The NBA contract has many specifications, and if you take risks for the sake of salary space, the consequence may be a lot of money and draft picks - the Minnesota Timberwolves in early 2000 is a very "classic" case.
Because of the secret contract with Joe Smith, the Timberwolves not only lost Garnett's youth, but indirectly led to the team's dark period after 2005, which was considered by many to be a masterpiece of "more than worth the loss".
Is the Timberwolf's vision really so bad that he would give up the whole country for Joe Smith? Maybe we can reconstruct the context at that time and see why we made this decision.
Looking at Joe Smith's 16-year NBA career, it's really not glorious. He played for a total of 13 different teams, averaging 10.9 points and 6.4 rebounds per game, never to be selected for the Star Game or Team of the Year, and finally retired in 2011.
But that was the result of "the whole career", if you go back to Joe Smith's spirited end of the 20th century, he was the 1995 draft pick, averaging 17.0 points, 8.2 rebounds, 1.0 steals and 1.2 blocks in 211 games, which is the golden state Warriors' immovable start.
In the 1997–98 season, Joe Smith was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers. With Allen Iverson and Derrick Coleman dominating the ball, the short half-season slipped slightly, but he was only 22 years old and still had a promising age.
As the NBA entered a "lockdown" state in 1999, Joe Smith had no intention of renewing his contract with the 76ers, and all teams began a fervent pursuit of "former champion" Joe Smith. But no one could have imagined that he would finally sign a one-year contract and defect to the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Joe Smith's signing with the Timberwolves was worth $1.75 million, far below what he was in the market at the time. It was reported that before Joe Smith was traded to the 76ers, the Warriors had offered a good bid to renew the contract, but he declined, and from this point of view, it is indeed a strange thing.
However, in recent years, many players have abandoned their parent team offers, opted for "price reduction" to sign short contracts, tried to keep themselves flexible and play better, and Joe Smith may not be a cross-era pioneer. In particular, he did not have a good time at the 76ers, and faced a crisis of "closure" full of uncertainty, and everything barely made sense.
Unfortunately, Joe Smith's "short contract" with the Timberwolves was signed once a year, doing so for two consecutive seasons, and finally by the third offseason, "success" attracted the attention of the league and teams, wondering whether the Timberwolves had ulterior motives.
It turns out that the Timberwolves wanted Joe Smith's "Bird rights," when the team could renew their contracts despite the salary cap for just three years on the same team. If this plan is achieved, the Timberwolves could ease the salary space that has been tightened by Garnett and successfully keep Joe Smith; And Joe Smith is only "bitter first and then happy", and is expected to get a more favorable long contract than the original "up to 80 million", and neither side has lost.
As for this "fact", it will be accidentally exposed, because of an unexpected personnel dispute, which led to the burning of the plan buried for several years, and even lost the team's bright future.
The so-called "paper wrapping can't hold the fire", according to the Los Angeles Times reporter J.A. Adande reported that when agents Eric Fleisher and Andrew Miller parted ways, they did not get together, and the latter took Joe Smith and Garnett directly from the company, causing the former owners to file a lawsuit in anger, indirectly revealing many "secret documents", including the illegal agreement between timberwolves and Joe Smith.
In addition to the previously mentioned 1.75 million, Joe Smith signed a one-year short contract with the Timberwolves for 2.1 million and 2.5 million for the next two seasons. If the third contract runs out and the team succeeds in getting Joe Smith's bird rights, the next contract will be worth as much as 86 million, which is a condition negotiated by both sides.
However, after the evidence was confirmed, the league's chairman David Stern declared the contract invalid and punished accordingly, and the Timberwolves and Joe Smith's wishful thinking officially ended.
In addition to paying a $3.5 million fine, the NBA has not received the Timberwolves' first-round picks for the next five years (2001-2005), the worst penalty in recent years.
Even if the penalty was later reduced to "three years", the Timberwolves lost the first round picks in 2001, 2002, and 2004 (in 2003 with the 26th pick Dudy Ebi), and the blow was still extremely heavy, greatly affecting the team's team planning in the early 2000s.
In fact, people involved were suspended, such as Timberwolves boss Glen Taylor and Management Kevin McHale, who didn't return until the summer of 2001.
In an interview, Kevin McHale first denied it, saying he "haven't read a contract in four or five years," but added that "there are 8 or 10 teams in the league that are doing similar things, but they're 'good at it, and we're not doing it well."
Kevin McHale's statement may be difficult for fans to pay, but it does reflect the signing situation at the time and is not as open and transparent as expected. The Timberwolves were undoubtedly the team that was "accidentally" caught with pigtails, and the league also tried to kill the chickens and monkeys, warning the teams not to try the law by example, otherwise they would lose more than just the contracts under the table and the bird rights operation.
When I used to study, my classmates often joked that when the final exam was too difficult, "three points rely on gambling luck, seven points rely on luck", and even more talked about "not cheating on the exam, be a student next year", thinking that many people are going to the wrong door, just to see if they have been caught.
Obviously, the Timberwolves around 2000 had neither "gambling luck" nor "luck", and the young "wolf king" Garnett, who was serious about playing at that time, could probably only ask the sky without words.
After the contract was invalidated, Joe Smith became an unrestricted free agent who could sign with any team, including the Timberwolves, who had just been penalized.
On the cusp, Joe Smith chose to sign a one-year contract with the Detroit Pistons before returning to Minnesota the following year, and the Timberwolves offered him a six-year, $34 million contract to make up for Joe Smith's losses in previous years in limited space.
The contract didn't end with the Timberwolves, and Joe Smith was packaged up for the Bucks in 2003 in exchange for Sam Cassel and Elvin Johnson, the last tenderness he gave to the Timberwolves.
Why? Because Sam Kassel played his masterpiece in the subsequent 2003-04 season, averaging 19.8 points, 7.3 assists and 1.3 steals per game, not only was he selected for the "only" Star Game of his career, but also helped the Timberwolves advance to the Western Conference Finals, creating unforgettable memories with Garnett, Latriel Spreeville, Wally Szelbiac and others.
However, this is also the last glory of the "KG era" Timberwolves, who will not return to the playoffs until 2018, and Garnett left Minnesota in tears in 2007, and the team entered a long rebuilding period.
Interestingly, Joe Smith was traded several times in his career, almost every time with a story of important trades, such as Aaron Iverson's return to the 76ers, Andre Miller's trip to the Nuggets, and the Cavaliers' second-round pick for Maurice Williams and danny Green.
At the end of 2010, the defending Lakers tried to make a reinforcement, sending Sasha Wujasic on a multi-party deal to get back Joe Smith and future second-round picks (one of which became Robert Thackeray), and the 35-year-old Joe Smith was not cut, and there were sporadic appearances in the playoffs.
As a result, Joe Smith, at the end of his career, had been teammates with kobe bryant, Paul Gasol, Artest, Bynum, Odom, Shannon Brown and others at the end of his career, almost witnessing the Lakers' "triple-game" dynasty - if they did not have Nowitzki's Dallas Mavericks to block.
After leaving the Warriors, Joe Smith did not continue to play the value of the "draft leader", but he was not absent from many big scenes, and in some ways, it was also a career without regrets.
Looking back at the Timberwolves' decision, was there no point in gambling then? I'm afraid not.
In the 1999-00 season, Garnett led a salary of 16.8M, which is no longer a cheap rookie appointment, and this number will further break the 20M mark in the 2001-02 season, and the Timberwolves' salary space will only become tighter and tighter.
Joe Smith, who was under 25 at the time, averaged close to "18 points, 8 rebounds, one steal block" per game, not only with height, defense, and only one year older than Garnett. As a good partner of the Wolf King KG's forbidden area, it always sounds good.
Moreover, it is precisely because Joe Smith is good enough, young enough, and a hot competitor in the market that it will attract the attention of all teams, feel "unfair" and "against the rules of the game" from the Timberwolves' approach, and let the league intervene in the investigation.
Otherwise, like Uduñis Haslem, who signed a short contract with the Heat for many years, how come no one protests? Of course, this is an extreme contrast, but Joe Smith was so good at the time that it was enough for the Timberwolves to take this risk, but they were "engaged" by the brokerage company, and it was a failure.
In this way, what Kevin McHale said about "open secrets" and "many teams do this" is not simply his last struggle, but more likely to be bitter and unwilling to be punished by the league.
Objectively speaking, the Timberwolves at the time were moving toward a "no pay space" situation, and the NBA's punishment was the last straw that crushed the camel, making them more inflexible to improve the lineup.
Under these conditions, the Timberwolves still made the playoffs for many years, with a winning percentage of more than 50%, and Garnett was even named "Most Valuable Player of the Year" in 2004, taking the only MVP trophy of his career.
It's hard to help but sigh that if they can keep those draft picks, maybe the Timberwolves' "KG boom" will have a chance to last longer, so that Minnesota fans do not have to wait for Jimmy Butler to arrive, Downs, Anthony Edwards grow and thrive, and once again experience the hope of impacting the championship.
From 2005 to 2017, and from 2018 to 2022, how cold the Northern Wilderness is, probably only Timberwolves fans understand.
Of course, this is not to say that if the draft picks are retained in those five years, there will be a chance of "big upgrade", after all, if the record is maintained, the ranking of these draft picks may not be too advanced.
But at the level of the deal, the Timberwolves have a lot less chips and are more passive in terms of reinforcements, because the teams know that Minnesota is eager to strengthen, and the ecology of the NBA is such a reality.
If you want to keep it, who did the Timberwolves have a chance to pick in the 2001, 2002, and 2004 drafts?
In the middle and back of the 2001 first round, there were Zach Randolph (19th), Gerald Wallace (25th), Tony Parker (28th) and others, and in the second round there were Arenas (31st), Memit oku (38th), and the following year there were Tyshone Prince (23rd), Carlos Boozer (35th), Matt Barnes (46th), Louis Scola (56th) and other players.
The losses in 2004 were even worse, and perhaps the Timberwolves were not selected by Dwight Howard, Okafor, Iguodala, Lol Dun, but after the 15th pick, there was still Joe Smith, J. Dun. R. Smith, Tony Allen, Kevin Martin, several players who shined in the 2010s, and the second round also had Two prime green leaves, Anderson Vallejo and Trevo Ariza, who were still out last season.
Although the Timberwolves may not have room to cultivate if they get any of the above, assuming that they can successfully enter the rotation or show value in a limited time, the Timberwolves will surely get more afterglow, without having to "beat off the retraining" when kg enters and enter a long dark period.
Intriguingly, the Timberwolves finally got the 15th pick in 2004, and "Big Al" Al Jefferson, known for his proficiency in low-post singles, was almost "hand-picked" by Kevin McHale, giving fans a glimmer of hope for the "post-KG era".
But that's another story.