Did you hear? Peyton Manning got traded, Johan Santana was sent packing and Pittsburgh decided that a handful of games was enough to tell that &8220;Syd the Kid&8221; was not all he was blown up to be.

OK.

None of that happened and to suggest that it would is probably crazy.

But that is exactly what I was thinking when I was perusing a NBA season preview over the weekend which suggested on more than one occasion that the Minnesota Timberwolves would be better off trading Kevin Garnett now than playing this season with him.

Sure, he may be the best player in the league, but what else ya got?

Maybe one or two other players that deserve a starting roll and that’s about it.

No bench and sadly for me, the Iowa native, no Fred &8220;the Mayor&8221; Hoiberg.

I had to take a minute to think this through.

I will tell you that I have lost a lot of interest in the NBA over the last five years or so, but I have always kept an eye on the Timberwolves after adopting them as &8220;my team&8221; several years ago when I went to the Target Center to watch my first pro basketball game.

In all the time that I was watching the Timberwolves I can honestly say I never said &8220;I wonder how good this team could be if they just gave The Big Ticket a ticket out of town.&8221;

Because the Timberwolves haven’t won a title there always seems to be a time when people start saying that a shakeup is needed, and evidently this is the season in Minnesota.

Garnett, despite playing in the league since 1995, is not even 30 yet.

He scores, rebounds, passes and is a leader.

And most importantly in my book &045; he is a quality person.

But maybe they’re right.

I mean the Wolves are just two years removed from a Western Conference Finals run.

Last year was a down season in which the team failed to make the playoffs, but no one blames Garnett.

Maybe instead of trading the best player in the league you could focus on putting players around him that could better help him get the job done.

The Wolves have suffered through several less than stellar drafts, and were stung hard by the Joe Smith contract debacle but those excuses can’t fly for ever.

Players of Garnett’s caliber don’t come around everyday, and to say that because it hasn’t worked so far it is time to give up on a player playing his best ball at the highest level is a little extreme.

If you do trade Garnett what is fair market value for the best player in the NBA?

Would the Nuggets give up a Carmelo Anthony or the Cavs part with King James?

Would they really be so much better suited to succeed with the other pieces the Wolves have assembled?

How has the trade the Yankees made to get Alex Rodriguez worked out for them or how many

titles did the Oilers win after Gretzky was moved to L.A.?

I know that in those situations money played a big factor, but I don’t see that it does in Minnesota’s case.

To take the identity of your team and ship it off in hopes that someone else can do what Garnett did even last season (read: lead team in points, rebounds, assists and steals) doesn’t make sense to me.

The Wolves would be better served to work on the supporting cast because the role of star is in very capable hands.