Lone Ranger

Kevin McHale loves to lose himself in the northern woods of Minnesota. As a boy growing up on the Iron Range during the 1960s, it wasn’t uncommon for him to disappear in the morning and be back at dusk. “I’d spend five, six, seven hours walking all by myself; maybe sit on a log for a couple of hours and watch what was going around,” McHale relates in an uncharacteristically wistful tone of voice. “I’d just absorb all this solitude. I am at my most peaceful when I am outdoors.”

McHale’s older brother, John, according to more than one person, is Kevin’s best friend. “We bought some hunting property in northern Minnesota in 1989,” John says. “We have a deer shack there we call Bearville because it’s in Bearville Township.

“We’ve started doing some farmer food plots around the place. There are no cell phones, no e-mail. The only thing you have to worry about is keeping the tractor running. Kevin’s happiest when he’s doing that. As a matter of fact,” John says, speaking in early September, “I bet you he’s there right now.”

As Kevin McHale sits in the forest watching the birds flit and the deer forage, or turns the wheel of the tractor and engages the power-takeoff that drops the plow, there must be moments when he wonders why he didn’t kiss the Minnesota Timberwolves goodbye in 2004.

McHale, the local basketball legend hired to evaluate talent and bring luster to a floundering franchise in 1994, had finally assembled a team that delivered unprecedented rewards to long-suffering Wolves fans. There were fifty-eight wins, the first-ever trip to the conference semifinals and finals, and, as a righteous capper, the naming of resident superstar Kevin Garnett as the league’s Most Valuable Player. Through astute trades and free-agent signings, McHale had surrounded Garnett (who he traded to McHale’s old team, the Boston Celtics, last summer) with an almost entirely new supporting cast of complementary veteran stars such as Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell and selfless role players Trenton Hassell and Fred Hoiberg. Throw in a couple of would-be starters (Wally Szczerbiak and Michael Olowokandi) and it wasn’t surprising that the Wolves were a trendy pick to win the NBA Championship in 2005.