May We All Find Opportunities In Life To Be So Abundant

So the axe has finally fell in Minnesota, where eternal GM and current coach Kevin McHale was relieved of his duties after a brief fifteen years. The next time you hear some sportswriter talk about how impatient and short-sighted modern sports owners are, please keep McHale in mind.

The man was at ground zero for the unspeakable Joe Smith meltdown, couldn't keep Stephon Marbury in his shoes as a young man when he could have done some good in his career, traded Kevin Garnett for the defense and health-free Al Jefferson and a sack of gah (Ryan Gomes can put up some numbers, but not when the team actually wins)... and, well, there's a million other points.

Sure, he was involved in the original Garnett signing, and the Wolves did manage to not quit on him last year when he came down from the front office to coach. Also, the Wolves did go to a conference final when Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell had the last good years of their careers, but... um... that's really a trivial return on investment for 15 years. And the fact that the man didn't get hauled off on the back of a refuse truck years ago, when he dealt the signature player of the franchise's history to his old team for 30 cents on the dollar...

Well, when do the Celtics sign him back to the lifetime services contract, seeing how he performed lifetime service in the Garnett deal? And did the Wolves finally run him off before he could ship back Jefferson and others back to Boston for Garnett, now that the Big Ticket might have a career-threatening injury?

Finally, on the off chance that you keep track of such things... McHale becomes yet another final and defined example of how, if you'd like your NBA franchise to actually be worth a damn, you absolutely have to keep it away from Ex Superstar. Larry Bird in Indy -- terrible franchise, DOA ever since the Artestocalypse. Isiah Thomas, perhaps the worst GM in NBA history. McHale, profiled here, laughingstock. When Joe Dumars -- you remember, the guy who passed on Carmelo Anthony and Chris Bosh for Darko Milicic and traded Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson -- is your most successful member, it's time to flunk the class and just go find some stat or cap nerd to go run your club. You're still not going to win unless you can find some complete fool to give up a superstar for nothing (a la Gasol or Garnett), but at least you won't be a laughingstock.