New man in the middle

Ten years ago, the precocious future of a floundering franchise held the Timberwolves for ransom and extracted an unprecedented contract that inevitably shuttered the NBA for three months and rewrote the league's complex salary-cap rules.

Late Wednesday night, Al Jefferson -- another precocious player for the same franchise once again floundering -- agreed to a five-year, $65 million contract extension that is barely half the princely sum Kevin Garnett received from the Wolves in 1997.

Together, the pair will be forever linked because they were the prized pieces exchanged in July's bold trade that sent five players, including Jefferson, and two draft picks from Boston to Minnesota for Garnett, a 10-time All-Star.

Wherever Jefferson goes this season, he likely will be compared to the former face and pulse of a Timberwolves team that has advanced beyond the first round of the playoffs once in its first 18 seasons.

In every other way, though, the two are what Wolves vice president of basketball operations Kevin McHale calls "diametrically opposed" performers.

Garnett is the revolutionary 7-footer, a physical anomaly, passionate and loyal. He broke barriers by stepping directly from high school into the NBA with a guard's gait and, in retrospect sometimes too often, a guard's game on his way to the 2004 league MVP award and a Hall of Fame career.

Jefferson is a 6-10 anachronism whose youth belies his looks, a smash-mouth, low-post scorer who, like Garnett, stepped straight into the pros from the preps but is more of a throwback than a worn Moses Malone game jersey.

"We're totally different," Jefferson said a couple of days before he prepared to join Garnett in a lofty tax bracket. "He's a better passer than me, and he's got more outside game. I just love the block. One thing we do love to do is rebound."

Garnett led the NBA in rebounding the past four seasons, a mark at which Jefferson says he is aimed. But the Wolves guaranteed him $65 million rather than let Jefferson become a restricted free agent next summer mostly because he is a master improviser who manufactures so many moves around the basket it looks as if he makes them up as he goes along.

A second option to star Paul Pierce last season in Boston, Jefferson, now just 22, is the Wolves' first scoring option and the jewel of their roster makeover, even if he made it clear Thursday the Wolves are "no one-man show."I don't necessarily think this is my team," he said, "but I'm the one who has to set the example. I'm ready for that."

'Al loves to bang'

Wolves coach Randy Wittman suggests an NBA regular season, which begins tonight against Denver, will tell whether Jefferson has the consistency to deliver on the promise of a preseason in which he averaged 17.9 points and 13.4 rebounds. It also will show if he can handle opposing defenses geared to stop to him.

"We're going to find out, to be honest with you," Wittman said when asked if Jefferson is prepared to carry a team.

Teammate Sebastian Telfair calls Jefferson a "freak of nature" when he possesses the ball near the basket. Savvy vet Mark Madsen prefers to call him a "machine" while Jefferson refers to himself as a "beast."

McHale, a fellow who had a few offensive moves of his own back in the day, simply thinks of Jefferson as a man out of time.

"He's a low-post scorer," McHale said. "Hell, those guys went the way of the dinosaur. Guys who went down there and just rooted around. They just don't make those guys anymore. Al loves to bang."

Jefferson remembers being that way ever since he was little, when he was a 6-year-old who grabbed a basketball and soon discovered he was bigger and more gifted than his peers.

In time, he developed moves and counter-moves, and then probably a counter to his counter-move. He averaged 42 points and 18 rebounds for Prentiss (Miss.) High School the season he became that state's Mr. Basketball.

"I've never heard of any guy who scored 42 points a game, not in any summer league, nowhere," Wolves veteran center Theo Ratliff said. "A guy who can do that has a knack."

That knack convinced the Celtics to select Jefferson 15th overall in the 2004 NBA draft. It also convinced McHale last summer that Jefferson's promise -- he shed 30 pounds and healed from an ankle injury to average 16 points and 11 rebounds last year, his breakout season -- made him the proper touchstone for any trade involving Garnett.

"Al's better than I thought he was," McHale said after watching Jefferson through the preseason, "and I thought he was pretty good."

An 'uncanny' scorer

Not particularly tall or wide by NBA standards, Jefferson possesses soft hands, patience and a seemingly endless variety of moves and gyrations around the basket.

"Uncanny the way he scores down there," said Wolves forward Antoine Walker, who played with Jefferson in Boston. "I can't really say what's his pet move. If I was scouting him and had to guard him, I'd probably try not to let him touch the ball as much as possible.

"He can go right. He can go left. He can pump fake you. He can go up and under. That's unusual for a 22-year-old. Usually you develop that as your career goes along."

Jefferson considers his go-to move a little jump hook from the middle of the lane. His counter-move is a shot fake and a step underneath an airborne defender or backward step and move along the baseline.

"Some of that stuff I work on -- I work on my shot -- but a lot of it is feel, all feel," Jefferson said. "It just came along. I started feeling how guys played me and I took what they gave me. I can't really tell you how I do what I do. I just do it."

Ratliff has led the NBA in blocked shots three times and admires Jefferson for being unpredictable in his release, saying a defender never knows whether a shot is going to be launched from behind Jefferson's head, from the side or out front.

"Sometimes I do, sometimes guys who study me do," Jefferson said when asked if he ever gets his shot blocked. "But they block me once, I doubt they block me again."

Walker calls Jefferson the most polished low-post scorer he has seen at that age. "He's only 22," Walker said, shaking his head. "Twenty two?" He predicted Jefferson will become an All-Star once he adds a midrange jump shot and improves his ballhandling ability, both of which Walker called the natural development of his game.

A young leader

Jefferson's old-man stubble and his rumbling voice belie his tender age. So, too, does the patience he displays with the ball. He remembers being mistaken for somebody much older nearly all his life, particularly when he was a 6-6 seventh-grader "out there running with those little kids."

Now, at 22, he will be asked to lead his team and prove true Madsen's contention that he has a "maturity beyond his years." The same was asked of Garnett more than a decade ago, when his mammoth contract and a series of management missteps inevitably hamstrung the franchise.

Late Wednesday, Jefferson accepted that $65 million deal against the advice of his agent. On Thursday, he made an astounding statement for a professional athlete, saying he didn't deserve a maximum deal approaching $80 million because he hasn't proven himself yet.

He will earn $11 million next season and will receive a $1 million raise every year for four years after that.

"I wanted to get in my head, get in my heart that I'm going to be here," he said. "They traded for me. They traded one of the best players in the NBA for me. I felt this is where I needed to be. This is where I want to be."

Jerry Zgoda • jzgoda@startribune.com