A huge, wonderfully-entertaining oral history of Kevin Garnett’s remarkable 20-year career has been published over at Bleacher Report and it is well worth your time.
Highlights include a look-back at KG entering the NBA straight from high school, his infamous $126 million contract that forever altered the L’s financial landscape, a near-trade to the Los Angeles Lakers and plenty of other fun anecdotes.
The best Garnett story is told by Tyronn Lue, who reveals that the 39-year old future Hall of Famer is insanely intense even when watching crappy reality television.
Sam Mitchell, Timberwolves teammate, 1995-2002: “We were running sprints after practice. He outran every guard, outran every small forward and every big guy. He wanted to win at everything that he did. Every drill, he wanted to win. And it was the first day. … The first thing I thought about was, ‘Hell, how am I gonna score against this guy every day in practice?'”
Flip Saunders: “Great memory—remembers everything. There have been times where he’s remembered scouting reports from six years ago. We always had a fine system for [not returning] scouting reports. In his first few years, he used to just pay all the fines up front, because he would keep the scouting reports to study them in the offseason. […] He’s guarded Michael [Jordan] at times. He’s guarded Karl Malone. He’s guarded Shaquille [O’Neal]. He’s guarded point guards, Kevin Johnson, [Steve] Nash, [Stephon] Marbury. You just pick the All-Stars, at some point he was going to be matched up on all those guys and guard them all. There have been times when he’s guarded all five positions in the same game.”
Tyronn Lue, longtime friend of Garnett’s, Cavaliers assistant coach: “The proudest moment for me was when he won that championship, and I got a chance to see his emotions and how he reacted. It was the best thing for me. […] A lot of people do all their howling on the court and they’re faking just for attention, but what he does is genuine. So one day we were at his house and we were watching Puff Daddy’s show Making the Band, and in one of the scenes, some new guys came in and were trying to sing and were trying to compete against the guys who had been there. And KG just got so hyped, ‘Motherf—-r, you’ve got to stand up for yours! You’ve got to fight! Motherf—-r, you’ve got to come together!’ He’s going crazy, he’s sweaty. And he just head butts the wall and put a hole in the wall of his house.”
