The point is, Taylor said something that didn't help do anything but make himself look ungrateful, and silly. It didn't hurt Garnett. It didn't much help the Wolves, on their own little roll here at the tail end of the year. It was indeed one of those remarks that might have induced Taylor to try and grab the words out of the air and stuff them back down his gaping, undisciplined maw.
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This isn't unprecedented stuff, for an owner to blow up his relationship with his best player. Larry Miller did it for years with Karl Malone, offending him then making up over and over again. Miller was high strung and loose-cannonish, but there was an impish quality to his tantrums, based solely on what irritated him at the moment.
Taylor pulled this doozie out of the air, a year after Garnett supposedly took his powder. Worse yet, it violated the third rule of sports public speaking, which is this:
Your right to say disparaging things about others ends when your winning percentage does.
But we don't adhere to that little-known codicil at the end of the First Amendment. We think Taylor is spectacularly wrong to say what he did without more proof than some momentary pique at a local columnist. I mean, the Wolves are hardly pure in the game-tanking department anyway.
Nevertheless, Taylor's bizarre assessment reminded us that there is another rule of sports public speaking, which is this:
There is a statute of limitations on complaints of one day.
You have an issue, you make your point then and there. Next day at the absolute latest. But 11 months later is just too far after the fact, and in any event begs the question, "If you were OK with it then, why are you speaking up now?"
And the answer is simple. Glen Taylor lost his mind, and said something he can neither prove nor defend. And much as we mock him for it, we appreciate that he did, because the beast must always be fed. And Glen Taylor's as good a meal as any.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
