Links between Garnett, Wolves have faded over time

One Wolfe said "You can't go home again." Another Wolf has been living by that.

Kevin Garnett, the most famous of all the Minnesota Timberwolves across 21 NBA seasons, was back in the Twin Cities Wednesday night. It was his third annual one-and-done visit, Garnett and his Boston Celtics crew dutifully playing their only road game on the schedule at Target Center and exiting the tail end of a nasty Philadelphia-to-Minnesota back-to-back itinerary with a 92-90 victory.

For Boston, it was six in a row now, the stiffest test yet to the Celtics' defense (the Timberwolves shot 52 percent) and a night to bend but not to break to the fatigue and travel. For Garnett, it was a return to the scene of his greatest individual exploits. This was where he established himself as a Hall of Famer, where he won his MVP, where he lived out so many compelling storylines -- high school kid to pro, $126 million lockout trigger, astonishingly versatile 7-footer -- until he got traded to Boston in July 2007 and wrote the tale that mattered most.

So it was a return, sure. But not really a homecoming.

How could it be? There isn't one player left on the Wolves' roster that Garnett played with. Corey Brewer is Minnesota's senior member now -- and he was drafted a month before Garnett was shipped to Boston for five players and two first-round picks. "His rookies" from his final season there, Randy Foye and Craig Smith, are in Washington and Los Angeles, respectively.

Flip Saunders, the coach who helped him reach the postseason for eight consecutive years (and vice versa) is in Washington now, too. Kevin McHale, the vice president of basketball operations who gambled on Garnett straight out of Chicago's Farragut Academy, can be seen on NBA TV these days.

And get a load of this one: Of the Timberwolves players who reached the Western Conference finals with Garnett in 2004, only one -- New Jersey's Trenton Hassell -- is an active player anymore, and he's around mostly in an expiring-contract kind of way. What's gone on in Minnesota, to this point, is a modern suburban teardown in reverse: A McMansion of a franchise with lofty ambitions getting leveled for a shabby dwelling of uncertain future.

The passing of time was a major theme of author Thomas Wolfe's novel, published posthumously in 1940. Well, nowhere does time pass more quickly than in professional sports, where careers begin and end in a span of a dozen seasons, where 35-year-olds are considered ancient and where "what have you done for me lately?" isn't just a snide remark but a philosophy that steers franchises.

Garnett told me late Wednesday night that his separation from the team he carried and defined for so long began as soon as he got traded. Physical distance begat psychological distance, which in turn begat emotional. Facing Minnesota might not be like facing any other team, but it is like facing many other teams: A night to punch the clock, take care of business and stay ready for the Clevelands, the Orlandos, the San Antonios and the L.A.s.

"Troy [Hudson], Trenton, Rick [Davis], some of the guys I have special relationships with, they all left and moved on to different situations," Garnett said. "I've never looked back. Obviously, I have some family that still lives here. But other than that ... when a new page in my book opens, I just try to embrace that and go forward. Apply the things I've learned in my past to my future, and move on."

It's something most NBA players, and many great ones, experience. Garnett wasn't able to finish as a one-franchise guy like Reggie Miller or John Stockton, though that always was his aim. He never brought a championship to Minnesota to soften, over time, even the saddest or harshest of departures (think Kareem Abdul-Jabbar exiting Milwaukee). Garnett's final two years with the Wolves were cranky ones, the organization's obvious need to rebuild out of sync with the perennial All-Star's ticking clock.

As he looked around Target Center Wednesday night, though, it was hard to see that he ever had been there, never mind logged 12 intense, often happy seasons in that gym. His return, the Celtics' lone visit, didn't sell out, just as LeBron James and Shaquille O'Neal didn't sell out the building five nights earlier. The Wolves, as is the custom in the NBA with visiting teams, stepped on his name in introductions, putting Garnett second and forcing fans who were so inclined to cheer quickly.

George Washington left behind a trail of "slept here" signs. Garnett? Finding a hint of his impact, a source of satisfaction for him, was trickier.

"I don't know," he said, pondering. "I'm so numb when I come in here. I sort of put on my face, as I say, because I'm really intense when it comes to game day. It's easy to come here and actually focus, because I don't have any of my old teammates on the other side. Sam, Spree, Freddie [Hoiberg is]up in the office -- he's corporate now. Obviously Steph. So my history is kind of past. The only thing that's from the past that I can take a glimpse of is the Malik banner up there. I took a minute tonight to just look at it. But when it comes to the building, there's so many different changes here -- it's not even the same tunnel."

Malik Sealy -- a teammate, a friend and the player who inspired Garnett to wear No. 21 when he go to the NBA, from following Sealy's games at St. John's -- was killed in May 2000 by a drunk driver on a Minneapolis highway after celebrating Garnett's 24th birthday that night.

"So many different changes that I can't really relate to, so there's no need to dig into that part of it. Faces are different in the crowd," he said. "Y'know, some day I feel like a team is going to have to be put together for the city. At some point, basketball here is going to have to go to another level. [But] my focus is Boston, being in the New England area, playing a couple more years, then sitting it down."

At that point, Larry Fitzgerald Sr., a Twin Cities sports journalist whose son is an All-Pro NFL wide receiver for the Arizona Cardinals, asked Garnett if he second-guessed the Wolves' decision to trade him or felt sad about that end.

"Nope," he said. "Nope." Garnett shared a lesson from his mom Shirley, after Garnett had hesitated crossing a busy street one day: "She said, 'Never second-guess a decision. If you're gonna go, go.' "

Then Fitzgerald asked him how it feels to have influenced so many young people as they grew up in the Twin Cities, including that wide receiver in Arizona. "I'm just glad I was able to be of impact to him," Garnett said, "and now he's able to be of impact to a whole bunch of kids, and so on and so on. That's how it spreads."

Come to think of it, that's how it spread throughout Target Center Wednesday night. The signs of Garnett's time there were evident after all, in so many green Boston No. 5 jerseys scattered through the Minnesota stands.

Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA for 25 years. You can e-mail him here.

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