Garnett is hoping to do some celebrating in the playoffs.

One by one, they have left him, some by their own hand, others by fate and circumstance. Stephon Marbury. Tom Gugliotta. Malik Sealy. Bobby Jackson. Joe Smith. Kevin McHale. Glen Taylor. Leaving the burden on his still-skinny shoulders. So many other guys would have found a convenient out, an excuse to get traded out of town. It's too cold. I don't have enough help. The market is too small.

Even someone making $126 million.

But Kevin Garnett will have none of it.

And this is why, despite the $126 million, I root for him.

"That doesn't help anything, moaning and crying about a situation," he said last week. "What does that help? That shows you're a big baby and quick to run when stuff gets hard. I know if I can go through the great things here and the good things here, if I can go through the great summers and times when we win and we get 11 in a row and we make the playoffs for the first time, and they drop those little sprinkles from the ceiling, I can definitely go through when we lose six in a row, when it snows, and it's a blizzard, and it's 32 below, 20 below."

	Marbury

	Gugliotta

	Sealy

Blizzard is an apt description of what's beset the Timberwolves in the last two years. They had the nucleus of a championship with Marbury, Gugliotta and Garnett leading them. Then Marbury forced a trade. Gugliotta skipped to Phoenix for less money than Minnesota was offering. Jackson did the same two years later. You know all about the Joe Smith mess.

But nothing hurt them like the death of Sealy. He was more than 12 points a game around Minneapolis.

"He carried himself in a very confident way," says second-year forward Wally Szczerbiak. "As a young player and a rookie, I looked up to him probably more than anybody on the team. He always kept an even keel. There was never one day where he'd tell me something differently if he played well, or he'd tell me something the other way if he didn't play well. He was always telling me the same thing."

He was Garnett's solace, too.

"I always remind him of what Malik used to tell him," says veteran Sam Mitchell. "Malik used to always say 'kid, you only go through this life one time. At least enjoy it.' And I think Malik taught Kevin how to enjoy being Kevin Garnett."

Death makes everything else smaller. So while the Wolves miss Smith, and McHale, and Taylor, and will certainly miss the draft picks (rumors that the league would give Minnesota some of its five picks back have died down), that loss pales by comparison.

	“	That doesn't help anything, moaning and crying about a situation. What does that help? That shows you're a big baby and quick to run when stuff gets hard. I know if I can go through the great things here and the good things here, if I can go through the great summers and times when we win and we get 11 in a row and we make the playoffs for the first time, and they drop those little sprinkles from the ceiling, I can definitely go through when we lose six in a row, when it snows, and it's a blizzard, and it's 32 below, 20 below. ”
		— Garnett

"We went through the Joe Smith thing," Coach Flip Saunders recalled, "and people were saying 'isn't this just totally devastating?' I said 'you know what devastating is? Devastating is going to a funeral in New York and seeing somebody you're close to in a casket. That's what devastating is.' And so I think it did, it put everything in perspective."

Garnett has tried to move on. He's leaning more on Mitchell, who's played in more Wolves games than anyone. And Garnett's relationship with his mother has grown over the years.

"We've got a bond now that I wish we would have had when I was like 10," he says. "That was her way of making sure that I understand that she's the mother and I'm the son. You don't play with your mother like you do with a friend. Throughout the hard times she's always there."

So Garnett and the Wolves have soldiered on. His Original Block Family of friends and kin are still around. Newcomer LaPhonso Ellis has given them some scoring punch. They put an 11-game winning streak together around the all-star break, but other than that, they've been a .500 squad most of the year. They beat Portland in Portland, but lose twice to Golden State.

"I think in order for us to be successful, we have to have everyone on the team playing at a confidence level that's not, say, in awe of what Kevin does out there," Szczerbiak says. "I think we're best as a team when we kinda let the other guys make their impressions, let Terrell kind of run his show, let me do my thing, Kevin does his thing, AP (Anthony Peeler) steps up and plays well. When we get too much in awe of his emotion and his kind of intensity that he brings to the game, that's when we don't win ... whenever he has over five assists, our record skyrockets. And I think that's a sign that we're best when we're really all playing well."

(Aside: I don't think KG and WS are still feeling each other, if you know what I mean.)

Right now, the Wolves are clinging to the last playoff spot in the West, and even if they hold off Houston, their biggest on-court failure looms large -- they've been beaten in the first round four straight years.

"If we got out of the first round, it would be like a championship for this franchise and this city," guard Terrell Brandon says. "They're just waiting for us to get past that first round."

They hung around for a while against Portland last year, before the Blazers dispatched them. The loss still stings Garnett. He puts his head in his hands. He rubs his head for a long time.

"It's like you play 82 games just to go home after four more games," he finally says. "If we're gonna play 82 games, let's play 15 more, let's play 20 more. That bothers me. That really gets under my skin.

"I remember last year, we lost, man. I just wanted to leave. I just wanted to leave. Buzzer went off and I remember Rasheed (Wallace) telling me to keep my head up. I can remember Smitty (Steve Smith) coming over and saying a couple of words, whatever, stay in there. I just wanted to go to my car and just bounce, you know, jersey on, sweatin', stinkin'. I just wanted to leave. It hurts that much, know what I'm saying? I came in with a towel on my head. I just wanted to sit there. I don't know what these college kids go through as far as four years, they're seniors, and they go on. But if it's anything like the playoffs, and you're out, I understand them. I feel them.

	“	If we got out of the first round, it would be like a championship for this franchise and this city. They're just waiting for us to get past that first round. ”
		— Brandon

"To me, that was probably the worst feeling, you know? And then, on top of that, then what happened to us, it seemed like after we lost, stuff started piling on, like it was condensed, the whole summer after that."

But Garnett will not become a spokesman for the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, either. The recruiting that other players do for free agents during the season and once July 1st rolls around is lost on him.

"I'm not a person to fly somebody in here and take 'em to a baseball game, knowing that I haven't made a Twins game -- in the six years I've been here, I've probably made two Twins games," Garnett says. "You know, take you to the park, push you in a swing. That's not me."

This is not a story that's going to end with some miracle victory. Minnesota's lack of size up front (6-5 Reggie Slater is playing center, ahead of the dispassionate Radoslav Nesterovic) will surely doom them this postseason, too. And without the draft picks, the only thing Minnesota will have to offer potential free agents in years to come are the midlevel and veteran's exceptions. It is not promising, at least in the championship chase sense. But Garnett will take his chances in Minneapolis this season, next season, every season, with whatever 11 other guys roll through.

"I've always told my cousins and my little siblings under me, 'to understand the good stuff, you have to go through bad stuff. That's the only way you learn,' he says. "I'm just not that type of person, that's gonna bitch and moan about every little thing. That's not me. I'm not gonna cry about a situation, I'm gonna try to find a way to make it better. I'm gonna stand up like a man and face it. I'm not gonna run from it. I'm'a be with the Titanic, until they get all the way to the bottom. 'Cause I can swim. That's how I look at it."

Floyd could stick around, no Bull
Tim Floyd admits he's gotten some feelers from colleges. "And there have been nights," he told me last week, "where that's looked pretty good." But nearing the end of his third season in Chicago, he says he's committed to the Bulls.

"Our first two teams were comprised of players who were one-year free agents, with cap room in mind, and we were built to be bad the first two years for the picks," he says. "But now we do have a core group of young players. We've got to stay positive with these guys. We can't create a situation where players are mad at players, or players are mad at players, or coaches are mad at players."

	ALDRIDGE'S RANKINGS
	THE TOP 10 1. Sacramento 2. Philadelphia 3. San Antonio 4. Portland 5. Utah 6. L.A. Lakers 7. Dallas 8. Milwaukee 9. Minnesota 10. Charlotte THE BOTTOM FIVE 25. Atlanta 26. Vancouver 27. Washington 28. Golden State 29. Chicago

Or, one supposes, where coaches are mad at general managers. The buzz all year has been that Floyd and GM Jerry Krause aren't seeing eye to eye, that Krause's insistence on running the triangle offense is not only grating on his coach, but impeding the development of first-round picks Marcus Fizer and Jamal Crawford.

One NBA coach says, "I can't believe they don't play those young guys, Fizer and Crawford. I'd play those guys 'till they drop, 35, 40 minutes a night. They're playing Bryce Drew."

But Floyd says his relationship with Krause is fine.

"Jerry has been terrific," Floyd says. "I get frustrated like any coach in this league. I don't want it to sound like I have problems here. Every coach in this league goes in probably once a week, once every two weeks, and says 'can we do something here?' But Jerry has been easy to work with. And he also is so strong in terms of what he sees with this big picture."

But Jerry isn't getting his brains beat out on the court every night.

"I do think that (coaches) think in terms of short term," Floyd says. "I told Jerry, 'we'd have more than 11 wins if I'd been picking,' just kidding him. But the problem is, yeah, maybe we would have (more wins), but we'd be capped, and we'd be right where we'd be for the next 15, 20 years. And the people in this city wouldn't accept that because of what's behind me, these six championship trophies."

After last summer's free agent fiasco in Chicago, Floyd believes the Bulls should have tried to recruit free agents in pairs, instead of going after one at a time -- and watching each of them land somewhere else. Asked if he felt used last summer, he said, PC-like, "you understand the process. The players are in charge. And players have different needs."

Yeah, none of them needs to be on a team that wins 15 games.

So, while the Bulls wait for Yao Ming, Floyd piles up the losses. His players, to a man, say he's stayed amazingly positive. But if help doesn't come quick, it's hard to believe Floyd can stay equally positive with Krause.

"Do we disagree? Absolutely," Floyd says. "There's probably not a coach in this league that doesn't do that. But we haven't gotten to a point where it's disagreeable, and as a result, we've been able to continue to work together and work towards the same goal."