Attack of the Yorkshire Terriers

Al Jefferson, Gerald Green, Sebastian Telfair and Craig Smith. This is the list of Timberwolves nursing ankle injuries for today's game against the Boston Celtics. I have checked the United States of America State Department's travel advisory warnings website and for some reason the UK, and it's rabid population of Yorkshire terriers, was not on the list. I find this insulting that our government cannot accomplish the simple duty of protecting its citizens, especially such household names as Sebastian Telfair (THE GUY HAD AN ESPN DOCUMENTARY, HE'S CELEBRITY!), from this gang of ankle-biters. If the government can't keep Bassy safe, how am I supposed to feel?

<-- Scotland Yard bravely cornered and arrested the leader of the rabid Yorkie pack responsible for the ankle injury outbreak that struck the Minnesota Timberwolves Basketball Organization.

KG ALPHA DOG

A lot of today's Pioneer Press news (that's the paper I get at home and I have not cruised the western paper's website yet) on the team centered around, obviously, K.G. This summer in email correspondence with the usual suspects I email about the three (that's right, I said three) major sports, the topic of the K.G. trade came up several times as several teams and trade scenarios were presented to the general public. Ultimately, no matter where K.G. went, if there were other stars, he would have an enormous year.

As one of my three favorite basketball players ever, I have objectively noticed that K.G. has played at a level to be the alpha dog on each team he has been a part of - by team, I mean that the Wolves have made changes every season he was here. His best season was not the season he won the MVP, it was the year prior when he led this team to a 4 seed and lost in the first round to a Lakers team that turned it around late in the season and won its third straight. That 2002-2003 team was riddled with mediocrity except for Garnett. He led them to 51 wins with Hudson/Strickland at PG, and significant minutes by KG2, Kendall Gill, who was at least as old as Joe Louis as measured by the My-T Sharp barbers from Coming to America (roughly 137 years old). 23.0 ppg, 13.4 rbg (with a starting lineup of Rosho, Wally, AP, and Hudson - no rebounders, amazing) and 6.0 apg. That is the baseball equivalent of Roy Hobbs leading that crap New York Knights team to the Pennant.

Back to the Alpha Dog hypothesis, Spree and Cassell joined the team in 2003 and KG's numbers were insane, par for the course. 24.6, 14.1, and 5.1. Nearly unanimous MVP and the best Wolves team ever. Would have made the finals had Cassell's back not betrayed him. Not noticeable in those numbers is the intensity with which KG played. He had to out-dog Cassell and Spreewell. Do you remember that team? On top of Cassell's clutch shooting, KG was a beast in the 4th quarter on that team. I went to game 7 against the Kings when he destroyed Chris Webber like the Giants over the Vikings in 2001. I remember the regular season Clippers game when the Clips got up by twelve, started mouthing off, then KG led a comeback and hit the game winner and dropped about 8,000 F*** bombs in 15 seconds while Spreewell chest-bumped him 400 times.

Unfortunately, like Zepplin says, the Song Remains the Same when KG is surrounded by mediocrity. Yes, K.G. is still intense. Yes, you can pull out his stats and averages and tell me he was pretty much the same every season. But he wasn't. I literally caught every game that was televised that season or I went to the games and he was different when he had to out alpha other alphas. I remember thinking it was going to be a special year that year when the Wolves beat New York on the road in overtime and Spreewell was yelling out explitives all over the court after putting up 31. KG was right there and had that look that his time had finally come.

It's going to be the same on this Celtics team. Ray Allen is fairly mild-mannered, but Pierce is super intense. If I didn't have season tickets, I would get NBA League Pass, KG is going to be a monster.

OTHER NEWS AROUND:

- This is yesterday's news, but it goes back to making the league competitive. I'm talking about Juwan Howard's "where I will be traded" list. Now, Juwan has been extremely professional and this is not necessarily against him, but if players want to pick and choose teams each year, they should sign 1-year contracts. If you want a max contract from a crappy team, deal with it. There was no bigger atrocity than what Vince Carter did up in Toronto. Absolutely unforgivable, even if you do jump over 7 foot frenchmen (on a related note, watch KG's reaction to this dunk. I thought he was going to explode).

You can get the rest of the relevant news and other Wolves stuff on the links to the right.