O Let’s Do It

This is the kind of thing that can originate only from an extravagantly hungover mind. I housed eleven Old Styles last night and awoke to an inspiration for a Blogspot post. As I can’t pitch this to FreeDarko or Chauncey Billups (the blog), given that FD shuttered before Obama’s second term and Chris Ryan is now much more than some delightful pseudonymous internet yahoo, I will leave it here, for five people to enjoy.

I wrote a thing for RealGM that former number one overall pick Joe Smith “liked” on Twitter, which got me thinking about Joe Smith’s immensely strange NBA career that explored the limits of journeymandom: third in the Rookie of the Year voting (right behind a 31-year-old Arvydas Sabonis, distantly trailing Damon Stoudamire), a career-best second season in which he averaged 18.7 PPG and 8.5 RPG, traded from Golden State to Philadelphia in his third year, signed with the Timberwolves in his fourth season and from there Joe Smith becomes what would be deeply disappointing if he were drafted right before Antonio McDyess, Jerry Stackhouse, Rasheed Wallace, and Kevin Garnett — which he totally was — but would be fine if, like, you had only recently become aware of his existence. Joe Smith put up 11 and 6, the Joe Smith of statlines, over sixteen seasons and he played for thirteen teams. Joe Smith — whose name I will never not say in full, like RZA and GZA when they encounter Ghostbustin’-ass Bill Murray in Coffee And Cigarettes — got around.

Oh, and Joe Smith once cost the Minnesota Timberwolves three first-round draft picks. Or rather, the Timberwolves cost themselves those picks because they so desperately wanted to nab Joe Smith in free agency that they egregiously circumvented some NBA bylaws and got themselves in huge trouble with the league office. The story has been told many times over by now, but basically: the Wolves wanted Joe Smith but didn’t have the cap space to pay him fair market value, so they agreed to sign Joe Smith to a series of three one-year dirt-cheap deals, acquire his Bird Rights, and then reward him with a seven-year, $86 million contract. This, uh, didn’t work. During the summer of 2000, just as Joe Smith had signed with the Wolves for a third time, word of their extremely illegal arrangement got out. In October, David Stern tore up Joe Smith’s contract, made him a free agent, fined Minnesota $3.5 million, and took away their first-round picks for the next five years. (He later restored their 2003 and 2005 selections.) In December, Stern suspended owner Glen Taylor until September 2001 and forced basketball operations VP Kevin McHale to take a leave of absence until August 2001.

The thing that occurred to me, while I was refamiliarizing myself with this scandal was: wait, Kevin Garnett stood for this? The NBA was different in 2000. Stars didn’t switch teams nearly as often as they do these days, and Garnett was peculiarly, almost Catholically devoted to the organization that drafted him. He even had a tough time ditching the Wolves for the obviously much more promising Celtics in 2007. But man, if the Pelicans got hit with a massive, draft pick-sapping sanction this summer, they would suffer doubly: the disciplinary action would be announced, and fifteen minutes later, they would get a call from Anthony Davis’s agent demanding a trade. KG stuck around, albeit at a premium. At the time, he was in the middle of a six-year, $126 million deal. He reupped in the fall of 2003 for five years, $100 million.

I was curious who the Wolves and Garnett missed out on during their league-mandated absence from the draft. So I figured out where Minnesota would have picked in the first round during the years they didn’t have a selection. The results are a bummer if you spent the early and mid-aughts wishing Garnett didn’t have to suffer so many contested Wally Szczerbiak jumpers.

2001 (18th overall): Zach Randolph (19th), Brendan Haywood (20th), Gerald Wallace (25th), Sam Dalembert (26th), Tony Parker (28th), Gilbert Arenas (31st)

2002 (24th overall): John Salmons (26th), Carlos Boozer (35th), Matt Barnes (46th)

2004 (28th overall): Anderson Varejao (30th), Trevor Ariza (43rd)

From 2000 to 2005, the Wolves were awesome exactly once, when they traded away Terrell Brandon and a bunch of flotsam — very much including Joe Smith — for Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell. That squad made the Western Conference Finals and lost respectably to Shaq and Kobe’s Lakers in six games. The next season, a 35-year-old Cassell got hurt and Trell checked out. The Wolves barely cracked .500. It would have been great if that aging team could have leaned on, say, a coming-into-his-own Tony Parker, or brought John Salmons off the bench. Thoroughly demoralized, Garnett left for Boston two years later. At the time of his exit, his best teammate was Ricky Davis.

I like to think that the night the Wolves decided to pitch Joe Smith on gaming the salary cap, Glen Taylor was pacing near the head of a long, densely populated boardroom table, and when Kevin McHale said something like Mr. Taylor, if the league catches wind of this, we’re finished, Taylor stopped pacing, put his fist to his lips, removed it, and solemnly asked his charges is Joe Smith worth the risk? Everyone murmured to their neighbor for a few seconds before Taylor thunderously cut through the noise: gentlemen, I think we all know the answer to that question. And a great relief washed over the room until they realized Taylor was picking up the phone and dialing an outside line.