wolves/nba

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.