Marc Jackson spent the first four months of the 2001-02 NBA season mostly sitting on the Golden State Warriors' bench.

All that changed, however, when the Warriors finally dealt him to the Timberwolves at the league's trading deadline Feb. 21.

Now Jackson mostly sits on the Wolves' bench.

It wasn't supposed to work out this way, but when the big man returned to The Arena in Oakland Monday night, only his designated chair seemed to have changed. Jackson left Golden State in a bad mood, unhappy that they matched his free-agent offer from Houston last summer, then rarely used him while waiting for the right trade offer.

Yet Jackson barely has been playing for the Wolves. He missed Saturday's game against Phoenix because of the flu, but it was a sign of how far he had fallen from the team's rotation that almost no one noticed.

Sick or healthy, Jackson hadn't played in five of the Wolves' previous six games heading into the Golden State contest. And in his 10 most recent outings, he averaged 2.8 points on 33 percent shooting with 2.7 rebounds.

In a perfect world, Jackson would have returned to face the Warriors as an impact player, averaging about 18 points and 10 rebounds, and jauntily waved at his former teammates as he barreled toward the playoffs.

Instead, he got in for five minutes of the first half, scored four points with three rebounds against his old club, then got ejected for committing a flagrant-2 foul on Warriors guard Bobby Sura at 8:07 of the second quarter.

So much for a perfect world.