Lone Ranger

Joe Ryan is one of those lifelong friends. Prompt him to think of an anecdote that would reveal who McHale is, and he replies, “I can think of a whole bunch of them, but not any I’d want to share with you. Kevin is a guy who if you have a problem, you bring him into the foxhole with you. He’s stubborn as the day is long and hasn’t really changed in thirty years. He’s got integrity.

“And he’s friends with us because he knows we knew him before he went to the Cities or to Boston.” To everyone else, McHale is aggressively unknowable, and that’s how he prefers it.

Kevin McHale thinks he knows the right way to build a winning basketball team. After working for the Wolves just one year less than he played for the Celtics, he’s finally got a clean slate and a clear shot at proving himself. If it doesn’t pan out, then all his disparaging talk about the “excuse society,” the “microwave society,” and the “look the other way society” comes off as sad caricature.

It’s a risk he’ll gladly take. McHale’s most influential role model worked for forty-two years without a sick day or a peep of braggadocio about it. Yet his own competitive spirit is such that he grew up fighting with his brother rather then letting him score, honing rather ordinary athletic gifts through constant refinement and then intimidating his opponent with trash talk and a bruising style of play. He’s bided his time, heard the taunts, and taunted back: He doesn’t care.

But you know he does.

“Kevin is not the type of guy to say, ‘This losing is eating me up,’ but believe me, it is eating him up,” says Joe Ryan. “We Rangers, we don’t like to lose, and Kevin is as competitive as anybody I’ve ever met. I don’t know much about basketball, but I do know this: Kevin is just dying to say ‘I got it! I did it right.’ ”

Britt Robson is a Minneapolis writer who has covered the Timberwolves since 1990.