Kevin Garnett can show his fondness for the Wolves by leaving $8M on table

The Timberwolves played their last game of 2015-16 on Wednesday night at Target Center. It was also the final game of Kevin Garnett's 21^st NBA season. He has spent 13 and one-third of those seasons in the employ of the Timberwolves.

Garnett's salaries have totaled $330,408,963 for this long and distinguished career. This comes up only 2.245 percent short of the $338 million that will be gifted to us grateful Twin Citians for the privilege of hosting the 2018 Super Bowl.

Actually, Garnett's gross salaries would have been closer to our forthcoming windfall courtesy of the NFL, but the 1998-99 lockout took away $5,463,415 of the $14 million that Da Kid was due to make (pre-tax, of course).

Garnett will have received $194,132,932 in regular season salaries from the Timberwolves after the final game. Based on being traded to the Timberwolves with 30 games left on the 2014-15 schedule, my calculations have Garnett receiving $13,182,927 in this second stay in Minnesota.

The Big Ticket was given a raucous welcome back to Target Center on Feb. 23, 2015, played in four of the next six games (all appearances at home) and then sat out the final 22 games of the season.

Garnett turned 39 last May 19. The Wolves gave him a two-year contract, calling for $8.5 million this season and $8 million for 2016-17. He played in 38 of the Wolves' first 45 games in 2015-16. He has not played since Jan. 23, with a bad knee but also as the team concentrated on getting bigger minutes for its young nucleus.

He will have played in 43 of the team's 112 games since being reacquired by the Timberwolves. He will be 40 at the start of next season, if he should return and claim the $8 million remaining on his contract.

We will see how much good will owner Glen Taylor has earned through making those deposits of $194,132,932 (not counting playoffs) into Garnett's accounts. We will see how much of an emotional investment Garnett has in the Timberwolves, his first and last team and returning from what's now a 12-year stay in the NBA's non-playoff wasteland.

If Garnett has good will toward the organization and concern about building a roster even stronger than the one he carried to the West's No. 1 seed in the 2004 playoffs, then Garnett will leave Season 2 of that contract on the table and walk away.

He would be doing this knowing, even with a salary cap anticipated to leap from $67 million to $89 million next season, that the $8 million could be used for a roster upgrade to produce a contribution much more significant than Garnett's has been since he got back here.

The Timberwolves aren't going to confront directly Garnett's obvious lack of impact on the court. Playing roughly 16 minutes in those 43 games, he averaged 3.7 points and 4.1 rebounds.

When he was starting and playing one-third of games earlier this season, he was an above-average defender (compared to the younger Wolves) and could work the defensive board.

That was it.

The Timberwolves and the FSN telecasters can give you all the hype they want about Garnett's value as a "mentor'' to Karl-Anthony Towns and others.

A salary of $8.5 million is supposed to get a team an on-court contributor. Mentors don't make $8.5 million. They make a couple of hundred thousand as consultants.

Garnett has every right to come back for the second year of that contract. He signed the two-year deal in good faith with Taylor and the late basketball boss, Flip Saunders, and most everyone around the Wolves expects KG to be back in 2016-17.

That doesn't change the obvious: The Timberwolves could make much better use of that $8 million in rounding up a strong forward or a shooter this summer than by giving it to a player that they chose not to play after Jan. 23.

This is particularly true when you consider the Wolves already have $12.5 million in dead cap money wrapped up in Nikola Pekovic for next season (and in 2017-18).

There will be competitors on the open market that can stay under the cap limit with an $89 million payroll. The combination of Garnett being back and Pekovic being cooked by injuries would put the Wolves at $68.5 million to build a roster without going over the limit.

Kevin Garnett is the only superstar in franchise history and the source of the only success this team has had in 26 seasons. He earned every nickel made in his first 12 seasons here. And those were a lot of nickels.

This time, he's being paid for his legacy as The Franchise, and you wonder if that's really enough for a player who made himself a superstar and an MVP with his competitive ferocity.