What if the Minnesota Timberwolves traded for Allen Iverson in 2006?
By Ben Beecken
The potential impact of Allen Iverson on Kevin Garnett’s career
The one major downside to the acquisition of Iverson, however, is that Garnett almost certainly would have not won an NBA championship.
A duo of Garnett and Iverson in their early 30’s with little talent around them wouldn’t have gotten it done, and The Big Ticket would not have found his way to the Boston Celtics, where he ultimately won the 2008 title alongside Ray Allen and Paul Pierce.
For Garnett’s sake, probably a good thing that the front office didn’t manage to trade for Iverson.
From a fan perspective, acquiring The Answer would have been exciting, and would have brought another season or two of playoff basketball and genuine hope. It’s not like the return for Garnett amounted to much, so it’s difficult to project what would have happened after 2008 if that deal had never gone down.
Ultimately, Iverson went to the playoffs twice with the Nuggets, losing in the first round both times. Denver didn’t improve until they traded Iverson three games into the 2008-09 season and acquired former Wolf Chauncey Billups in the deal. That season, George Karl’s Nuggets won 54 games and went to the Western Conference Finals.
The Wolves stumbled to the end of the 2006-07 campaign, firing Casey and trading Garnett in the offseason. They’ve made the playoffs once since.
Garnett, of course, won the 2008 championship in Boston and had a sustained run of success with the Celtics before a rough tenure in Brooklyn and a brief stint back in Minnesota to close his career.
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It would have been fun to have A.I. in a Timberwolves jersey at Target Center, but in the grand scheme of things, Garnett deserved to win a title at some point during his marvelous career, and having Iverson in Minnesota may very well have blocked that from happening.