The Timberwolves tip off in San Antonio on Wednesday night to begin their 2018-19 NBA season, and Jimmy Butler will be in uniform despite throwing a grenade into their preseason plans before showing up to Apocalypse Now practice. During the NBA's opening night on Tuesday, TNT had on Area 21 maestro Kevin Garnett to talk about the shit storm in Minnesota, and he had the censors working overtime when Wolves owner Glen Taylor was brought up:
If you're unfamiliar, there's a well-known backstory behind Garnett's inflamed rhetoric. When KG was traded back to the Timberwolves in 2015, he had been hoping to purchase a stake in the franchise he still feels a kinship with. However, his attitude toward Taylor curdled when he didn't think the franchise properly paid their respects to departed former coach and GM, Flip Saunders, who had drafted KG out of high school. The Wolves did show a tribute to Saunders after his premature passing, but the scale of the commemoration irked KG, who didn't attend. Garnett later told the Associated Press he "couldn't put a lifetime of friendship into three minutes."
The lack of a Target Center banner for Flip also rubbed Garnett the wrong way. "And then, too, I thought he wasn’t celebrated the proper way," KG said. "You have high school banners, you have [expletive] hockey banners [hanging in the rafters]. You couldn’t put a Flip banner in Target Center, some place that we helped build? ... We established that market. I helped grow that with him. You can’t put him in the [rafters]?"
Garnett's animosity toward the team's owner was laid bare again in an interview he did with Awful Announcing last year, when teaming up with Taylor was brought up. "I don’t want to be partners with Glen [Taylor], and I wouldn’t want to be partners with Glen in Minnesota,” he said. “I would love to be part of a group that buys him out and kind of removes him and going forward.”
He spoke further about his disappointment with Taylor to USA Today in April of that year:
It was a huge disappointment and one that showed me the true Glen Taylor. It showed me how he really feels. When this guy got the team, it was worth $90 million. When I left it, it was worth somewhere in the $400 (millions). That was never taken into account in my value or none of that. I guess I served my purpose, and I was on to the next. So it’s all good. So it’s all good. I’m moving on and taking my ball and playing somewhere else. (Laughs.)
Despite saying his piece on Minnesota's owner, Garnett still found time to talk about Butler and how the Wolves should handle things moving forward:
Here's KG's full interview with TNT:
And here's Jimmy Butler's IG post downplaying the self-described "drama" over the last few weeks:
