Dan Barreiro-Star Tribune
February 19, 2003
Do they dash to the restroom? Grab a snack or a smoke? Banter with the studio audience?
Given Craig Kilborn's penchant for booking extremely attractive female supermodels and actresses, it might be assumed that the host of "The Late Late Show" would be tempted to use the time to flirt.
Yet now it can be told that when there is a break in the action of his show, which is taped at 8 p.m. Central time, Kilborn dashes to a control room backstage and gets on the Internet. On weeknights when a certain Midwestern pro basketball team is in action, he checks two things--the latest score of the Timberwolves' game and Kevin Garnett's line, not necessarily in that order. If Kilborn held true to form, he did the dash from behind the desk as recently as Monday night, when the Wolves played the Jazz in Utah.
And on nights when Garnett is having a particularly huge night Kilborn might email his pal, Wolves season ticket-holder Jimmy Jam Harris.
Kilborn, the Hastings, Minn., high school phenom, admits he has become a Da Kidophile.
"I can remember in the summer hearing rumors about Garnett going to New Jersey," Kilborn said the other day. "It's funny. And at the time I said, 'You can't trade him.' Then I started thinking about the idea of KG playing with Jason Kidd. I got really excited about it. It was about then I realized that I'm actually more a Garnett fan than a Wolves fan. I see the way he has stepped up his game, and it's just amazing to watch him. I can't say enough good things about him."
When a Minnesota writer celebrated Garnett's emergence this season, Kilborn read the column and called Jimmy Jam. With mock indignation, Kilborn wanted to know why he had not been acknowledged for his role in the blossoming.
Was Kilborn kidding? Probably, but with this fellow, never shy about patting himself on the back, you can never be sure. So the writer called him for details of a phone call placed to Flip Saunders last October.
"That's one of the perks of being a talk-show host," Kilborn said. "Flip was nice enough to put up with me. I said, 'I love you, man," and then tactfully added that KG had to play the '4' [power foreward position]. That he had to post up more and attack the basket.
"I thought he was trying to do some of that in the playoffs [last year] when he got criticized, but didn't have that much success because he wasn't used to it. Too many jumpers. I just said that he needed to attack the rim. I'm a big tough-love guy. I wanted KG to get the very most out of his ability, and now he's doing it. Already the best passing foreward, this great a defender, and a great rebounder, and now he has added this low-post game. I get giddy when he posts up."
It is scary stuff when a grown man admits to being inspired when a pro basketball player plants his posterior down low, turns and launches a 10-footer, but Kilborn is a basketball junkie. Though he is smart enough not to book many basketball players--"they usually aren't great guests"--he loves watching them.
Kilborn played high school basketball in Hastings, and was a perimeter player at Montana State in the early '80s. "I could shoot the lights out, but I played no defense," he said. "I've always loved basketball, but I'm an NBA fanatic."
He despises Shaquille O'Neal and the Lakers, a dangerous position for a fellow who lives and works in Hollywood. "Nobody is more passionately anti-Lakers than I am," he said. "If the league wasn't so diluted, they would have been exposed a long time ago. Shaq commits an offensive foul every time he touches the ball inside. True story: One time, I told Phil Jackson, who was in the green room, that my dad said that they would never have allowed Wilt Chamberlain to get away with the kind of offensive fouls that Shaq got away with, and Phil said, 'Your dad is right.'"
Kilborn blames the Shaq phenomenon on the same fellow he blames for the Wolves' inability to better surround Garnett with talent.
"All David Stern cares about is the money," he said. "He's just a marketer. Look at what he did to the Wolves with the Joe Smith thing. You think he would have been that rough on a team in a bigger market, like L.A.? Forget it. That was excessive punishment."
Like many wolves fans, Kilborn worries the Wolves never will be able to surround Garnett with the talent he deserves. "My dad is critical of the front office sometimes," he said. "I'd love to see them make a move, but I have to say that if KG was ever traded or he played with someone else, I'd probably root for that team. I'm a KG guy."
