Friendship made guard's long nights well worth it

Last update: February 7, 2008 - 11:20 PM

Target Center security guard Gregg Bright was there in uniform in that hallway the first day a 19-year-old kid straight from high school walked past him and into the Timberwolves locker room for the first time.

"First time I saw him, I thought he'd break in half," he said.

Thirteen years later, Bright again will be stationed outside the home team's room when a future NBA Hall of Famer for the first time stops way short and enters the visitors' quarters at that hallway's other end.

"It was different coming back this year," he said. "There's an emptiness."

Kevin Garnett is gone, but he left Bright with so many memories and a shelf filled with basketball sneakers he gave to the grayed, bespectacled man 27 years his senior. Every night for 12 seasons on his way into work, Garnett nudged Bright -- protector of the Wolves at night, salesman and teacher of embalming products and methods by day -- and playfully reminded him that he was Garnett's "favorite white boy in the world."

Bright responded each time, "Always and forever."

For most of those 13 years, Bright faithfully stayed at his post until the franchise's superstar, a notoriously late departer, left the building. Many nights, that was past 11:30, more than two hours after game's end.

"This year, I get home much earlier," he said. "I show up and my wife asks, 'Is the game over?' And I say of course it is."

JERRY ZGODA

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