As the entire Canis crew have been piling on the Iron Ranger in the last few posts, tonight's Denver-LA playoff game reminds me of one mistake McHale never made: trading for Allen Iverson.
I know just about everyone in the Twin Cities market wanted AI but where Denver is now is where the Wolves would have been if we had acquired the chap, which is a 8th or 7th seed in the playoff hunt, with no real chance to compete for a championship ring. The salaries of both KG and Iverson would have left little cap room for the other pieces that would have been needed to seriously compete for a title. Denver's one and done playoff reputation probably won't improve this year against the Lakers; Iverson's acquisition was supposed to vault them past those lower seed slots. That hasn't happened.
The entire blame isn't on Iverson; George Karl deserves a lot of credit for a poor coaching job this year, but given Minnesota's own difficulty in personnel management and the fact the Randy Wittman would still be head coach, the prospects for a breakthrough wouldn't have been bright. KG's playoff reputation would have been sullied further, and we would STILL be talking about the pieces needed to properly surround the both of them for a run at the ring.
That trade would have been fun, but it was the wrong Answer.