Very quickly, The Kid became The Franchise, by playing basketball with the type of intensity that made you push your head back a little further; open your eyes a little wider — as if you thought for a brief moment, he just might break through your television screen.

We’d never had that. And we desperately needed that.

When you grow up in a microcosm of midwestern values — “Minnesota Nice” — it can be disorienting the first time you see a seven-foot-tall, 250 pound man flex his sinewy frame, throw his head back, and scream expletives into the air after dunking a basketball over a man so violently, the still image will inevitably end up frozen on a poster.

But there’s this thrill.

KG’s jersey was one of three I ever owned as a kid, and one of two I truly wanted. When you get older, you wear that jersey to support your team; root for that player. But when you’re a kid, you wear that jersey, because the moment you pull it over your head, you are that player.

That thrill arrived over and over again in the nearly infinite number of moments that The Big Ticket did something positively superhuman; something undeniably great; something in the name of us.

When he swatted the shots of basketball gods? So did you.

When he viciously dunked on the most famous NBA All-Stars? So did you.

You trash-talked the most frightening players in the league. Banged on your own head, screamed at the top of your lungs, and took your state to the Western Conference Finals. You stood, two feet firmly planted on the sideline announcers table, whirling your warm-up shirt in air like a helicopter.

You bowed down to no man. And you stood up to all of them.

Yes, I know — Kevin Garnett never won a championship in Minnesota. But I don’t know a single Timberwolves fan who blamed him for going to the Celtics and winning one there.