Back when everyone in the NBA was looking for the next John Stockton–Karl Malone pairing, Flip Saunders thought he might have a promising pairing on his Timberwolves. He had a young big named Kevin Garnett who could dominate a game at both ends. He had a young point guard in Stephon Marbury whose talent was obvious to anyone watching.
Saunders would tell his two rising stars in the late 1990’s when they were just getting going, with two straight playoff berths, that they owed it to themselves to stick it out and make it work. Because even if they couldn’t be as good as the Jazz’s Hall of Fame duo — the pair that put Salt Lake City on the sports world's map — they still could be a formidable tandem. Who knew where that would get them down the road?
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Saunders, who died Sunday after a brief battle with cancer, told me later, when he was coaching an Eastern Conference power out in Detroit, “I always told those two, 'I hope we’re not at an All-Star Game in 20 years, when you’re retired, and we’re saying, “What if?" And we’re not looking at mistakes we made.' ’’
We all know how it turned out. Marbury made the biggest mistake, forcing his trade to the Nets in 1999 when he couldn’t accept the fact that Garnett would always be the T-wolves No. 1 star, including when it came to who would earn the most money.
With Marbury gone, Garnett went on to flourish, winning an MVP award, a championship later with the Celtics and a first-ballot ticket to the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. Meanwhile, Marbury never approached Stockton when it came to toughness and mental makeup. He never came close to being a difference-maker at point guard. After he left Garnett, his career took a downward trajectory, hitting rock bottom when he landed with the Knicks after also playing in Phoenix.
When the NBA world was stunned to learn of Saunders’ death, many of his former players fondly remembered that he knew what buttons to push to get them to play better or to do what the team needed. They talked about early-game benchings that made them furious, but served to drive them to play smarter and better when Saunders put them back in the game later. They talked about his little digs that drove them, even some that came at the expense of Garnett because Saunders knew that Garnett was strong enough to take it.
“There were things he did where I hated the guy," former Timberwolves All-Star forward Tom Gugliotta said. “But he knew what he was doing. Flip was a psychiatrist. I mean, he read me like a third-grader’s book."
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But when it came to Marbury, Saunders could never convince the backcourt star that he had it better being second banana to Garnett than leaving to find a team where he would miscast as the franchise star. He especially warned him that going to the Nets would never work because it would only provide more distractions to the Brooklyn-born Marbury.
“Going back home sometimes is not always the best thing,’’ he told Marbury, who would have none of it.
So the T-wolves acquiesced, granting Marbury his wish to return to the New York area.
“What do you say to a guy who’s 22 and doesn’t accept the fact that he’s playing with a guy who’s 10 times better than he’ll ever be?" Gugliotta said on SiriusXM NBA Radio. “What’s the old expression? 'Youth is wasted on the young.’ How true. That’s what we had with Stephon. Flip couldn’t do anything about that."
You know who realized that in the end? Marbury was still a Net and finding out the hard way how impossible it was to win games without Garnett, when he dialed up an old friend in Minneapolis in the wee hours one morning to tell him that he never, ever should have forced his way out of the T-wolves.
The call didn’t go to Kevin Garnett.
It went to Flip Saunders.
