Sam Smith

Do you suppose Fred Carter, LeRoy Ellis, Manny Leaks and Dale Schlueter were toasting the other night when the Minnesota Timberwolves hung on to beat the Golden State Warriors to get their sixth win of the season and probably assured themselves of not challenging the all-time team futility record of the Carter, et al Philadelphia 76ers who were 9-73?

Probably not as it seems only those 1972 Miami Dolphins of the NFL don't want to see their records broken.

You'd think those guys wouldn't mind, though Carter is sort of the unofficial spokesman for that team and always says he'd hate to see anyone be worse, not so much because he'd feel sorry for the team and players but he still likes the notoriety.

The Timberwolves probably are safe now as they're on a 15- to 20-win pace with Wednesday's good home win over the Phoenix Suns. No, they won't be the worst team in NBA history, just competing with Seattle and Miami to avoid being the league's worst this season.

The NBA is filled with misery beyond those 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers.

There are the expansion dregs like the 15-win Heat of 1988-89 who soared to 18 wins in their second season. Whoever thought Mike D'Antoni would ever get another shot after that 14-36 lockout season in Denver in 1998-99? Denver made one of the best runs at the 76ers in 1997-98 with an 11-71 season. The 1992-93 Mavs also had an 11-71 season. The Atlanta Hawks put up a 13-69 season in 2004-05, one of three teams ever to go through a season without back to back wins. Minnesota got its this week.

The Bulls after the breakup of their championship teams in the 1990's went 17-65 and 15-67 in consecutive seasons. Bill Fitch's expansion Cavs in 1970-71 were 15-67. The late 90's Warriors had three of four seasons in one stretch without winning 20 games. The Nets had a pair of sub-20 seasons in the late 1980's. The Clippers bottomed out in 1986-87 at 12-70 and five other times won fewer than 20 games in a season. Yes, they stand for historical NBA futility.

The Timberwolves likely aren't quite that bad, but to look at in another way, Kevin Garnett may be one of the greatest players in NBA history to get that team 32 and 33 wins the last few seasons. It suggests Garnett alone is worth 15 to 20 wins a season, which he appears to be doing for the Boston Celtics this season.

Because in trading Garnett to the Celtics, the Timberwolves basically got in return the team that won 24 games in Boston last season. Nice plan.

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Randy Foye will be back, which you assume means they send Sebastian Telfair back to the bench. Yes, they say they miss Theo Ratliff. Ryan Gomes just had a big game. He had a few like that with the Celtics as well. They got Antoine Walker, though it may help in the longrun with a shorter deal than Mark Blount's. And, heck, the way the Heat is playing and Minnesota beating them last week, maybe Walker in the end is on the better team.

But, hey, that's another column. We're trashing the Timberwolves here.

This is what happened in Minnesota. Ownership finally decided they could miss the playoffs without Garnett and lose a lot less money. Yes, this is about making money and not competing. Don't be surprised. It happens plenty in pro sports. There are plenty of those baseball teams not spending their revenue sharing now that they get it, and Donald Sterling in the NBA for years made money with losing teams. Now, he's spending and losing, which doesn't make him happy.

The Timberwolves wasted a star like perhaps no other team in NBA history.

Garnett could have been Tim Duncan if the Timberwolves knew what they were doing. They seemed to at one time in getting Stephon Marbury and Tom Gugliotta, and everyone should have known what a cancer Marbury was the way he forced his way out of Minnesota and ruined the best chance he ever had in the NBA to be a winner.

Every team makes personnel blunders, so there's no reason to go over Minnesota's. But they got caught cheating on Joe Smith's contract and were decimated in draft picks, the punishment really for being so stupid to do something so blatant. They had good coaching in Flip Saunders, and for one shining moment, even with over the hill veterans like Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell, they put together just a modicum of talent around Garnett to enable him to carry it to the conference finals.

With what they had around him otherwise, no one could move that mess very far.

That's a dozen years of a talent that rarely comes along and it went to waste. One year out of the first round of the playoffs. What a sin.

Al Jefferson is going to be a really good player. Yes, they got something. But he'll likely be the only one from the deal with the Celtics left when Minnesota even has a chance to compete. And that's assuming they don't waste their draft picks this time.

It's a shame when a team gives up like this. I believe there were many better deals for Garnett. A team never gets value for a superstar, but geez. The Bulls were desperate for years and one time were offering Luol Deng, Tyson Chandler and the No. 2 overall pick in the 2006 draft. Last summer, the Lakers offered Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom, and we've already seen that Bynum is growing into an elite center and you don't find those often. Bynum, Odom and, say, Foye would have been a nice three-player core to begin building around.

Rebuilding sounds good: Play the kids, let the fans enjoy the ride and watch 'em grow. It's fine if it works. It doesn't always. They are painfully long seasons in the quest to find a star. Minnesota had one of the biggest. Will Jefferson be that? Not likely anywhere near Garnett's level, especially in all around play and leadership. Rarely does a player like that come along. It's a long, painful way back for teams like the Timberwolves and few are going to enjoy the process.

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