5 great teams that were ruined by the Kobe-Shaq Lakers
4. Minnesota Timberwolves
Success didn’t come naturally to the Minnesota Timberwolves. The 1989 NBA expansion team saw other recent expansion teams (Heat, Hornets and Magic) become charter franchises in the NBA early into their tenures. For Minnesota, it was disappointment after disappointment including seven straight sub-30 win seasons. Finally, in 1996, hope arrived in the former of seven-fo…sorry 6-foot-12 power forward Kevin Garnett. “The Big Ticket” simply put, could do it all. A strong big man with guard-like dribbling ability and range all across the court Garnett immediately turned the Wolves into a playoff team.
While Garnett and coach Flip Saunders continued getting Minnesota to the playoffs year after year, the Wolves couldn’t get the monkey off their back. Year after year, they lost in the first round. The teams changed (Supersonics, Blazers, Mavericks, etc.) but the result never did.
In 2003, Minnesota finally appeared ready to make a deep run in the playoffs. Garnett finished second in MVP voting and averaged 23 points per game and 13.4 rebounds per game on the 51-win Wolves. Facing off with the defending three-time champion Lakers, Minnesota went into the fourth quarter of Game 4 staring at a potential 3-1 series lead. As you can probably guess: that didn’t happen. The Lakers came back, won the series in six games and the Timberwolves were eliminated in the first round for the seventh straight year.
In the offseason, Minnesota got serious. Realizing they were wasting the prime of one of the NBA’s most skilled big men, the Wolves got to work revamping the team around their young star. Out were Joe Smith and Terrell Brandon in was center Ervin Johnson, Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell. Minnesota added to the reserves signing role players Trenton Hassell, Troy Hudson and Fred Hoiberg. It was now or never for Minnesota.
The moves paid off.
Minnesota won 58 games and took home the top seed in the Western Conference playoffs. Sprewell and Cassell both had career years while Garnett put himself into another echelon, winning the first NBA MVP award of his career.
After seven years of disappointment, Minnesota finally won a playoff series making quick work of the Denver Nuggets. They rode that momentum into a tough second-round battle with Sacramento that saw the Wolves pull out the series victory in seven games.
The only thing that separated Garnett and the Wolves from an NBA Finals berth was the dreaded Los Angeles Lakers. While the Wolves had lost to Bryant and O’Neal the prior year, they were confident with their new-found swagger that things would be different in 2004. Los Angeles had drastically re-done their roster as well bringing in veterans Karl Malone and Gary Payton.
Minnesota seemed ready to knock off the Lakers to enter the first NBA Finals in franchise history. An unfortunate injury to Cassell in Game 7 of the Sacramento series largely took him out of the Lakers series. Despite a heroic 23.7 points and 13.5 rebounds per game series performance by Garnett, it wasn’t enough. The Lakers — led by Bryant’s 24.3 and O’Neal’s 20.7 points per game — were too much for the undermanned Wolves to handle.
The Lakers won in six. Minnesota was going home.
Little did Wolves’ fans know, this would be the final run for Garnett and the Wolves. In the 2005 season, Cassell and Sprewell had lengthy contract disputes and the team failed to capture the magic of their prior season. Coach Saunders was replaced by general manager Kevin McHale and the Wolves finished the season with only 44 wins, missing the playoffs for the first time in eight seasons.
Over the next several seasons, the Wolves slowly dismantled their core concluding with the trade of their franchise cornerstone to the Boston Celtics. Garnett would finally achieve championship glory with his new team but it was a bitter pill to swallow for Wolves fans. Since their Western Conference Finals loss to the Lakers, Minnesota has missed the playoffs 15 out of 16 years.
Ouch.