Kevin Garnett has once again called out Minnesota Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor for his actions during The Big Ticket’s second divorce from the franchise.
If you’ve been holding your breath for the retirement of Kevin Garnett‘s Minnesota Timberwolves jersey at Target Center any time in the near future … well, you can take a few deep gulps of air.
A jersey retirement involving KG’s iconic No. 21 isn’t coming to 600 First Avenue any time soon.
To be fair, we’ve known this for awhile. The recent announcement that his No. 5 jersey would be retired by the Boston Celtics has started the conversation back up again, and now that Garnett will officially be part of the 2020 Hall of Fame class, he’s back on the media circuit giving interviews.
This time, it was The Athletic’s Shams Charania that elicited the money quote from Garnett, which we can’t quite repeat here in its entirety. If you have a subscription to The Athletic, however, you can find the article (and all of its unedited quotes) here.
Among other things, Garnett said that he “won’t forgive” Wolves owner Glen Taylor for the way that he handled things after Flip Saunders’ tragic passing in fall of 2015. Garnett also said that he’s “not entertaining” the possibility of a Wolves jersey retirement at the moment and that he doesn’t “do business with snakes”.
Long story short, Saunders and Garnett had conversations regarding what Garnett’s transitionary role would be following his retirement, which could have even come a year later following the signing of a new one-year deal with an option that would have run through the 2016-17 campaign.
Instead, Saunders passed, Tom Thibodeau took over both on the bench and in the front office the following spring, and Garnett was no longer part of either the on-court nor the off-court plan.
To be clear, Garnett once again made clear his love for the state of Minnesota, the city of Minneapolis and Wolves fans. But there is clearly no love lost between Taylor and Garnett, and while we’ve covered it several times here at Dunking With Wolves in the not-so-distant past, this fits the bill of “straight from the horse’s mouth” and is the clearest of indications that there is not a jersey retirement ceremony on the horizon.
Here’s hoping for some sort of thawing in the relationship, although it certainly seems unlikely at this stage.