Trading for Kevin Garnett was about basketball.
It was an opportunity, as Grantland notes, for the Wolves to re-acquire the greatest player in franchise history for Thaddeus Young, who could have left Minnesota for nothing at the end of the season.
Beyond basketball, Garnett’s future in Minnesota could include part-ownership of the team.
Charley Walters of the Pioneer Press reports that Garnett is expected to sign a two-year contract extension this summer and during those years he and Wolves president/head coach Flip Saunders are “expected to try to form a group to buy the team from Glen Taylor.”
Kevin Garnett, Flip Saunders in likely bid to buy #Twolves – http://t.co/OCvWT5lMao pic.twitter.com/Qtr110DZtl
— Pioneer Press (@PioneerPress) February 22, 2015
It’s been Garnett’s ambition to someday buy the Wolves.
“I want to buy the Timberwolves. Put a group together and perhaps some day try to buy the team. That’s what I want,” Garnett told Yahoo Sports in November.
Sid Hartman offered a prediction related to Garnett’s future in his latest column in the Star Tribune:
“My prediction: Garnett will play at least one more year and then might even be on the coaching staff in addition to being a part of the front office and ownership group.”
Pro Basketball Talk expects the Timberwolves will cost an owner or ownership group upwards of $750 million.
Twenty years worth of NBA salaries have paid Garnett $315 million, according to Basketball-Reference. If he and Saunders team up to form an ownership group, it would fulfill Taylor’s hopes, as he said in 2012, of selling the team to a group that plans to keep the franchise in Minnesota.
“I have to find someone that’s committed to here,” Taylor said in a 2012 interview. “It’s always best if it would be a Minnesotan. I’m telling you I don’t know that’s the way it’s going to work out. I haven’t had a lot of Minnesotans step up.”
