IWasntMadeToPlayTheSon
Mutant Mindframe
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...-kevin-garnett-the-player-who-changed-the-nba
A Man in Full: An Oral History of Kevin Garnett, the Player Who Changed the NBA
By Howard Beck, NBA Senior Writer May 18, 2015
They had come to see a prospect, a teenager who stood nearly seven feet, with the wingspan of a prehistoric bird, who ran like a cheetah and leaped like a gazelle. He looked like a center, but moved like a point guard. Gangly, yet graceful. He could pass and run and shoot. He could guard all five positions.
Until that day, no one had ever seen anything quite like him. Before them stood a basketball player for a new age: Kevin Garnett, The First of His Kind.
Here was a big man who could rise to defend the rim, grab the rebound, lead the fast break and dunk at the other end.
Here was a high school student daring to turn pro, at a time when the draft was strictly populated by collegians.
Here was an audacious, uniquely skilled young man who would, quite literally, change the NBA forever.
The preps-to-pros trend? Garnett started it. The age limit? Garnett indirectly triggered it. The max contract? The five-year rookie scale? The 1998-99 lockout? All were influenced by Garnett's then-infamous $126 million contract.
The perpetual search for lanky, long-limbed, uber-athletes who can swing from the paint to the perimeter—Darius Miles, Stromile Swift, Anthony Randolph—effectively began with Garnett, 20 years ago.
As Garnett's brilliant career quietly winds down back where it all began, in Minnesota—after stops in Boston and Brooklyn—it seems like the right time to reflect on one of the most unique figures ever to grace the NBA.
B/R spoke to more than 40 people who played or worked with Garnett over the course of his basketball life for a two-part oral history of a unique NBA career.
It's easy to forget now—in an era dominated by versatile, physical freaks like LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Anthony Davis, in an era of positionless basketball, where 7-footers shoot threes and freely roam the court—but basketball was, not long ago, seen through a much narrower prism.
Dale Tait/Getty Images
Power forwards were bruisers like Charles Oakley. Seven-footers like Hakeem Olajuwon lived in the paint. The long-range shooting and ball-handling were left to the little guys. The NBA in 1995 was ruled by muscular inside scorers—Olajuwon, Shaquille O'Neal, David Robinson, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley.
Then along came this spindly, fiery 19-year-old with the height of O'Neal and the grace of Scottie Pippen.
"I think back then, you started to think about how big, how tall these guys were with those skills, and is that going to be the norm?" Gregg Popovich says, recalling Garnett's arrival. "Are we going to have more guys like this come along that can do that? That's what I thought of when I first saw him. It was incredible."
Others would soon stretch our imaginations and definitions—Dirk Nowitzki, Rasheed Wallace and eventually James—but none who were quite like Garnett.
"He was that new-generation, transcendent player at the time," says Paul Pierce, who played against and later with Garnett. "Because nobody saw nothing like that, the combination of speed, athletic ability, versatility at the time. He was the first."
Today, no one blinks when Chris Bosh steps out to shoot a three-pointer, or DeMarcus Cousins pushes the ball in transition. We marvel at Durant and Davis, but Garnett was the prototype, their historical forebear.
"He was kind of the first freak athlete like that, that could move and run and do all those things," says Toronto coach Dwane Casey.
"He revolutionized the sport," Bosh, the Miami Heat star, says of Garnett, without hyperbole. "He was a young fella, being an All-Star, taking the rebound and pushing it down court and finishing with a dunk. I had never seen that before. So I was like, 'If I want to be in the NBA, I've got to do that.' "
Garnett turns 39 Tuesday, and though his ferocity has not faded, his skills most surely have. He may play another season or two, but he has likely played his last truly meaningful game.
Yet Garnett has left an indelible mark—as a pioneer and a prototype, a trash-talker and a barrier-smasher, a leader Kobe Bryant, Jermaine O'Neal and Taj McDavid followed Garnett's lead. The trend reached its peak in 2001, with three of the top four draft picks coming straight from high school, including Kwame Brown, the first preps star to be taken No. 1. Two more preps stars would eventually go No. 1: LeBron James in 2003 and Dwight Howard in 2004.
While Garnett, Bryant and Tracy McGrady became superstars, many others washed out, driving league officials to seek a policy change. In 2005, the NBA—with the consent of the players association—adopted a rule requiring all draft entrants to be at least 19 years old and a year removed from high school. All told, 38 players made the preps-to-pros leap in the 10 years following Garnett's entry.
Russ Granik, NBA deputy commissioner 1990-2006: Back when Kevin did it, I think it was looked at as just an anomaly. … I don't think people thought that one player doing this was going to change anything. We hadn't seen a player do it for [20 years]. So he might have been the only one to come in the next 15 years.
John Nash: I think [Garnett and Bryant] coming back to back, and having the success that they had, probably convinced everybody that if they were good enough, they could do it.
Sonny Vaccaro, former sneaker company executive: He may or may not admit to this, but he was going to go to Michigan. The Fab Five guys, that whole era, Juwan Howard being from Chicago—I would've bet a million dollars that's what he was going to do. [But then] I started hearing rumors that he would be drafted high, but [teams] didn't specifically say they would take him.
I said, "Kevin, if you can’t play, if you screw up, you're still going to get $15 million. God forbid if something happened to you in college, you're not getting anything." He said, "Mr. Vaccaro, do you think I'll get drafted?"
I told him I didn’t know for sure, but, and I'm paraphrasing—"Kevin, you will not go below 10th in the draft."
Paul Pierce, Washington Wizards forward (formerly with the Nets and Celtics): He opened the floodgates. There are a lot of guys who are in the league because of that. Who knows if we have Lakers Kobe or LeBron James, these guys out of high school, if it wasn't for Kevin Garnett.
ED BETZ/Associated Press
LeBron James, No. 1 pick in 2003: For myself, KG and Kobe, they set the tone on guys coming straight to the league at that era, in the '90s where it was not the thing to do. In KG's fashion, for him being an 18-year-old kid…to do the things that he did, it was a positive reinforcement when I got to my decision time, that I could do it.
Russ Granik: It got to point where if a high school player didn't come out directly to the NBA, it was almost like he was acknowledging he wasn't a top-tier player. And that really became part of the problem.
Jonathan Abrams, author of Boys Among Men: How the Prep to Pro Generation Redefined the NBA and Sparked a Basketball Revolution, due out in 2016: I think Kevin Garnett made it almost look a little too easy. He had his growing pains at the beginning, but he really flourished in his second season, so it put it into the heads of a lot of these other guys, that 'Hey, Kevin Garnett did this; maybe I can, too.' But I don't think they really saw the behind-the-scenes work that a young Kevin Garnett really put into his game, and also the veteran leadership that he had on that team, with a guy like Sam Mitchell.
Paul Pierce: After that draft, you noticed that everybody wanted the next Kevin Garnett. They were looking for the tall, skinny kid, who was fast, athletic and trying to bill him as a Kevin Garnett. Guys like Darius Miles, Stromile Swift, Brandan Wright. Keon Clark.…We got these tall, skinny, athletic guys, who are fast, get up and down the court, maybe we can turn them into the next Kevin Garnett. So that's when the draft changed from being full-grown and proven, to OK, this guy has potential, he can be the next Garnett.
Jonathan Abrams: [NBA officials] thought that a couple failures would kind of correct the system, and kids wouldn't jump out of high school. So they weren't that concerned when Garnett originally came out about an influx of high-schoolers applying for the draft in subsequent seasons.
Juan Ocampo/Getty Images
Russ Granik: The problem was when it became much, much more widespread, it became awful hard to evaluate talent. I think that really pushed the league to fight so hard for at least one year out of high school, as the draft eligibility. That one, I really do attribute to [Garnett].
Ron Klempner, NBPA general counsel: [Garnett] was one of the first, and certainly one of the highest profile. I would say that it added to the discussion [of an age limit]. But considering the removal of time, I'm not sure how big of a part it was.Zach Randolph, NBA forward, 2001-present: We're always trash talking. I fouled him when I played for Portland—he was playing for Minnesota—he fell, but then did five push-ups in a row before he got up.
Chris Bosh, NBA forward, 2003-present: Usually I don't talk back, but if he said something to me, I said something back. I had just a terrible game for me (against the Celtics in the 2011 playoffs). He got me all off my game. He scored, like, four times in a row on me in the crunch. And I was so embarrassed and so upset, and he got in my head. Ever since that day, I never said anything else.
Jose Calderon: Everything started because I switched (onto Garnett on defense) once, and I contested one of his shots. And he made it. So he was kind of happy about it. So we went at each other.…The next possession he comes back and he's like, 'OK, let's do it again.'…I think after that, he looked at me differently, like, I stood up to him or whatever. After that, we have [had] a great relationship.
Danny Ainge, Celtics GM: He's so competitive that he wanted to win that scrimmage in practice, and he wanted his players to be able to talk through the trash. It was real. It wasn't just some sort of contrived test on his players. He genuinely wanted to compete and he wanted to win in practice, and he was not afraid of challenging his players and talking trash to them and getting them fired up.
Charles Krupa/Associated Press
Tony Allen, Celtics teammate, 2007-10: (In practice), I'd make a shot, he'd be like, some explicit version of 'Do it again! Bring that (bleep) in here again!' Or they'll score, they'll make a run and he'll scream, out something like, 'I'm not good, I'm great!' His motor just never stops.
Paul Pierce: One time, he asked [Joakim] Noah if he could rub through his hair, like a female or something.…And I know that kind of made [Noah] hot. And this was when Noah was a rookie, too. I remember Noah looked up to KG. He was like, 'Man, KG, I had your poster on my wall, I looked up to you, man.' And then [Garnett] just said something like that, and was like 'F--- you, Noah.' I was like, 'Whoa.' This kid fresh out of college, looks up to KG, just said he had his poster on the wall, and he tells him that! It crushed him. It crushed Noah.
Kendrick Perkins, Celtics teammates 2007-11: He definitely has the best punch lines in the NBA, as far as talking goes. You don't really want to wrassle with Ticket. He got the best vocab, for sure.
Paul Pierce, recalling a light moment between himself (then with Boston) and Garnett (then with Minnesota): We were both on losing teams at this point. This is probably around the last week of the season. We're talking (trash) at the free-throw line. I'm like, 'Man, everybody needs to shut up, because we all going to the Bahamas next week.' And as intense as he was, he had to look up and just start laughing.…I said, 'I'm going to Cancun. Where are you going, Ticket?' He said, 'I'm going to St. Lucia.'
A Man in Full: An Oral History of Kevin Garnett, the Player Who Changed the NBA
By Howard Beck, NBA Senior Writer May 18, 2015
They had come to see a prospect, a teenager who stood nearly seven feet, with the wingspan of a prehistoric bird, who ran like a cheetah and leaped like a gazelle. He looked like a center, but moved like a point guard. Gangly, yet graceful. He could pass and run and shoot. He could guard all five positions.
Until that day, no one had ever seen anything quite like him. Before them stood a basketball player for a new age: Kevin Garnett, The First of His Kind.
Here was a big man who could rise to defend the rim, grab the rebound, lead the fast break and dunk at the other end.
Here was a high school student daring to turn pro, at a time when the draft was strictly populated by collegians.
Here was an audacious, uniquely skilled young man who would, quite literally, change the NBA forever.
The preps-to-pros trend? Garnett started it. The age limit? Garnett indirectly triggered it. The max contract? The five-year rookie scale? The 1998-99 lockout? All were influenced by Garnett's then-infamous $126 million contract.
The perpetual search for lanky, long-limbed, uber-athletes who can swing from the paint to the perimeter—Darius Miles, Stromile Swift, Anthony Randolph—effectively began with Garnett, 20 years ago.
As Garnett's brilliant career quietly winds down back where it all began, in Minnesota—after stops in Boston and Brooklyn—it seems like the right time to reflect on one of the most unique figures ever to grace the NBA.
B/R spoke to more than 40 people who played or worked with Garnett over the course of his basketball life for a two-part oral history of a unique NBA career.
It's easy to forget now—in an era dominated by versatile, physical freaks like LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Anthony Davis, in an era of positionless basketball, where 7-footers shoot threes and freely roam the court—but basketball was, not long ago, seen through a much narrower prism.
Dale Tait/Getty Images
Power forwards were bruisers like Charles Oakley. Seven-footers like Hakeem Olajuwon lived in the paint. The long-range shooting and ball-handling were left to the little guys. The NBA in 1995 was ruled by muscular inside scorers—Olajuwon, Shaquille O'Neal, David Robinson, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley.
Then along came this spindly, fiery 19-year-old with the height of O'Neal and the grace of Scottie Pippen.
"I think back then, you started to think about how big, how tall these guys were with those skills, and is that going to be the norm?" Gregg Popovich says, recalling Garnett's arrival. "Are we going to have more guys like this come along that can do that? That's what I thought of when I first saw him. It was incredible."
Others would soon stretch our imaginations and definitions—Dirk Nowitzki, Rasheed Wallace and eventually James—but none who were quite like Garnett.
"He was that new-generation, transcendent player at the time," says Paul Pierce, who played against and later with Garnett. "Because nobody saw nothing like that, the combination of speed, athletic ability, versatility at the time. He was the first."
Today, no one blinks when Chris Bosh steps out to shoot a three-pointer, or DeMarcus Cousins pushes the ball in transition. We marvel at Durant and Davis, but Garnett was the prototype, their historical forebear.
"He was kind of the first freak athlete like that, that could move and run and do all those things," says Toronto coach Dwane Casey.
"He revolutionized the sport," Bosh, the Miami Heat star, says of Garnett, without hyperbole. "He was a young fella, being an All-Star, taking the rebound and pushing it down court and finishing with a dunk. I had never seen that before. So I was like, 'If I want to be in the NBA, I've got to do that.' "
Garnett turns 39 Tuesday, and though his ferocity has not faded, his skills most surely have. He may play another season or two, but he has likely played his last truly meaningful game.
Yet Garnett has left an indelible mark—as a pioneer and a prototype, a trash-talker and a barrier-smasher, a leader Kobe Bryant, Jermaine O'Neal and Taj McDavid followed Garnett's lead. The trend reached its peak in 2001, with three of the top four draft picks coming straight from high school, including Kwame Brown, the first preps star to be taken No. 1. Two more preps stars would eventually go No. 1: LeBron James in 2003 and Dwight Howard in 2004.
While Garnett, Bryant and Tracy McGrady became superstars, many others washed out, driving league officials to seek a policy change. In 2005, the NBA—with the consent of the players association—adopted a rule requiring all draft entrants to be at least 19 years old and a year removed from high school. All told, 38 players made the preps-to-pros leap in the 10 years following Garnett's entry.
Russ Granik, NBA deputy commissioner 1990-2006: Back when Kevin did it, I think it was looked at as just an anomaly. … I don't think people thought that one player doing this was going to change anything. We hadn't seen a player do it for [20 years]. So he might have been the only one to come in the next 15 years.
John Nash: I think [Garnett and Bryant] coming back to back, and having the success that they had, probably convinced everybody that if they were good enough, they could do it.
Sonny Vaccaro, former sneaker company executive: He may or may not admit to this, but he was going to go to Michigan. The Fab Five guys, that whole era, Juwan Howard being from Chicago—I would've bet a million dollars that's what he was going to do. [But then] I started hearing rumors that he would be drafted high, but [teams] didn't specifically say they would take him.
I said, "Kevin, if you can’t play, if you screw up, you're still going to get $15 million. God forbid if something happened to you in college, you're not getting anything." He said, "Mr. Vaccaro, do you think I'll get drafted?"
I told him I didn’t know for sure, but, and I'm paraphrasing—"Kevin, you will not go below 10th in the draft."
Paul Pierce, Washington Wizards forward (formerly with the Nets and Celtics): He opened the floodgates. There are a lot of guys who are in the league because of that. Who knows if we have Lakers Kobe or LeBron James, these guys out of high school, if it wasn't for Kevin Garnett.
ED BETZ/Associated Press
LeBron James, No. 1 pick in 2003: For myself, KG and Kobe, they set the tone on guys coming straight to the league at that era, in the '90s where it was not the thing to do. In KG's fashion, for him being an 18-year-old kid…to do the things that he did, it was a positive reinforcement when I got to my decision time, that I could do it.
Russ Granik: It got to point where if a high school player didn't come out directly to the NBA, it was almost like he was acknowledging he wasn't a top-tier player. And that really became part of the problem.
Jonathan Abrams, author of Boys Among Men: How the Prep to Pro Generation Redefined the NBA and Sparked a Basketball Revolution, due out in 2016: I think Kevin Garnett made it almost look a little too easy. He had his growing pains at the beginning, but he really flourished in his second season, so it put it into the heads of a lot of these other guys, that 'Hey, Kevin Garnett did this; maybe I can, too.' But I don't think they really saw the behind-the-scenes work that a young Kevin Garnett really put into his game, and also the veteran leadership that he had on that team, with a guy like Sam Mitchell.
Paul Pierce: After that draft, you noticed that everybody wanted the next Kevin Garnett. They were looking for the tall, skinny kid, who was fast, athletic and trying to bill him as a Kevin Garnett. Guys like Darius Miles, Stromile Swift, Brandan Wright. Keon Clark.…We got these tall, skinny, athletic guys, who are fast, get up and down the court, maybe we can turn them into the next Kevin Garnett. So that's when the draft changed from being full-grown and proven, to OK, this guy has potential, he can be the next Garnett.
Jonathan Abrams: [NBA officials] thought that a couple failures would kind of correct the system, and kids wouldn't jump out of high school. So they weren't that concerned when Garnett originally came out about an influx of high-schoolers applying for the draft in subsequent seasons.
Juan Ocampo/Getty Images
Russ Granik: The problem was when it became much, much more widespread, it became awful hard to evaluate talent. I think that really pushed the league to fight so hard for at least one year out of high school, as the draft eligibility. That one, I really do attribute to [Garnett].
Ron Klempner, NBPA general counsel: [Garnett] was one of the first, and certainly one of the highest profile. I would say that it added to the discussion [of an age limit]. But considering the removal of time, I'm not sure how big of a part it was.Zach Randolph, NBA forward, 2001-present: We're always trash talking. I fouled him when I played for Portland—he was playing for Minnesota—he fell, but then did five push-ups in a row before he got up.
Chris Bosh, NBA forward, 2003-present: Usually I don't talk back, but if he said something to me, I said something back. I had just a terrible game for me (against the Celtics in the 2011 playoffs). He got me all off my game. He scored, like, four times in a row on me in the crunch. And I was so embarrassed and so upset, and he got in my head. Ever since that day, I never said anything else.
Jose Calderon: Everything started because I switched (onto Garnett on defense) once, and I contested one of his shots. And he made it. So he was kind of happy about it. So we went at each other.…The next possession he comes back and he's like, 'OK, let's do it again.'…I think after that, he looked at me differently, like, I stood up to him or whatever. After that, we have [had] a great relationship.
Danny Ainge, Celtics GM: He's so competitive that he wanted to win that scrimmage in practice, and he wanted his players to be able to talk through the trash. It was real. It wasn't just some sort of contrived test on his players. He genuinely wanted to compete and he wanted to win in practice, and he was not afraid of challenging his players and talking trash to them and getting them fired up.
Charles Krupa/Associated Press
Tony Allen, Celtics teammate, 2007-10: (In practice), I'd make a shot, he'd be like, some explicit version of 'Do it again! Bring that (bleep) in here again!' Or they'll score, they'll make a run and he'll scream, out something like, 'I'm not good, I'm great!' His motor just never stops.
Paul Pierce: One time, he asked [Joakim] Noah if he could rub through his hair, like a female or something.…And I know that kind of made [Noah] hot. And this was when Noah was a rookie, too. I remember Noah looked up to KG. He was like, 'Man, KG, I had your poster on my wall, I looked up to you, man.' And then [Garnett] just said something like that, and was like 'F--- you, Noah.' I was like, 'Whoa.' This kid fresh out of college, looks up to KG, just said he had his poster on the wall, and he tells him that! It crushed him. It crushed Noah.
Kendrick Perkins, Celtics teammates 2007-11: He definitely has the best punch lines in the NBA, as far as talking goes. You don't really want to wrassle with Ticket. He got the best vocab, for sure.
Paul Pierce, recalling a light moment between himself (then with Boston) and Garnett (then with Minnesota): We were both on losing teams at this point. This is probably around the last week of the season. We're talking (trash) at the free-throw line. I'm like, 'Man, everybody needs to shut up, because we all going to the Bahamas next week.' And as intense as he was, he had to look up and just start laughing.…I said, 'I'm going to Cancun. Where are you going, Ticket?' He said, 'I'm going to St. Lucia.'
soulcrushing
Like he's some goon or some sh!t 
