One-Time NBA All-Stars

Wally Szczerbiak

He's szczintillating on the court. He's szczizzling off of it. He szczo quickly could become the talk of Madison Avenue.

— Darren Rovell, 2002.

The 2001 NBA All-Star Game was a classic, for nine minutes at least, the largest underdog squad in All-Star history returning from a 95-74 fourth quarter deficit to topple the well-heeled West. The 2002 All-Star Game, featuring ten first-time participants, figured to be even more celebratory.

Instead, an angry Philadelphia crowd booed All-Star Game MVP Kobe Bryant as the Philly product dominated inside the building wherein his Lakers won the previous June’s title at Philly’s expense. Bryant popped early and often (31 points with 12-25 shooting and five assists) on his way toward avenging the West’s loss the previous February.

Three of the West’s first-time All-Stars hit double-figures: Dallas’ Dirk Nowitzki with a dozen, Sacramento sweet shooter Peja Stojakovic with one less, and Minnesota Timberwolves swingman Wally Szczerbiak with 10 points on 4-6 from the floor.

''What do you think of all these white guys from around the world making it in the N.B.A. and the All-Star team?'' asked a reporter from the ''Best Damn Sports Show Period.''

The reporter was familiar to Szczerbiak, since it was John Salley, a former N.B.A. player.

''I think it shows how popular basketball has become in so many different countries,'' Szczerbiak said. ''I believe it's a positive thing.''

''And,'' Salley continued, laughing, ''don't you think you have an unfair advantage because of your name that you can pronounce some of those names like . . . ?'' He tried to say Stojakovic and Nowitzki, but stumbled.

The 2002 run was Szczerbiak’s lone All-Star showing, toe and knee injuries limited him to 80 games in two seasons to follow, but those setbacks didn’t waylay a series of likely All-Star Game appearances, Wally wasn’t like that, and the West was too deep. Yet Szczerbiak’s 2002 reserve selection wasn’t a blown choice by the league’s voting coaches, a gimmick or a miss or something to rub in Wally’s face when Szczerbiak steps in it while discussing modern All-Star candidates.

Wally World was 25th in NBA Win Shares that season (if 62nd in WS per minute) on a 50-win Wolves team, Wally working 82 times an outing at 38 minutes per game. Minnesota developed a top-four offense in 2001-02 despite ranking 18th in three-pointers made and 22nd in free throws swished, Szczerbiak was the club’s second-leading scorer at 18.7 points per game, 50 percent from the floor, 45.5 percent on the threes he didn’t take enough of (2.2 launches per contest).

Anyone want to see some two-pointers?

The Wolves were swept in the 2002 first round, the final year of the NBA’s five-game opening round series, dumped by a Mavericks team featuring Dirk and fellow first-time All-Star, Steve Nash.

There were no snubs that All-Star season, Szczerbiak was it. Nobody argued for Brent Barry’s supersonic 65 percent True Shooting or another turn in the lineup for David Robinson and John Stockton. Shawn Marion was a better all-around player but fewer coaches nodded at Matrix with Phoenix at .500 (and Suns coach Scott Skiles soon to step down). And no coach would touch Rasheed Wallace with a vote, even in Rasheed’s hometown.

So Wally (the only 2001-02 All-Star with an unlisted fan vote on Wikipedia, which means any of us could go change his total to “88”), made an All-Star Game. At the time, I’m sure Wally Szczerbiak hoped the selection would go a long way toward changing the thing that most people knew about Wally Szczerbiak, which is that Kevin Garnett could not stand Wally Szczerbiak.

Actually, there was more than one thing.

''What's it like to be the heartthrob of the N.B.A.?'' asked Jill Martin, of Miami Heat TV, at an interview session Friday in a hotel ballroom.

''Once you make the All-Star team, things escalate,'' Szczerbiak said, with a polite shrug. ''People can think whatever they want. Doesn't bother me. But I'm trying here to focus on basketball.''

''Well, I think you're gorgeous,'' Martin said. ''And you can quote me.''

Wally’s a hot one, a participant in GQ’s 2002 ‘Great Guys With Great Bodies’ pictorial, but that wasn’t why he and KG clashed.

I cannot find proof of it, only references from some sloshed-the-night-before blogger from the 2010s, but you can trust me when I tell you Wally Szczerbiak rankled Kevin Garnett in 1999 at the Tournament of the Americas: Szczerbiak (a Minnesota draft pick the month before) needlessly brought up to media that soon-to-be five-year veteran Garnett that KG was only ten months older than his rookie.

There was also this:

Team USA was clobbering Canada in an exhibition when Wally buried a jumper and, in acknowledging the crowd’s cheers, didn’t get back to stop a Canadian fast break.

Gary Payton told KG: “Straighten him out.” And KG did, in no uncertain terms. So began the cold war between them.

At 29, soon after being traded from Garnett’s Timberwolves in 2006, Wally copped to the friction:

"I was young," Szczerbiak said. "I was a rookie and we had a few run-ins. It was kind of one of those things where you want to establish your turf. I'm not saying anyone was right or wrong, but we got over it and had a lot of good times, and a lot of fun playing together for five-and-a-half years."

Later, Szczerbiak pinned the Dan White Doughnut Defense on KG:

Wally Szczerbiak, TV analyst, former Wolves teammate: He loved his Krispy Kreme doughnuts. When I was a rookie he made all the rookies go up to Krispy Kreme in Maple Grove and hit Krispy Kreme. That was his thing. He would eat them before practice all the time.

Ryan Saunders, former Timberwolves coach, son of head coach Flip Saunders and ball boy in the 1990s: A lot of times my dad would purposely have KG not play with the starters in practice, with Sam (Cassell) and (Latrell Sprewell) and Wally (Szczerbiak) and those guys just to fire him up. I remember things were getting intense and Wally, who was on the opposite team, made a shot. He runs and sticks his hand to give me a high five. I’m 15 years old. I don’t know what’s going on. KG yells at me and calls me a cheerleader for the other team. He ends up just rattling off I don’t know how many baskets and unbelievable defensive plays. After each one, he’s yelling at me, who is a kid, to cheer against him again. He did all this knowing I loved him and I was his ball boy always wanting to rebound for him.

Visiting reporters probably wanted to ask Garnett why Szczerbiak rankled the Timberwolves so much, but grew tired of waiting for KG to exit his postgame shower and wrote about something else.

Szczerbiak was the first-round draft pick Minnesota earned from New Jersey in 1999, after Timberwolves guard Stephon Marbury decided he couldn’t stand strutting second-fiddle to Kevin Garnett and forced a deal to the Nets.

Minnesota chose Wally World ahead of Andre Miller and Jason Terry in the 1999 NBA draft, preferring their lot at point guard (aged-29 Terrell Brandon, gleaned from the Marbury deal). The Timberwolves signed Chauncey Billups (after Billups turned down larger offers) to a three-year, $7.4 million deal ahead of 2000-01, Szczerbiak’s second season, ahead of this ESPN the Magazine profile from Ric Bucher (who wears sunglasses in elevators):

“As point guards, we try to get [Szczerbiak] going early,” says Billups, “because he’s going to find some shots on his own if you don’t.”

Although Wally suspects otherwise, no one on the Wolves would claim that getting him shots is not in the team’s best interests. It’s how Szczerbiak responds when they don’t get him the rock that turns up the heat, particularly on a team where only rookies Maurice Evans and Loren Woods have logged fewer NBA seasons.

“If he doesn’t get a shot four or five times down, he’ll start yelling my name when he’s not even open,” Brandon says. “Once I passed to Felipe Lopez, and Wally stepped in front and stole the ball.”

Gotta agree with Wally here.

In utterly related news, Wally World credits Lopez’s famed presence at St. John’s as the reason the Long Island-born and bred Szczerbiak left the NYC area for Miami of Ohio University, even after St. John’s recruited him.

Billups has a similar tale from a game when Wally was still looking for his first shot. “We’re on a fast break and I’m waving him on, but he’s coming up behind me,” Billups said. “I swear to God, I thought he was going to steal the ball. We’ve got all kinds of stories like that. We joke about it.”

Wally also is not above yelling, “Pass the ball!” and stomping off, as he did at Lopez for taking a first-half-ending drive to the hoop in a loss to the Kings, or shaking his head after Anthony Peeler missed him on a fast break against the Cavs. His slump-shouldered strolls away from the bench during timeouts when he’s frustrated are so common -- and so vexing -- that members of the coaching staff have been seen mimicking him. “As long as it’s not disruptive, you don’t pay attention to it,” Garnett says. “If it gets out of hand, we as team leaders will address it.”

Garnett and Szczerbiak two famously came to blows earlier in 2000-01, a month into Wally’s second season, a scuffle a long time coming.

Billups, who teamed with Garnett in Minnesota from 2000 to '02, says one of his most vivid memories of Garnett is from a Timberwolves shootaround in which Saunders tried to familiarize the team with its next opponent. The coach attempted to run through that team's offensive sets for the starters but was thwarted by Garnett, who refused to stop denying his player the ball during the walk-through. "I warned KG," Billups says. "I told him, 'You keep yelling this s--- at people and someone is going to come back at you.'"

That guy, Billups says, was former Wolves teammate Wally Szczerbiak. "I got along with Wally just fine, but he was kind of a know-it-all," Billups says. "I took his arrogance to be a positive all players gotta have, but KG took it a different way. It was KG's team, his voice, his show, his everything. Anyone who differed was going to be an outcast."

The tension boiled over during a November 2000 practice, when Szczerbiak reportedly got picked off and chided Garnett to call out the screens. KG responded curtly, "Play some defense," the pickoff seemingly a consequence for whatever expectation Szczerbiak wasn't meeting defensively. Szczerbiak took exception. It accelerated into a shouting match, which spilled into the training room. Punches were thrown. Ask Szczerbiak about it today and he says he was simply a young player trying to stick up for himself. "I felt like I had some leadership qualities," he says. "I'm not a guy who will take a back seat all the time, and in certain scenarios I'm going to speak up for what's right. At times it definitely got me in trouble."

Wally’s defense got everyone in trouble:

Worth noting: the fact that Szczerbiak and Garnett played six-plus seasons together and were teammates in the 2002 All-Star Game.

"We figured it out," Szczerbiak says.

They did. Szczerbiak returned from injury late in 2003-04 to provide superior Sixth Mansmanship to what still stands as the Greatest Timberwolves Team, playing through a broken back. By then Latrell Sprewell and (especially) Sam Cassell shouldered shot creation, life was much smoother when Wally was worlds away from acting as Minnesota’s second-best player.

Or when Andrae Patterson was counted upon as a Timberwolves rotation piece. Back to the fight.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that Garnett confronted Szczerbiak in the team's training room about an hour after practice.

After an exchange of words, Garnett had to be pulled away by teammate Andrae Patterson and at least two staff members.

An hour after practice, about the same time KG typically leaves the shower.

"It's like when you get in a fight with your brother," Szczerbiak said Wednesday. "These things happen."

How did it happen? Wally Szczerbiak was keen to detail every play to the press, while KG declined comment (presumably in a bid to secure more shower time).

"It was just a play where I was guarding Sam (Mitchell), and Kevin's man came over and set a little brush screen and I just said, 'Hey, Kev, can you help, step up, call the screen,' and he said 'Play some defense'," Szczerbiak said.

Hey Kev—

You are 14 years younger than 37-year old Sam Mitchell, play some defense.

"And I kind of went back (at Garnett) because that kind of hit me the wrong way, and then he kind of went after me. It was just kind of the heat of competition, going up against a great team trying to win and play hard."

Garnett, who refuses to speak to the media before games, did not comment at the morning shootaround.

Or, as KG calls it, “showeraround.”

Szczerbiak said he was surprised at Garnett's reaction considering how well the players get along with each other.

Alright Wally.

"That's why this is so out of this world," Szczerbiak said.

Out of this Wally World.

"I just hope that both parties agree to put this behind them. I know I'm willing to."

Wally willing, both parties moved onward. Months after his ten-point All-Star contribution, Szczerbiak’s representatives leaned upon that ascension as he grew due for a contract extension:

Agent Gary Wichard said Szczerbiak's performance in three seasons with the Wolves, as well as his All-Star status, his off-court contributions and the salaries paid to comparable players, all point to a six-year, $83.6 million deal, the maximum for a player of his experience.

"This isn't any sort of 'line in the sand.' We're in this thing together," said Wichard, who anticipates talking with Wolves vice president of basketball operations Kevin McHale in the next few weeks.

"Wally has been as important to his team as any of the guys who came out (in 1999). Of that class, let's take a hand count of All-Stars."

Charlotte's Baron Davis and the Los Angeles Clippers' Elton Brand, both 1999 picks, were added to the 2002 NBA All-Star Game as injury replacements. Szczerbiak was voted to the West squad by the conference coaches.

Szczerbiak eventually signed a six-year, $63 million extension. It would be his final NBA contract.

Unrelated quote:

"You can't teach the beast," Garnett says. "It's either in you or it isn't. You can't just go to the store and buy a six-pack of beast. It don't work like that."

No, but you can sign up for social media for free, at no apparent cost to one’s reputation, as Szczerbiak proved in 2012:

YO! Hollinger’s always up on this stuff.

Wally deleted that one, clearly lacking the #postgene, but kept this …

… and others around.

By then Wally was long retired, bowing out ahead of 2009-10, his left knee too balky for action.

In 2006 Minnesota attached an available first-round pick — a rarity during Kevin McHale’s tenure — to flick the remaining three and a half seasons of Szczerbiak’s six-year deal onto Boston (for Ricky Davis among others).

"Chemistry's a strange thing," McHale said in a conference call with reporters. "When you've got it, everybody plays a little better. When you don't have it, everybody plays a little worse."

The ability to earn that future first-round pick back from the Celtics was perhaps the nagging force behind the voice which moved McHale to trade Garnett to Boston in 2007. And two years later, with McHale out, David fucking Khan Minnesota used the pick on Jonny Flynn.

A month before trading for Garnett in 2007, the Celtics dealt Szczerbiak to Seattle with No. 5 draft selection Jeff Green and Delonte West, Wally’s big contract was needed for the winning bid which earned the C’s Ray Allen.

Wally worked with Seattle for a half-season (Kevin Durant’s first) …

… before the SuperSonics dealt him to Cleveland at the 2008 trade deadline, midway through LeBron James’ fifth season.

More like Wally Mitty.

Q: Are you and Wally better than Kobe and Shaq?

KG: [Long pause] No … it hurts me to say it but we're not. I just … [sigh] ... we just aren't.

That’s the story of Wally Szczerbiak.

In a time when people had really wet hair, Wally had the wettest.

I AIN’T GONNA STAND FOR IT

The pedal steel destroys me.

This is the first installment in a series, suggested to me by #postgene recipient (and longtime subscriber) Roger Mason Jr. = Hero.