It isn’t entirely impossible that the Minnesota Timberwolves can win Game 6 of the Western Conference quarterfinals tonight in Los Angeles and knock off the three-time defending national champions at home in Game 7.
But at this point, it’s probably more likely that Lakers season ticket holder Dylan McDermott will have a successful movie before that happens.
In any event, the smart money right now is on the Timberwolves — more specifically Kevin Garnett — losing their seventh consecutive first-round playoff series.
Once again, the dream of May basketball in Minnesota is dying.
At the start of the season, it didn’t seem like it was meant to be for the Timberwolves. They lost All-Star shooting guard Wally Szczerbiak until mid-January and, without the presence of a true point guard, sputtered out of the opening gate like a limp horse at the Kentucky Derby.
Given that the Wolves have their first first-round draft pick since 1999, it was all but a consensus among Minnesota media and fans that it would just be better off for the team to miss the playoffs and pick up a quality player wherever the ping pong balls sent them in the lottery.
But no one in the Timberwolves organization really saw it that way. Especially not Garnett. In fact, he thought he’d do the franchise one better and give them what they’ve never had in each of their previous six first-round playoff flops: home-court advantage.
To the surprise of maybe even general manager Kevin McHale, the Wolves were flat out the most dominant team in the league for the better part of the second half of the season.
They were 12-1 in the month of February, and at one point had won 18 consecutive home games at the Target Center.
Offseason free agent signees Troy Hudson and Kendall Gill were picking up the slack of a team lacking a strong supporting cast, and head coach Flip Saunders was even making a bid for NBA coach of the year.
As for Garnett, he was having one of the most dominant seasons in the NBA since Michael Jordan was in his prime. Ignoring his past playoff critics, he literally carried the Timberwolves up the conference ladder, setting them in the No. 4 spot in the West when the playoffs rolled around. He had finally given them home-court advantage in round one.
Garnett averaged 23 points, 14 rebounds and six assists at the conclusion of the regular season. He led the league in both triple-doubles and double-doubles while ranking in the top 10 in the NBA in 17 different offensive and defensive categories.
The table was set, and Garnett was prepared to finally pull the first-round playoff monkey off of his back.
But that mischievous monkey that has plagued both Garnett and the Wolves over the previous six seasons wasn’t as apt to roll over and die.
As luck would have it for the Wolves, the unpredictable Portland “Jailblazers,” a team who the Wolves had fought off mightily to earn the No. 4 spot in the West, fell flat on their face in their regular season finale against the Los Angeles Clippers, paving the way for the red-hot Lakers to climb into the No. 5 seed.
And just when the Wolves thought they might answer their critics and do some damage in the West, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal — not Damon Stoudamire and Zach Randolph — arrived for Game 1 at the Target Center.
From that point on, it’s been a familiar playoff script for Wolves fans to follow. Excitement and optimism followed by disappointment and frustration.
After tanking the first game of the series, the Wolves stormed back to take Games 2 and 3, played well enough to almost win Game 4 and came back to the Target Center needing just to take care of their home court in order to advance to the second round.
But putting away the three-time defending champions isn’t like knocking off the Detroit Tigers; you actually have to do a lot more than simply show up.
The Lakers pummeled the Wolves Tuesday night, giving them a 3-2 edge in the series and allowing them an opportunity to close out round one of the playoffs in the confines of the star-studded Staples Center.
Barring one of the more improbable upsets in recent playoff memory, the sun will set on Garnett and the Wolves when the fourth-quarter buzzer sounds sometime around midnight tonight.
An offseason of second-guessing and personnel bashing will likely persist in the Twin Cities, just as it has the previous four or five seasons, when simply making it to the playoffs was no longer considered acceptable for the Minnesota franchise.
Call it bad luck, choking or postseason incompetence if you want to, but please do not pin any of the Wolves’ shortcomings this season on the play of Kevin Garnett.
Simply put, he is the best player in basketball today. Shaq may be more dominant and Iverson more flashy, but there isn’t another player in the league that has done more for his team and himself than Kevin Garnett has this past year.
And while the cameras will shift to Garnett when the Wolves drudgingly head to the lockeroom when their season ends, it has been anything but his inability to perform that has kept the Wolves from reaching that next rung on the playoff ladder.
It’s not his fault that former Timberwolves guard Stephon Marbury couldn’t handle his success while in Minnesota, forcing a trade in which the Wolves retained Terrell Brandon, who has sat on the bench the last two seasons while eating up $10 million of salary-cap room a year, preventing the acquisition of any other serious talent.
It’s not Garnett’s fault that Minnesota’s front office was caught illegally signing the sparsely used Joe Smith to a contract extension, a deal that has cost the Wolves first-round draft picks since drafting Szczerbiak in 1999.
And it’s certainly not his fault that best friend and starting shooting guard Malik Sealy died in a car accident two years ago, or that defensive hound Felipe Lopez tore his ACL and was lost for the season in training camp.
Garnett cannot be blamed for the fact that Szczerbiak, allegedly Minnesota’s No. 2 guy, has played like he’s been drunk in each of the first five games or that the officials have called fouls on the Wolves for merely breathing on the Lakers.
Garnett is only one man.
And while the Spurs’ Tim Duncan will most likely garner MVP honors when the NBA season concludes this June — in large part due to the fact that his team has actually done something in the postseason in recent years — there is no doubt in my mind that’s an award that belongs in Garnett’s trophy case.
You could say that Kobe deserves the award, but let’s not forget that he couldn’t even keep the Lakers above .500 when Shaq started the year on injured reserve. Some might make a strong case for Tracy McGrady, but he doesn’t see the powerful teams from the West as much as Garnett does, and he plays in a conference where a 40-42 record gets you in the playoffs and Brad Miller is an All-Star center.
Through the first five games of the Wolves-Lakers series Garnett has averaged 29 points, 16 rebounds and six assists, numbers that don’t even sound that fascinating anymore because Garnett has simply made them his norm.
Give him a Kobe, give him a Bibby or give him Nash, and Garnett wouldn’t just be the best player in the league, he’d be the proud owner of an NBA championship ring.
Or don’t give him any of those guys. But then don’t blame Garnett for another first-round playoff loss.
