Patrick Reusse: KG looked twice before leaping east to Boston

Team USA had defeated France to win the men's basketball gold in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The awards ceremony had taken place, and Kevin Garnett and his teammates were leaving the court. Garnett was asked about the gold medal hanging around his neck. "It's heavier than I thought," he said. "Really. I didn't think it would be this heavy." Seven years later, Garnett must have had the same thought as he reconsidered an earlier decision and agreed to leave the Timberwolves for the Boston Celtics.

It had to be a lot heavier for Garnett trying to carry the Wolves for the past three seasons than he could have imagined. His team had taken the Los Angeles Lakers to six games in the Western Conference finals in 2004, and Garnett must have envisioned one more tweak in personnel allowing the Wolves to travel even farther down the playoff road.

The opposite occurred. The Wolves struggled during a 2004-05 season in which Garnett's favorite coach, Flip Saunders, was fired. They fell from 58 victories in 2003-04 to 44, then to 33 and finally to 32 last season.

Those were all non-playoff seasons, and it had to be impossible for Garnett, now 31, to see a chance to get back in contention with the Wolves in the NBA's wicked West.

So when the Celtics and General Manager Danny Ainge came at him for the second time this summer -- and this time with another veteran star in the fold after a draft-day trade with Seattle for Ray Allen -- Garnett agreed to make the contract accommodations necessary for Tuesday's deal to go through.

In a sports area that lives and dies with the Red Sox and bursts with pride over the Patriots, it had been a long time since the once-dynastic Celtics had captured the public's imagination.

Garnett's appearance did this, and all the civic happiness was something our one-time Kid deserved to relish again.

He came here out of high school in the June draft of 1995. In the relay of Minnesota sports icons, Garnett received the baton from Kirby Puckett, who had his career ended because of glaucoma in 1996.

They were the lean giant and the roly-poly jockey, yet they brought the same combination of personality and fierce competitiveness to their occupations. They also became fast friends, with Puck sitting in a front-row seat at Target Center as KG took the Wolves from bottom-feeders to the playoffs and ultimately, briefly, to championship contenders.

When Puckett died in March 2006, Garnett flew back during the midst of a Timberwolves road trip to attend his friend's funeral.

There came to be a lot of Minnesota in KG over the past dozen years. You would see him slipping into Twins games, or show up to support the woebegone Lynx, or offer a one-liner about a governor and Wolves ticketholder named Jesse.

And he had those wonderful quirks, such as refusing to be advertised as a 7-footer. He's listed everywhere as 6-11, although as Flip Saunders would say, "KG's actually 6-foot-13."

There are scores of remarkable games and endless highlights on his résumé, and there were also the small nightly dramas as KG showed his emotions from the top of his shaved head to his size 15 Adidas.

Late in the 2004 regular season, the Wolves had a comfortable lead entering the fourth quarter. Garnett sat for what should have been a long rest. Within two minutes, the lead was slipping and Saunders was calling out, "Kevin."

Garnett had a look of disgust as he checked back into the game. Immediately, he steadied his teammates and secured the victory over Utah.

"Kevin doesn't pout -- not as a 19-year-old kid, not nine years later," said Randy Wittman, then an assistant and now the Wolves head coach. "When he gets that look on his face, it's because he's mad at the way his team is playing, or the way he's playing, or both.

"Kevin's very hard on himself. If you're going to demand respect from teammates, the No. 1 thing is to hold yourself to a higher standard.

"Nobody could demand more from Kevin than he demands from himself."

What KG demanded from himself over the past month was to take another look at the Boston situation and the chance to win. And when he thought about Allen and Paul Pierce being there to help with the heavy lifting, he took the plunge.

Patrick Reusse can be heard weekdays on AM-1500 KSTP at 6:45 and 7:45 a.m. and 4:40 p.m. • preusse@startribune.com