T'wolves fan Hartnett thinks it was time for KG to go

Actor Josh Harnett thinks it was time for the Timberwolves to cut ties with Kevin Garnett. Jayme Halbritter/Getty Images

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Josh Hartnett needs a smoke. He wasn't planning on lighting one up, but as soon as his agent leaves his suite at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles he opens up the balcony windows overlooking West Hollywood and grabs a pack from the nearby room service cart.

"I can't believe it," he says. "I can't believe he got traded."

Hartnett, who was born in Minnesota and is a die-hard Timberwolves fan, just found out Kevin Garnett has been traded, and he's not quite sure how to take the news.

"It's going to throw the team into a completely different style of basketball," he says, stepping back into the room and turning off the television blasting the news. "I don't think it would be necessarily a horrible thing for the team in the long run because they are spending so much money on KG's contract, so now hopefully they'll be able to afford some new players that will come up and be some future stars."

After initially being upset by the news, Hartnett leans back on the cream colored couch and further reassess the trade, looking at the young players and draft picks coming to Minnesota.

"We've tried everything with KG," he says. "He's an amazing player. He leads by example and he has a great work ethic. He commands the court so well on his own but there's... we've got a rotating roster outside of him that there hasn't been a whole lot of opportunity for the team to really become a team.

With a young core that now includes Al Jefferson, Gerald Green, Ryan Gomes and Corey Brewer, Hartnett thinks the Timberwolves just might have the consistency that the team never had when Garnett was the centerpiece.

"It's not like when Kobe and Shaq were working together for so long and got to really form the dynamic that created that franchise," he says. "We haven't ever really had that. We've had that troubadour, usually older players come in and play a role for a while and then move on. It would be good to have a young team that's all working together for a while and I think that we'll maybe start from scratch, but hopefully that'll be a good thing."

Hartnett realizes, however, that a championship is not likely in the picture anytime soon. Not just because of the young roster but the inability of Minnesota sports teams to get over the hump in recent years.

"We keep falling short of the mark with our teams in Minnesota," he says. "We had such a great team with the Timberwolves a few years ago when we had Sam Cassell, Latrell Sprewell and KG. We thought we were going to make it, but didn't quite get there so it's disappointing to be a Minnesota sports fan. There's always these really good teams, that can't quite get there, except, of course, for the Twins back in '87 and '91."

As Hartnett talks about sports in between drags of his Camel straights, he begins to sound like an experienced sports reporter, which would make sense since he plays one in the upcoming film Resurrecting the Champ, which comes out Aug. 24.

In the film Hartnett plays Erik Kernan, a Denver Times sports reporter who is having a hard time escaping the shadow of his beloved broadcasting father. At one point his editor, played by Alan Alda, says, "I forget your pieces while I'm reading them. A lotta typing -- not much writing."

His life and career turns around when he stumbles upon a homeless man who claims to be legendary boxer Bob Satterfield, who was rumored to be dead, and pens the story of his life.

"What I liked about it is was that I got the chance to really see how much pressure you're under to report on something that's going to be spectacular for people to actually take notice of and to help perpetuate your career," he says. "At the same time you're bound by the rules of truth and journalism and journalism integrity."

Those rules certainly come into the play in the movie, which is based on J.R. Moehringer's 1997 Los Angeles Times Magazine feature story on Satterfield's glory days and demons.

"What kind I thought was most interesting was the kind of struggle between a proper journalist and the people who can just write whatever they want on the web," he says. "You're bound by these rules that other people aren't bound by. You're stuck between a rock and a hard place. I had a new sort of appreciation for the job."

Hartnett, who plays opposite Samuel L. Jackson in the film, followed Moeringer around for the film and spoke to him about his relationship (or lack thereof) with his father, which he chronicled in his book, The Tender Bar, a memoir of Moeringer's fatherless upbringing in pub-heavy Manhasset, New York. "That really helped me because it's a really big part of this film," he says. "The film is thematically about fathers and sons as much as it is about sports writing."

One thing Hartnett did not do to prepare for his role was step into the squared circle despite being a big fight fan.

"When I was doing Black Dahlia, I started to box but I don't box anymore," he says. "It's the discipline that I would have loved to keep up, but unfortunately, I smoke. The character smoked in the movie, as well, so I was smoking ton of Camel straights for the movie everyday and then going to boxing afterwards. Bad idea."

Maybe not as bad as trading away Kevin Garnett, but a bad idea nonetheless.