in their brand new rebuilding program. Don't bother with the nonsense about expired contracts. I know all about that. The Wolves get five more players from one of the most dysfunctional franchises in basketball, to add to the two that still remain from the last deal _ one a certified 7-foot weenie (Mark Blount) and the other a certified coach-killer (Ricky Davis) _ that also included Justin Reed and the alleged key to that deal, Marcus Banks.
That alone was the trade that should have ensured that McHale never got another chance to do anything more substantial than go kill some animals up north. There, at least, he could do no more damage to the franchise.
Instead, here he is, back again and Wolves fans, many of whom had come to grips with the need for the Garnett Era to end, are supposed to be inspired by acquring a bunch of players who largely contributed to the systematic destruction of what was once considered a basketball dynasty. Repeat: The issue here isn't that Garnett should not be traded. (His own contribution to the Wolves' issues, though nowhere near as devastating as the Ostrich's, has been recorded here for some time.) The issue is just how little this team got in return, and more crucially, from a franchise which failed to successfully rebuild with the players the Wolves are now supposed to, yes, use to re-build. Jefferson has a chance to be good as a low-post scorer, though he is in for a rude awakening against some of the big men of the Western Conference. He also is a very mediocre defender, and his injury totals at his tender age are scary. And he's the only player in the deal who does anything for me.
Green can jump out of the gym but has the basketball IQ of Marlon Maxey. Gomes is a decent backup. Nothing more. Telfair has been an abject embarrassment, especially off the court. The money Ratliff represents looks nice, but the Wolves will soon learn that having cap space will not necessarily mean convincing players this is the place to play. The draft choices are decent chips, but not as sexy as they sound, given the Wolves' pick that stupidly was sent to Boston in the last Celtics trade was going to be protected for a while.
A Warriors deal that reportedly included Brandan Wright and other young Golden State Warriors interested me more. So did a Suns deal involving Shawn Marion and a series of No. 1s that would have included another Atlanta pick. The Celtics deal is horrendously worse than what the Bulls offered a year ago _ Luol Deng, Tyson Chandler and the No. 2 overall pick.
But if I'm a Celtics fan, I'm thrilled by this deal. Ainge _ and the Brain Doctor _ finally did something right, and leave it to an old Celtic, McHale, to conspire to help him do it. You get a star player who in Boston should be reinvigorated, and with Paul Pierce and Ray Allen at his side to take fourth-quarter shots, Garnett can go back to doing what he does best: Using his all-around skills to influence a game, rather than have to grab it by the throat, which has never been his strength. Matter of fact, with two scorers with him, Garnett might actually find himself in better position to also do some vital scoring. In return, all Ainge had to give up was one promising inside player and a bunch of his garbage.
All this deal does is cement the symmetry: The Ostrich didn't know how to support and complement his (flawed) superstar, and in the end, he didn't know how to trade him, either.
