Liberty Ballers, a Philadelphia 76ers community

SF - Ndudi Ebi

"Loyalty is something that hurts you at times, because you can't get youth back,'' Garnett said last month about wishing he had pushed earlier to be dealt from a mediocre Minnesota team. "I can honestly say that if I could go back and do my situation over, knowing what I know now with this organization, I'd have done it a little sooner."

Kevin Garnett and Kevin McHale, 2005 McHale heard Garnett make those comments. He said the huge contract extension Garnett signed in 1997, which played a key role in there being a lockout in 1988-99 and the NBA eventually instituting maximum salaries, hampered Minnesota's ability to improve.

"That's always a tough thing,'' said McHale, who starred with the Celtics from 1980-93 and admits he's rooting for them in the Finals but that it doesn't affect his on-air objectivity. "He signed that huge contract, and that huge contract was somewhat prohibiting the team from going out and finding other people (due to Garnett eating up so much of the salary cap). So it was a two-way street. He did the right thing. The money was offered. He took it. It was right before the new collective bargaining agreement."

"If a guy was doing the Riverdance like that, coach would come over and say, 'Who's got the fewest amount of fouls of my big fellas?' " said ex-Celtic and TNT analyst Kevin McHale. "If you raised your hand, he would say, 'We will let him drive and then we will throw him on the ground.'

"When he is laying there we would say, 'Do you feel like dancing now?'

"And that pretty much solved the dancing problem."