The NBA experienced a full eclipse last week.

The Boston Celtics were the first team to 30 wins.

The Minnesota Timberwolves, the first team to 30 losses.

Celtics general manager Danny Ainge is being lauded as possible executive of the year after acquiring superstars Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen without having to give up his incumbent superstar Paul Pierce - thus, the runaway start in the East.

Meanwhile, Wolves general manager Kevin McHale, former Celtics teammate, peer and close friend, is being trashed from head to toe.

The only way it could be juicier would be if the two were in New York or Los Angeles, where the microscope would be on them at the same time.

This isn't a story that began this season with these two guys, though. It's just at a new crescendo in their NBA lives.

They began feeding off each other as teammates on the Celtics from 1981-89. McHale was the yang to the often reluctant Larry Bird's yin. Bird was often bristling with the media, while McHale had clever quips and always a comment - often more than Bird wanted to hear. But McHale was a Hall of Fame player in his own right as a strange combination of awkward and smooth, a barrel chest upper body with a 6-11 frame, exceedingly long, skinny legs and arms and soft hands. He was the pre-eminent low-post scorer and defender of his time.

Ainge wasn't anywhere near the player, although a superb natural athlete who also had a cup of coffee with the Milwaukee Brewers on the baseball diamond. His hands, athleticism and shooting range - and lack of conscience when it came to whether or not to take a shot from any distance or angle - made him invaluable.

The thing was, they were often a comedy routine together as the media egged them on. For two-plus seasons in the mid-1980's Bill Walton was even added to the fun. But by the end of the decade, Ainge moved on, McHale's ankles broke down and he finally retired in 1993. McHale, a star at the University of Minnesota and native of tiny Hibbling, Minn., was immediately gobbled up by Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor as a native son extraordinaire.

Ainge kicked around the NBA a few years longer before retiring in 1995. He did some stints on and off in the broadcast both, a coaching stint with the Phoenix Suns slapped in between, until the Celtics hired him in the spring of 2003.

While Ainge was trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life, it seemed McHale needed to figure out what not to do. Oh, he pulled off a great move drafting Garnett out of high school in 1995 with the fifth overall pick of the draft and then made the bold move of hiring his former University of Minnesota roommate Flip Saunders from the CBA to take over the team as head coach by the end of that season. But even that set off an infamous and unprecedented run of seven consecutive seasons of first-round playoff exits.

In the middle of all that, McHale and the organization drew the ire of NBA commissioner David Stern with a multi-million dollar fine and lost a slew of first round draft choices for a being caught making a "wink-wink" deal with Joe Smith in January of 2000.

It seemingly drew into question everyone in the organization from Garnett to Saunders, but McHale seemed impervious to it all. Here's a guy who drafted Ray Allen but traded him for Stephon Marbury on draft day 1996, and stuck around long enough to repeat the mistake drafting Brandon Roy only to trade him for Randy Foye in 2006. We all know how swimmingly those deals worked out.

Give McHale credit for one season to the conference finals though - 2004 - when he gambled by bringing on the mercurial backcourt tandem of Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell. But it was only a mirage and perhaps the final blow. When the chemistry blew up in the middle of the next season, Saunders took the fall, McHale took over as coach, and it's been downhill ever since.

By that time, Ainge had already become well-entrenched with the Celtics, seemingly enamored of every great high school talent in the nation in search of his own Garnett. There were times, it seemed, that Ainge and McHale would make deals just for kicks, perhaps out of boredom, just to shake things up. They didn't really help anybody other than a change of scenery. But as McHale realized his team wasn't going anywhere and dumping Saunders was a huge mistake, Garnett - loyal to a fault - was becoming more frustrated, and something had to give.

A similar situation had unfolded in Boston. Ainge's youngsters may have been able to compete in the Big East, but not the Atlantic Division.

When the buzz began that the Wolves were shopping Garnett to the Celtics, he immediately nixed the deal in outrage after showing such loyalty for years. He then started making noise about where he'd like to go - Phoenix, with Steve Nash and Co. How about joining forces with Kobe Bryant, who was dying to have KG join him in LA?

No matter where the best deals would be, McHale was still in the sandbox without Ainge. They did the deal, Al Jefferson the young cornerstone coming from the Celtics along with flotsam, jetsam and draft choices.  Ainge then turned around and dealt his fifth round pick, some of his other marginal players and gobbled up Allen from the Sonics.

Now the Celtics are rolling - at 30-5 - and seemingly certain of finishing the regular season with the best record in the subordinate Eastern Conference.

That leaves us with the 5-31 Wolves, with McHale coming out of the dark long enough last week to say, "You can do a lot of stuff, but you cannot not compete. It's professional basketball. It's not a church league."

So just what is his plan ... gather enough young talent and draft choices to make a trade for a superstar like, uh, Kevin Garnett?  It's hard to know other than chances are he'll be back in the sandbox this summer discussing this and more with Ainge.