Perhaps it's because I wasn't a huge Wolves fan before he left. Maybe it's because he's the guy you love to play with, but hate to play against. Maybe it's because he's a star and star's get all the calls in this league. Maybe maybe maybe, but to hell with Kevin Garnett. He's a dirty player, physically and verbally. His "intensity" is infectious in the sense that everyone around him wants to smack him in the face, because he deserves it.
That said, the Wolves chose the wrong quarter to play poorly. Throughout the beginning of the season, they've saved their best effort for the final period of play. The LeBron game remains the only one where the Wolves did not have a chance to win in the end. All of those close games have been of the comeback variety, in the fourth or third quarter.
Against the Celtics, the Wolves lead for most of the night. They outhustled and outshot the Big Three for most of the night. They limited their mistakes, and responded to any rally the Celtics mustered with a few baskets of their own. After all the slow starts, the Wolves shot the lights out of the ball.
Except when crunch time came of course. The Celts locked down, and the Wolves managed to get some stops as well. The T-Wolves offense sputtered though. Oleksiy Pecherov had a great night shooting the ball, and didn't cool off, unlike Al Jefferson and the rest of the pack. Al got cold, and started forcing long jumpers to cool off even further, culminating in his coughing of the ball to Rajon Rondo late in the fourth quarter. Al's performance seemed to go along with the team's. When he moved the ball away from double teams, the team moved the ball. When Al worked on defense, the team did as well. When Al hit his shots, the team followed suit. When he tried to force his way through triple teams, the team started to force things too. When he lost his man on D, the rest of the team lost focus as well. Al Jefferson is stepping back into his role as a team leader, and it's his responsibility to make a good example, because the team will follow whatever one he sets.
Yet the starting line-up really wasn't the problem tonight. The tricenarian club's starters were all a "minus" for the game, and their entire bench was a "plus." Since I'm a Jonny Flynn fan, I'm going to blame Ramon Sessions. Not to mention that Sessions just didn't do anything good tonight. Flynn started driving to benefit his teammates, and Sessions started to drive into the middle of nowhere. Flynn actually took and made decent shots, while Sessions took and missed bad ones.
Blame can be spread all around, but let's face it: the Wolves almost beat the best team in the NBA. It was an inspired effort. They shot over 50% against the league's best defense. They held the best three-point shooting team to under 30%. One more shot, one less turnover, one more stop, and the T-Wolves would have had their biggest win of the season.
KG would have gotten what he deserved.
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