Malik Sealy

For a quarter-century, one number hung by itself in the Minnesota rafters, and the story behind it is the saddest and warmest the franchise owns.

Vitals
Born	February 1, 1970, Bronx, New York
Died	May 20, 2000, St. Louis Park, Minnesota (age 30)
College	St. John’s (1988–92)
Drafted	No. 14 overall, 1992, by the Indiana Pacers
Seasons as a Wolf	2 (1998–2000)
Number	2

The player. Malik Sealy arrived in the NBA already a New York legend — a 6-foot-8 wing they called “Silk” for the way the game seemed to cost him no effort. At St. John’s he finished as the program’s second-leading scorer with 2,401 points, made consensus second-team All-American in 1992, and won the Haggerty Award, given to the best college player in the metropolitan area, in both his junior and senior years. Indiana took him 14th in the 1992 draft, and he spent the next six seasons as a smooth, useful scorer for the Pacers, Clippers and Pistons — a career-high 13.5 points per game for the Clippers in 1996-97 — before the road brought him to Minnesota.

The Wolf. Sealy signed with the Timberwolves in 1998, reuniting with a franchise still building around a 22-year-old Kevin Garnett. The lockout-shortened first season was quiet, but 1999-2000 was the year everything clicked. When Minnesota stumbled early, Sealy moved into the starting lineup and steadied everything around Garnett, averaging 11.3 points and 4.3 rebounds across all 82 games while shooting a tidy .476 from the field. The Wolves won 50 games — the first 50-win season in franchise history — and Sealy, at 30, was playing the finest, most complete basketball of his life.

The brotherhood. What outlasted the box score was the bond. Sealy and Garnett were inseparable, the veteran and the phenom, best friends in a way the whole locker room could see. That friendship is the reason the rest of this entry hurts the way it does — and the reason a number that belonged to a role player became the most sacred digit the organization has.

By the numbers

Regular-season stats, per Basketball-Reference:

Season	GP	PPG	RPG	APG	FG%	3P%
1998-99	31	8.1	3.0	1.2	.411	.261
1999-00	82	11.3	4.3	2.4	.476	.286

Wolves career totals

113Games 1,180Points 444Rebounds 233Assists 106Steals

Franchise ranks

• 1st First jersey number ever retired by the Timberwolves (No. 2)
• Only Retired number in the rafters for 26 years, until Garnett’s No. 21

Per franchise history and the Basketball-Reference record.

Accolades

• No. 2 retired by the Minnesota Timberwolves (2000)
• Consensus second-team All-American, 1992 (St. John’s)
• 2× first-team All-Big East (1991, 1992)
• 2× Haggerty Award winner (1991, 1992)
• McDonald’s All-American and Mr. New York Basketball, 1988

Lore

The banked three on MLK Day. On January 17, 2000, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Wolves trailed the Finals-bound Pacers by ten in the fourth quarter and by 100-98 after Mark Jackson’s short jumper with 1.7 seconds left. The play was called “Last Shot”: Sealy was supposed to inbound the ball to Sam Mitchell, but sensing Mitchell was cold off the bench, he took the shot himself and let Mitchell throw it in. Sealy caught it on the left wing, rose over a recovering Jalen Rose, and banked a three at the buzzer for a 101-100 win. It was the only three-pointer Minnesota made all night, a lone make in six attempts, and it fell at the buzzer. Garnett had scored a career-high 37, fifteen of them in the fourth quarter. The moment survives in the disbelieving broadcast call — “Oh, he did it! Minnesota wins!” — because everything that came after made it unbearably precious.

Silk off the court. Sealy was more than a hooper. He acted, playing a starring role opposite Whoopi Goldberg as “Stacey Patton” in the 1996 film Eddie, and turned up on The Sentinel and Diagnosis: Murder. He designed neckwear and clothing under his own label, Malik Sealy XXI, Inc. He was, by every account, exactly as elegant off the floor as his nickname promised.

May 20, 2000. In the early morning after Kevin Garnett’s birthday party in downtown Minneapolis, Sealy was driving home when a pickup truck traveling the wrong way on Highway 100 struck his SUV in St. Louis Park. He was killed instantly; the other driver was drunk, with a blood-alcohol level nearly twice the legal limit, and later served time for the crash. Sealy was 30. He left a wife and a young son, and a franchise that has never quite gotten over it.

Garnett carried him everywhere. The grief reshaped Garnett’s career into a tribute. He inked “2MALIK” inside his signature shoes, tattooed his friend’s name on his arm, and when he was traded to Brooklyn in 2013 he changed his own number to 2 — the number he could never wear in Minnesota because it already belonged, forever, to Malik. When KG came home in 2015, he wore a No. 2 sweatband to do it.

The only number in the rafters. The Timberwolves retired Sealy’s No. 2 in the wake of his death — the first jersey the franchise ever raised, and for more than two decades the only one. That solitude was fitting and heartbreaking in equal measure: a good man, a good teammate, honored alone. Now Garnett’s No. 21 is set to join it during the 2026-27 season, which means the two best friends will hang side by side in the rafters, exactly as they were in life.

Silk hangs alone no longer — and the number 2 will never come down.