Garnett has Stories

2020

Kevin Garnett has always had the stories, yet he was never a storyteller. He catalogued all of his NBA experiences throughout his 21-year career, some harrowing, some hilarious, some motivating, and has decided to reveal those tales, his innermost thoughts, turning himself into a sage and a comedian.



Garnett has signed with Showtime Basketball, becoming one of the faces of the network's growing sports division. And although Garnett did so much talking on the floor - most of those words were not for a family newspaper - he didn't talk much off the floor. Garnett was guarded and limited with the media, but he is making up for lost time in a recent set of interviews.

The reluctance to talk about himself has dissipated and he is becoming as brash away from the game as he was in the game.

"For people who don't know me, I'm not big on myself," he said during All-Star Weekend in Chicago. "You're not going to hear me talk about too much. But if you ask me a question about something, I feel like I've damn near got a story for everything."

Garnett's first story for Showtime will discuss his decision to jump from Farragut Career Academy in Chicago to the NBA in 1995, the first player since Bill Willoughby two decades earlier to make the jump. Kobe Bryant and Jermaine O'Neal made the leap in 1996 and dozens followed over the next decade until the NBA implemented the one-and-done rule.

"How did we get here in 2020? Let me take y'all on an educational trip on how we got here by the decisions made all up into this point," he said. "Let's go all the way back to 1995."

Of course, in Boston, Garnett will always be the head of the new Big Three with Paul Pierce and Ray Allen , leading the Celtics to the 2008 championship and Game 7 of the 2010 Finals. Like the preps-to-pros trend, Garnett helped start the Super Team trend, but he points out Super Teams were popular in the 1980s, they just didn't have the moniker attached.

"It helped to have three superstars. It helped to have these guys, but what you don't know is a lot of those teams were high-IQ teams," Garnett said. "Those guys had guys like Dennis Johnson , a bunch of guys that just made up great teams. I would say we revived it, if you will, but Boston kind of changed the scope a little bit.

"I controlled my movement to the point where I wanted to make decisions like that that weren't detrimental to my career. Super teams have been going on since I made that decision."

Garnett earned $343 million in basketball salary. He was a 15-time All-Star, won an MVP, and was the Defensive Player of the Year. He walked away as one of the greatest power forwards and leaders in league history. There are no regrets.

"I'm not jealous about anything," said Garnett, now 43. "I killed the league. I got killed. I had a great experience. This has been like a fantasy ride. To top it with a Hall of Fame nomination is over my head. But I will say I'm a fan of how the players control their movement. That's important.

"I like that players have their whole brand. I'm just a fan. I watch. The brand of basketball now is different than the brand of basketball I played, but I'm just respecting it."

Looking back 25 years later, Garnett discussed a pre-draft workout as the impetus for his sparking career. Since he was still in high school, Garnett couldn't travel for workouts. He had his workouts in Chicago and he remembers Pat Riley - who, that offseason, would leave the Knicks for the Heat - shaking his head in confusion as to why he was watching an 18-year-old skinny kid work out.

"You could feel the owners and the GMs did not want to be in there," Garnett said. "If anything it made me nervous. I had never worked out in front of anybody professionally. I heard Pat Riley like, 'Gosh, why am I here?' And when I heard that I lost it. I forgot everything and the nerves went away and I attacked steel with steel."

And what was the key to Garnett flourishing in the NBA? He said it was those early workouts with then-Minnesota GM Kevin McHale , who was critical to Garnett's success and then made the franchise-changing decision to trade him to Boston.

"The stuff I had been working on with Kevin McHale, I wasn't necessarily strong enough to get it off," he said. "Mac was huge on these moves and he had these huge, wide shoulders and if you don't have these shoulders, you couldn't pull it off. Those two or three moves, I got confidence in them, my speed, my jumping ability. I started figuring out how to use it for me. I started seeing people weren't in great shape and I started running and using my youthfulness and I was dunking everything. I'm not laying nothing up. I'm putting it on your head.

"That Pat Riley thing stayed in my head and I played on it. That's when I knew I belonged."

Hall of fame

Sadness pervades the preparation

The Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame announced its finalists for the 2020 class and, as expected, Tim Duncan , Kevin Garnett , and Kobe Bryant were among those who advanced to the final round. They are a cinch to be elected. Although this class was expected for the past few years, it takes a more solemn direction with Bryant's tragic passing.

What's more, the Naismith Hall of Fame has never dealt with a first-ballot inductee dying before his ceremony. Bryant was killed in a Jan. 26 helicopter crash in Calabasas, Calif., along with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others.

The Aug. 29 induction ceremony could draw a record crowd, considering the number of current players, former players, and fans who will attend to support Bryant, Duncan, and Garnett. Naismith Hall of Fame CEO John Doleva told the Globe the ceremony will remain in Springfield's Symphony Hall, which has a capacity of 2,400.

There was a brief discussion about moving the event to the MassMutual Center (capacity 7,000), but the Hall of Fame wants to retain the event's intimacy. "You go from 2,400 to 7,000, it gets a little impersonal," Doleva said.

The Hall of Fame is considering a special observance during induction weekend that would allow people to honor Bryant. What could have been perhaps the biggest and most celebratory weekend in the hall's induction history could instead serve as one final basketball farewell to Bryant.

"This is unprecedented," he said. "This is evolving even as we speak in terms of what will be the attendance and what the [Bryant] family wants. We will wait and see and go with the speed they're ready to go at. The rest of the class is phenomenal finalists.

"It's going to be an evolving summer. It's a little bit different. We've inducted people posthumously, but they have been people 70 or 80 years old after their careers. This has been such an upsetting surprise and we want to make sure we're going to do it right. We're not going to rush our decision."

Naismith Hall of Fame chairman Jerry Colangelo said a final decision on how the ceremony will be constructed won't occur for another few months. "We're talking a great deal about it, but we haven't concluded anything," he said.

"Because of what you've just said, it's got to be handled in a very delicate manner and that's our intention, that's our plan and we'll have a game plan before we're ready."
Colangelo is hoping the tragedy of Bryant's passing won't overshadow the celebration and the other inductees. That will be difficult. "It's something that's going to take a long time but time has a way of healing," he said.

"It's a tragic loss but we will live. There's a void. Everyone feels a loss of Kobe, family, friends, the people close to him, the world of basketball."
"People in general. It takes something away and our jobs is to try to vent that off as much as we can in honor to all the other people who are going to be elected to the Hall of Fame.

"It will be more difficult without Kobe being here, but we'll do our best."

Figuring degree of difficulty

A few months ago, Celtics coach Brad Stevens reached out to newly hired Cavaliers coach John Beilein and the two exchanged ideas about making the transition from college to the NBA. Stevens said he had no question Beilein, coming from Michigan, would succeed despite being a first-time coach. Well 54 games into his tenure, the 67-year-old Beilein resigned, leaving the job to J.B. Bickerstaff after a miserable tenure. It was evident from the start that Beilein had trouble relating to his younger players - who were not college players, but millionaires - and he had trouble trying to figure out what the organization was exactly doing. The Cavaliers are in the beginning of a rebuild, but also have Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson on the roster making a combined $48 million. And they were unable to move either player before the trade deadline. Beilein was a bad fit for the Cavaliers, but it's also a bad job at this point. The Cavaliers have amassed young talent, but Collin Sexton , Darius Garland , and Kevin Porter have not developed into franchise-changing players, so Bickerstaff (or the next permanent coach) will lead a team that appears directionless . . . Two names to watch in the potential buyout market: Phoenix center Aron Baynes and Charlotte center Bismack Biyombo . Baynes is an impending free agent who has missed the past month with a hip injury. He could prove to be a valuable backup center for a playoff-caliber team. The Suns were in playoff contention a month ago but have lost 10 of 14 entering Saturday, and were six games behind the Grizzlies for the eighth playoff spot in the Western Conference. The Suns have already bought out guard Tyler Johnson and may want to clear more playing time for less-established players as they prepare for another season without the playoffs. The Hornets have already bought out Marvin Williams and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist as they look to clear the decks for a chase at a major free agent this summer. The Hornets are headed nowhere, and Biyombo could serve as a capable defender and pick-and-roll center for a contender.