I have always tried to separate basketball from the professional drivel that the NBA sells like it was Panda Express--repackaged so many times that it hardly resembles what it was meant to be, so that it can be sold to people who don't really know what it was in the first place. A couple of weeks ago I got the justification I needed to expose this rift when a corrupt referee was accused of fixing games to cover spreads and affect outcomes, possibly even helping the Spurs beat the Suns in Game 3 just this spring.
On what should have been the worst day of my professional sports life, I feel... satisfied. I established in a post a few months ago that my loyalty lies with Ticket first, and my Timberwolves second. KG should have been traded last year, it was naively optimistic of him and of me to think that we could win, and to think that Kevin McHale could build a playoff team around one of the best 25 players of all time. The article reporting the trade read like an obituary. Someone who played with more passion than entire Eastern Conference teams was reduced to a paragraph of stats and awards.
Garnett didn't want to leave. As Marc Stein continues to report, KG still wants to retire a Timberwolf . At the press conference, the honestly transparent 2004 MVP explained that it was only after owner Glen Taylor refused to sign him to an extension, and made clear his intention to rebuild (let me introduce everyone to the poor man's Mitch Kupchak), not to build around the only superstar to ever love my bitterly cold Twin Cities, that he knew his loyalty had been betrayed. The guy we should think of as perhaps the most loyal player in professional sports history finally had confirmation that the writing on the wall was all very real; Glen Taylor was an apathetic owner that didn't have any interest in winning basketball games or selling seats at soon-to-be deserted Target Center.
It should have been clear when Taylor never seemed to doubt his flailing GM who only feels comfortable dealing with former teammate Danny Ainge. Now that Taylor has successfully traded his superstar for exactly the team that Boston could have had if it kept its first-round picks the last two years, will people care? It was my fault for thinking McHale could get fired for trading for Marko Jaric and signing Troy Hudson to an unmovable contract. It was my fault for buying tickets, for watching games, and for investing enough of myself that my interest could be bought and sold and finally traded.
Kevin Garnett, we're sorry that we wanted to believe like you, that we had a GM that knew anything other than low-post scoring, and an owner who knew when to stop keeping people around just because you "go way back." There it goes, my only remaining passion in professional sports has left my home town for my birth town. I'll follow it like a candle in a pitch black room though, because I'm on your side Ticket.
