McHale: T’Wolves could have beaten Spurs in 2007

I don’t know if former NBA great and Minnesota Timberwolves GM Kevin McHale was serious or just joking when he made a remark to Dwayne Casey in 2007.

Here, I’ll let you read what he said first.

“I was jumping into a situation where the charge at the time was to win the conference,” Casey told Sporting News. “Kevin McHale felt like we should have won the conference, we should have beaten San Antonio and Dallas. Expectations—right, wrong or indifferent—were a little out of whack with the team that we had. I think everything happened for a reason. I thought we were on the right path in the second season, we were knocking on the door of the playoffs.”

Should have beaten Dallas and San Antonio in 2007? Yes, you read that correctly.

First, the Mavericks led the league that year almost winning 70 regular season games at 67-15 only to have the worst round one upset at the hands of the Golden State Warriors. Spurs fans went on to laugh at them for the next four years until it wasn’t funny anymore because this past season, the Spurs were also knocked out of the playoffs as the one seed to an eight seed.

Second, the 2007 San Antonio Spurs went on to win the NBA championship that year. Their toughest series was with the Phoenix Suns. They ended up sweeping their Eastern Conference foe in the NBA Finals.

How did the T’Wolves do in 2007?

Well, they went 32-50 and finished 12th in the Western Conference.

This was Kevin Garnett’s last regular season with the team before he was traded to Boston and Tim Duncan cemented himself in winning the “KG vs TD” debate. 

McHale may have made those comments before the regular season began in 2007, but knowing the landscape of the NBA at the time. It’s tough to actually think a team comprised of Kevin Garnett, Vin Baker, Trenton Hassell, Ricky Davis, Marko Jaric, and Mark Madsen would have been good enough to win the Western Conference.