Kevin Garnett ESPN SportsCentury | KG's Documentary 🐐

i don't believe it phelan is at the bottom for the big differences [Applause] is hello i'm chris fowler for sport century he was a willowy 6 feet 11 and he covered the basketball court like spiderman picked fifth the 1995 draft by the minnesota timberwolves kevin garnett did what hadn't been done in a generation he went straight from high school to the nba as we'll see in the next hour his passage opened the floodgates and transformed the league [Music] i'd like to thank all you for attending my first conference today as you all know may 10th i declare myself eligible for the nba draft i made my decision to declare myself further do i have to keep all my options open i'm an ultra purist and i was appalled that anyone was going to do this and i was also smug enough and competent to assume that he would be a ridiculous failure i was in chicago my hometown on vacation and i get this call from my office saying kevin garnett is going to turn pro i'm like what you mean this is more than a rumor i thought it was insane completely insane he was in st louis for the mcdonald's game earlier in the week and i talked to him on the phone and he was dead tired i said this is an indication that this kid's not ready how is his 218 pound body going to hold up to an nba season if he's wiped out at the end of a 30-game high school season the pressures of life on the road the pressures of playing an intense number of games in a short period of time sort of the physical emotional stress issues i would think a high school kid is particularly vulnerable it's probably going to come in slow it's probably not going to be effective ailing crying just you know young being young i went through four years of college at the university of notre dame and i didn't feel like i was adequately prepared to come into the nba so i couldn't imagine what it must have been like for an 18 year old and so i went from curiosity initially just to just flat out concern when kevin garnett entered the froze straight out of high school he joined the likes of moses malone daryl dawkins and bill willoughby all of whom took the plunge in the mid-1970s i thought it was great it had been 20 years since it was done i just was hoping that he didn't have to go through some of the rough times that i did bob feller came into the big leagues at 17 and was throwing strikes by the yankees so perhaps kevin made a good decision and they could go through maybe get his degree in the off-season we pursue our dreams in the united states i found some of this criticism to be a bit subliminally racist a white kid in a rock and roll band may go off to hollywood at age 18 to seek fame and fortune i don't see people all up in arms over that why shouldn't this kid have the opportunity to do this besides a few homemade videotapes sent to some pro scouts by his high school coach kevin garnett was just a blip on the nba's radar screen but that changed in june of 1995 when his agent eric fleisher arranged a workout for the 13 teams with the highest draft picks i was nervous because i didn't know what to expect and i didn't know how this was going to go i'm in chicago during an individual workout it's like uh whoa this is this guy is the real deal oh my god i said hey let's see him dribble down down the back right hand let's see your hook let's see your left hook see your running hook see your left running hook let's see you go up touch the box two hands and come back down touch it again so he takes the basketball from the stand so he jumps up he touches the ball boom on the block saying you know what let's see doing another side and that'll be the end of the workout so i went up smacked the glass and i came back and i turned back without smacking it and i just screamed [Music] thank you walked out i saw this unbelievably pterodactyl type player that was already incredibly skilled and mobile and athletic way handled the ball the way he shot the way he he moved with the ball i mean i went from going in there thinking i'm not gonna i'm not gonna take the kid just you know we'll go watch the workout to thinking damn i think i will take that kid if he's available that's pretty amazing they walked out of that workout saying we're not telling anybody about this if anybody asks you know we're not we're not interested in this kid but this is our guy we were drafted the same class and they throw this high school kid in there they're like yeah they think he's gonna be a first rounder like two weeks later hey they're saying this kid's gonna go in the top 15 and like two weeks later like hey this kid's gonna be a lottery pick but he's gonna be like top seven now if we get the worst david stern and they sound so gorgeous coming out of his mouth with the fifth pick with the fifth pick in the 1995 nba draft the minnesota tim will select kevin garnett from farragut academy in chicago and they called and i was like oh don't put my head on when was crying i see my sister she all emotional and aligned with the crowd happy the one thing that the nba will draft is size and size with skill goes faster kevin mchale picked it out almost right away is it quinn all i know is he can catch you can dribble and shoot he's seven feet tall and he can run like a gazelle i've never seen anything like that for all his size and athleticism the 19 year old rookie was not an immediate sensation as he ran the full gambit of nba fire i was at a lakers timberwolves preseason game cedric zabalos turned around thunk in kevin garnett's face and jogged up the court for all of us to hear loud and clear not ready i think he felt awkward hanging out i remember one time like five or six guys and invited him he finally said okay i'll come out and they asked for ids at a restaurant you know and we weren't even drinking but you could kind of see his face like odd see this is why i don't go out because i knew this was going to happen he got tested a lot by the the veteran players chasing down a loose ball across the baseline doug west kind of banged garnett into the the stands garnett got a little bit ticked off about the whole thing i'm not really you know blurbing out but i'm i'm ready for action i ain't running about basketball i'm ready i'm ready to fight i mean we kind of beat him up a little bit but we do that with a lot of rookies every rookie you got to find out what they're made of and especially about him being a high school guy we had to find out sam mitchell he called garnett's room up and to tell this guy look we're testing him when he was drafted it was so much made that it was my job to groom him you know what and i think that kind of he resented that but i just called him and told him that he don't forget all this stuff he's read and what he's heard i'm his teammate it helped me because he came to me and actually gave her two cents to call me and from then on i never looked at anybody as an enemy a lot of guys maybe shut off of what a veteran trying to tell him he loved it you know he wanted to learn he looks in the eyes he sizes you up he sizes people up around him if somebody's been through something that he can utilize then kevin garnett is not going to tell that person what he thinks the first time i met kevin i got this just great vibe from him you know he was asking me questions you know what do i do in minnesota what what are the people here like because i want to be in the community there's other players that have come through that it's like show me how to make money i remember being struck right away by his presence here i am getting ready to interview him i'm a 45 year old graybeard and he calls me son kevin garnett's first game at madison square garden he walked to the center of the court to check into the game and he was met by patrick ewing ewing looked at garnett and said to him what's up young fella and kevin garnett looked back and he said what's up gramps behind the bravado was deep talent struggling to break the bonds of inexperience basketball is tough i mean there were times i'd tell him keep your head up one thing i guarantee all rookies i guarantee them this you'll get your ass kicked on two things happen either you get a lot better you quit i didn't think he had much quitting i mean he'd get better there was a breakthrough game that he had against houston uh that first year it was about a two to three minute period where a star was born he dominated the game he was blocking a keem shot and rebounding the ball pushing it up the court i think he scored a few points but that was like the least of what he was doing out there it was a good game for him and i think it was a good game for us on the management side to say okay you know this kid this kid's going to be able to really play i didn't think he'd be prepared that soon you know he put up a couple of 20-point games you're looking like oh you know is this kid for real me kg yeah what's up he was duck kid and it was a tremendous thing for a franchise that had nothing appealing and then suddenly here comes this incredibly physically gifted mentally gifted player who had all this enthusiasm this love for the game and it really just kind of thawed that real deep freeze [Music] it's good for the league that kevin garnett is as good as he is it's good for the league that he's as good as everybody thought he could be the signal that it sends out to every decent high school athlete in america is the worst signal imaginable averaging 19 points and 10 rebounds over his first seven years in the nba garnett's success not only radically changed how the league recruits but how young talented players regard their future since his entry into the pros fifteen players have been drafted out of high school and three of those fifteen were among the first four picks in two thousand one the pyramid has been inverted now if you stay till your senior season of college you're a loser if you have to go to college at all you're not the phenom that everybody wishes they were garnett kind of put that ball in motion he didn't realize what he was doing at the time he was just following his own path it delays their development so as a result teams don't get the bang for their buck out of the draft immediately but eventually and we would know more if they were playing in college and got a chance to develop and it makes us maybe want to make our mind up a lot earlier i couldn't help but to notice how well kevin garnett did so i mean it definitely made my decision a lot easier if he signs with the nba that's guaranteed money you blow your knee out you can't ever play again you have nine million dollars you go to college you blow your knee out you're working in burger king so if you can make it you need to go as early as you can it has changed college recruiting just totally now since the advent of players like kevin garnett you just have to try to evaluate how long are you going to have them because if you're only going to have them for a year that's going to hurt your program i don't care how good that guy is leon smith who tried to commit suicide in dallas his first year admitted that kevin garnett was his hero he had his poster on his bed he believed that he was going to be the next kevin garnett either you go in or you're going to miss but when i speak with the kids man i don't speak from my perspective i speak from a perspective of what's best for that individual for me i was going through some things and i felt like financially i can help my family out and this is the best kind of opportunity i have right now we're prepared to deal with it we have special rookie orientation now for you know over 20 under 20 i mean we're really slicing and dicing in the summer of 1997 after garnett's second year in the nba his agent and minnesota management engaged in some slicing and dicing of a very different sort known as contract negotiations as the numbers spiraled so did feelings on both sides of the desk the timberwolves were at a very delicate point in their franchise's history you know they had started to win some games but they still were not thought of as legitimate i think they were scared to death to lose them a lot of clubs at that point could afford them he hid that summer down in south carolina impossible to get a hold of his agent did all the typical agent maneuverings the timberwolves did too it got leaked out of their organization that they'd made an offer of 103 million dollars to garnett the agent felt that was done to put pressure on garnett uh it was embarrassing to him and he issued a statement that kevin garnett will never resign if he becomes a free agent as i said to his esteemed agent you can tell me what more he can do with 120 million than he can with 90 million i i said i i'd like to know i don't know if your lifestyle changes a lot come on the country's not ready for 20 year black kid to see 103 million dollars to turn it down and it wasn't really him that didn't jump it was the people hunting and knew they could get a better deal it really didn't click that you know hey this is priority you got to grasp this you know i didn't i didn't have that sense at that time it was more of the agent at the time his agenda more than mine and when they offered the first i didn't even know about it i mean in the usa today that kevin garnett denies 113 one some something i'm like what now garnett's agent eric fleisher said his client was informed of the offer fleischer advised him to hold out until the timberwolves increased the contract two months later the acrimony ended when a six-year deal was struck it was all negotiating once timberwolves went up to 126 million everything got cured the thing i remember about the contract was we just chilled at the house all day so finally he gets this page and his agent says okay kevin come down to the target center we're ready to do the announcement and he says to his agent something like okay i'll be down a little bit we're listening to this new janet record you know i really didn't want to be bothered because i knew that you know it was sort of like some bs on both sides you know my representation in the temple it didn't matter if it was 100 110 whatever from my agent standpoint that was important for me i just wanted to get the thing done you know it's not about the money well i mean if it was about the money then obviously i would told eric you know you know save save your time and the timberwolves out at the same time you know save your time and how to try out the free agent market next year you know what people get sick and tired of it wasn't about the money that's a lie it is about the money because if it wasn't about the money you wouldn't have had your agent negotiate that deal where it came from i think is he will play as hard for that money as he had played for his rookie money as he had played in high school in chicago as he had played in springfield park in in malden south carolina that's probably what he was trying to get across it just it just came out awkwardly 126 million dollars it was just unbelievable at the time glenn taylor the timberwolves owner paid 85 million for the whole thing at 21 garnett owned his future in the form of the richest long-term contract in the history of sports i did an interview with him beginning of that year and i think he was still blown away that they would pay him that much money the thing that's amazing about kevin garnett is that i have not once seen anybody question the money on my worst critic i see me every day my expectations of me are far far far from any media organization players other players no one can make my own expectations of what i demanded myself night in night out the financial bar set by garnett's contract started a feeding frenzy that not only threatened a number of franchises it shed a green glare across the league that was not appreciated by the average fan the average person on the street finds that just incomprehensible how any athlete can get that much money to play a game the perception was that the nba was out of control it wasn't his contract it's when marbury starts saying i won't sign for a dollar less this is going to be the reason why there's not going to be basketball pretty soon because david stern was tired of hearing that that helped the owners coalesce on a notion that they needed the salary cap that tended to give them more protection and also tended to distribute the dollars more evenly in late 1998 the nba locked out its players for the first three months of the season until a new collective bargaining agreement with the salary cap was put in place i think kevin garnett is more responsible for the new collective bargaining agreement than any other individual person anywhere in the world the cap that was negotiated after the garnett contract demonstrated the competition is not on dollars the competition is going to be on management on getting the best players hiring the best personnel finally the league just said owners had to say wait a minute we're not going to be baseball we're not going to have ever escalating contracts that was the final straw kevin garnett's contract on a mall and it's this quiet suburb of greenville south carolina i thought it was like an outdoor library i remember across from the high school there was like a farm field with goats are grazing and you know it was mostly brought me it wasn't like greenville i didn't have the hoods very different from where i have moved from i just like that like okay we're rich now you know my mom very quickly let us know that she was working her butt off every day to just so that we have something decent born on may 19 1976 kevin and his two sisters grew up under the strict regime of shirley garnett a single mother devoted to the notion that books and not hoops was to score high in the game of life she felt like basketball would be a distraction to what was most important to her which was education and academics in fact when he tried out for the mauldin team she didn't realize that he was on it until this after the season began because he was afraid to tell her and i never forget her watching her and just walking to the gym and i'm warming up you know you gotta get a nice sweat and i'm like i can read the left she say you or mine when you get home kevin's stepdad didn't want to have a backboard and hoop mounted on their garage i just figured it'd look bad too much work and and a waste of time for the kid this is what i want to do so you know i snuck and i played and i snuck out and i got in trouble him and his stepfather didn't see eye to eye you know you never really saw him playing with him you didn't see them doing the following the father-son things and i guess that's why he cling to everybody else's father you know all my friends have fathers and i had a stepfather who you know he provided for us but you know was never at home took my mom through all kind of crazy stuff and [Music] you know knowing that that wasn't my real father i'm i'm absent on a whole nother side that's really me garnett's biological father o'lewis mccullough had been known on his high school basketball team as bye bye 45 because of his talent on the break kevin didn't know much about him until meeting that side of the family kevin and i first met in middle school it was not until a few months later my grandmother had made a call home and said dad found kevin and seen kevin in years since he was a baby as we went to my grandmother's house and i walked around the corner he was standing on the steps and i was like we both looked at each other like oh gosh and we both allowed man what cousins she's like yeah y'all cousins i was like kevin garnett learned about basketball and the lessons therein at the springfield park courts in malden for me it was where i learned the emotion learned it's where i learned a skill it's where i learned how to stand up for myself he's actually i think been taken home by the police at two o'clock in the morning he'd go out there and play all night and it didn't matter if people were there or not you know he was short at the beginning so he had ball handling skills and once he began getting taller it made him you know a better player i can remember at 12 being that i was 17 and i'll get rebounds and i'll bounce the ball off his head and i'll just talk trash to him all day he would get very frustrated but he went quick and at times he would tell me i'm going to beat you one day i never forget the day that i hit the shot to be bad and i cursed him up so bad and told me to get off the court and called him fat and started talking about his brother and his mom and he had to get off the court and he was hot when he entered malden high school in 1991 garnett was a force to be reckoned with kevin was about six seven as a freshman and uh he had um like say good feet good hands but he was tremendous shot blocker every seven block shots a game even as a freshman my assistant bill guthrie is a very good judge a talent he went the same as a ninth grader because the coach asked him to and he said my gosh if he could turn to go to college right now we'd take him he was averaging about 28 points about 16 to 18 rebounds and five or six seven blocks and three or four assists as a sophomore and the beach ball classic went five overtimes and he got 40 points and did not want to shoot it he said coach i'm getting tired of this i said we'll get tired because it's going inside every time and you're going to take the shot his popularity just began to grow i didn't realize until we would go to the mall and kids just knew him grown-ups started to recognize him he was like a professional basketball player in high school and that's the way people treated him and he never really got the opportunity to be that kid in the spring of garnett's junior year he was caught in an incident at high school that threatened to derail his basketball career black kid and a white kid get into it they get to fighting and so i'm trying to see what's going on i'm looking over everybody and kid comes upstairs he's ticked off and kicks the lock and breaks his ankle one of the kids became very upset about it and his father was upset about it and they pursued it he accused kevin of being one of a group of four or five youngsters that chased him down the hall kevin denied that he he struck him he wasn't necessarily in the fight but he was there as were many people so when the teachers came to find out what was going on everybody started naming people were there and they said garnett was there but you know he's at that point six seven six eight you know like everybody oh everybody remembers that he was there he came to school and got me came to school and arrested me and that's the first time that i was able to see the rail from the fake his coach never really had his back he said his coach just like disappeared and his coach turned his back on him basically when the incident got blown out proportionate it hurt him it was like here's my town and i'm known then it was like now i'm being let down nobody came to bat well i don't really know all the things that went into it but i know he didn't appreciate being put out of school or anything and i know he was unhappy the way it was dealt with i never forget man just being in depression like i'll get up i would take a shower and i would just go back to bed everyone was black and i was sitting and i wasn't eating as one of five students charged with second degree lynching garnett was released on ten thousand dollars bail faced with pending legal proceedings and the possibility of expulsion from school garnett's expected invitation to a nike basketball camp was also in jeopardy this was a big issue for the nike people so we had a debate on whether or not he was going to be invited to the camp i talked to garnett's attorney in greenville south carolina who assured me that this would never case would never come to trial that he was not guilty they had already worked out a settlement with the student with the help of begging and pleading for the state of south carolina to let me go to nike camp that year they did but they was they was giving me like a week and a half and nike was only four weeks he was able to enter into pre-trial intervention and if no further incidents the thing can be expunged from your record with plane tickets paid for by nike shirley garnett traveled to the company's basketball camp in deerfield illinois once there she met william wolf nelson head coach of the chicago-based farragut academy basketball team what mommy was saying um you know they didn't like the way the situation handled you know they probably wouldn't be going back and we just talked all night so the next morning mr harris the guy who started uh nike camp he was laughing and we said what we see you working your magic over there trying to get that boy he didn't charm me and didn't tell me anything just like call me you know uh you know call me collect and and we can talk and i was like it was easy to persuade him to want to leave big opportunity to play on a great basketball team get a lot of national exposure i'm just trying to figure it out my mom was like you know if you're going to succeed i got to get you out of here when the charges against him were dropped that summer garnett announced he would be leaving mauldin to finish high school at farragut academy rumors later surfaced that nike brokered the deal and paid for the garnett family to move to chicago there's reports down from south carolina newspaper that was trying to discredit this whole situation they said that the way that kevin made the move from south carolina to chicago is because of this big nike connection i mean this is so far from the truth it didn't make any sense we had looked into it everybody else looked into it as one illinois high school association official said they said well it's legal but it stinks [Music] my mom was just like you know i worked too hard for us to you know take steps back to living in the hood and we found the place inside the building that my coach stayed in and i just found ways to get by month to month living on chicago's west side garnett shouldered responsibilities other than basketball in school mom marriage wasn't going so swell so she was going back and forth and it made me go to a whole nother level of maturity because at for once i didn't have to take care of myself i had to take care of somebody else and that was ashley you know he did pretty good you know he looked at it for his sister that was that was his number one focus we had all the routines you know how we save money on how we how we ate i mean it was just times man where you know you play you know basketball for the you know local hood cast that you know had the money and could help you and that's how the way you got by and we just we totally hustled that whole year a lot of us myself included thought well you know he's really going to struggle going from you know malden's placid quiet suburb you know middle class to the west side of chicago with gangs and high crime rate and all sorts of problems but kevin adjusted well you're so good keep it up high yeah i would come downstairs to start practice practices had already started they were running hard you know kevin was the first one down first one back he was go go go captain hey man i didn't come over south carolina lose man you better get with the program you know chicago with the exposure and with the players that they have there just gave me a chance to show what i could do you know i had a teammate with ronnie fields that was probably you know better than i was ronnie was 6'2 and could touch the top of the square with his elbow you know he was a spectacular player everywhere we went it was like rock stars like we couldn't believe it would be nothing for to look out there and you see a bunch of pros who are coming in to play the bulls to be sitting on the front row probably the best game kevin ever played it was very jordan-like in that he was he had the flu and he was definitely under the weather just when it looked like they were beat and when they were at their lowest point ronnie fields had fouled out with six minutes left kevin at that point took over the game it's just like letting the moss out the cage i don't know where he got some strength from i mean he got guys hanging on his arm he carrying them to the basket he jumping up grabbing the ball out of mid-air he scored 25 points in the fourth quarter 14 in a row with such performances garnett became linked in the chicago area's circle of high school legends isaiah thomas mark aguirre and doc rivers there was also talk of the unthinkable when he first moved to chicago i was told by wolf nelson bob don't be surprised if kevin never goes to college agents are telling me that he would be drafted we talked about that and he was incredulous he couldn't believe it look at me you know i got a weak player like me play in the nba you know and he asked me he asked me if i thought he could do it i said no what are you going to do turn down millions or go to college and then you know then there's the act test well then that played a part in it well if he passes his act he may go for college for a year he took the test in february of that year and he was only two or three points away from passing when i work with kids part of what i do is have them take actual practice tests and so i wasn't making my own test and having him do well he was doing well on actual and i went from manage testing made for me to oh i'm starting to get this to i'm gonna get this test i'm gonna get this test i am going to get this test he didn't want to be thought of as stupid it bothered him a lot that his academic record you know became an issue when school and eligibility for college came up and he did not like the fact that it was publicized that he could not pass the a.c.t for passport testimony going i'm going to college i'm taking my my black behind the college despite failing to get a qualifying standardized test score garnett was recruited by many division one schools north carolina and michigan both of whom were affiliated with nike were at the top of his list i asked kevin at the time where where were you going to go to school if you don't go to the nba he opened up your shirt it was a big michigan shirt right there and i'm convinced he would have ended up in ann arbor if he hadn't gone to the nba the decision-making process of going to the nba really war on him a lot and wore him out when he got to the point where that deadline had came for him to decide to you know put his name into the draft or not put his name in the draft at that point he had not gotten the score to qualify see chauncey sanders see steph sign and sharif signing trailer bent sign and everybody signed up to college and i was like the rumor started getting around where he would be taken so now you're faced with that dilemma here's a kid who has to make a grown-up decision on his life at 17 years old should we do this is this possible who's the last to do it and she's supposed to be willowby i told him i'd go pro [Music] i tell him you know i would do it if i was in your situation go in there and play your game and don't be afraid to speak up it was a very very interesting conversation on what he was doing now and how long he played in the league and just started going through a whole bunch of different scenarios to where it just awakened me a little more i told him don't sign no power of attorney know where your money is you know know where the annuities are and pensions and i was frustrated i didn't know what i wanted to do and what i got to deal with because i'm raising my little sister you know my mom needs me to step up and i was just thinking the nba can't be this hard can't be spurred by financial burdens and disappointed by his academic rating garnett announced his intentions to enter the nba on may 10 1995. seven weeks later on draft day he received a call from coach wolf nelson he was like i got to score us i was like what i got to scroll they was on some papers and stuff so you passed okay and i just remember getting really emotional i just was like well you know turning back now i just feel like i got the monkey off my back for so long i felt like this was something i couldn't do but i kept going at it [Music] when the timberwolves drafted stefan marbury in 1996 they had their backcourt counterpart to kevin garnett the two had a relationship that started in high school 700 miles apart over the phone stefan gets kevin garnett's phone number calls up kevin garnett back when he's still living in malden he says i speak to kevin garnett and kg is like who's this this is steph who stefan marbury the stefan marbury you know i heard about him and he heard about me and we were pretty much like 1a1b as far as the best players in the country so we pretty much wanted to know who each other was and we just talked on the phone for hours these were two rising stars and they had this phone relationship they began plotting their dreams together suddenly those dreams coincided on the end of their senior season they meet up in this gym on chicago's west side they meet out in front of the gym and they have make eye contact they know who they are immediately i mean they've been reading about each other for years they're like yo what's up you know what are we going to do let's go inside and run some ball we were playing like we played with each other before i think it was just common for us to click that was my first time like really playing on a great point guard [Music] you know he was dropping and just didn't know where it was coming from kg's on the low block kind of makes eye contact the stuff steph knows what to do kg spins off the block goes in the lob catches it tomahawk powerhouse jam and that's how kg and stuff began right from the exhibition season in stephon's first year felt totally different i could see like the way we moved the ball and and the defense we played the unselfishness and and the amount of talent we had i knew it was going to be fun garnett feed left side marbury cuts into traffic puts it over to garnett takes it to the right you have these two young players and you knew they were both going to be something else every win was as a milestone for the timberwolves it was just a part of something that you could see gradually going up it was just great man it was as far as talent was the best team that i've ever been on there was a sense this tandem would be together for 12 13 15 years and would win more than one title that's for sure before garnett led the timberwolves to their first playoffs the 20 year old was the second youngest player in nba history to be named to the all-star team it was great baby everything without expecting yeah we got everybody back to minneapolis he never gave any sense that after three years he was going to you know he was going to move on to a bigger market he was a guy who said no i'm going to make it work here these guys drafted me these guys believed in me and i'm not going anywhere after the timberwolves signed garnett with the largest contract extension in nba history marbury expected a similar payout when the big contract goes to kevin and you've got a brooding sibling in this case stephon marbury there was some jealousy that followed and we needed most people to have to settle for 86 million dollars but it seemed that was going to bother staphon my analogy for the kevin stefan situation is batman and robin they're a duo but nobody says i'll be robin everybody wants to be batman kevin was batman okay marberry didn't want to be robin he wanted to go be batman on another team kevin was like yeah but you're still gonna make a lot of money why don't you know we still we're still gonna do this together right and stuff started making it be known well you know no you know no i'm gonna have to get out of here to get paid he was hurt he was hurt very very much so we all want to step on this day there was no question about it it was kind of like he just broke up a family for him just to leave us like that we kind of looked at like i could do that didn't mess with me a little bit you know i got some personal friends that we had the same friends and he would talk he would talk to them be like yeah you know he didn't paid all this money he only take the last shot at the end of the game and he don't do this he don't do that you know and somebody made a point like well you got the ball you know you can't have you can't take the last shot you got the ball i mean he has stuff for friends i think he accepted cool it was a beautiful thing but i think it was a thing that got taken too far and it was in on both of them at no time did i think to myself this is solely about money i think stefan generally didn't like minnesota he got talked into basically going home because he gave the monster deal he could get so the contract through no real fault of kevin garnett's ruined that team for a while to keep himself grounded kevin garnett surrounds himself with trusted friends he calls them the official block family he has this mentality of i shine you shine and if he did well they would do well that's why they called the official black family you know all his guys and i'm like what you doing oh i'm in charge of the fan club what are you doing i'm charging special projects what are you doing i'm setting up his website y'all joking it's like they're playing business but they're serious it's about family it's about you know giving people opportunities but within value i totally don't believe in people who know feeding off somebody else or riding somebody's coattail i work for him for years straight to the point i'm perfectionist to it to an extent don't expect any um layoffs no slacking um he's just hard driven when has kevin garnett ever been arrested when has he ever been caught with marijuana when has he ever chewed out his coach got a coach fired you don't see that from kevin garnett i think that's in part because he is so well grounded because of his background and because of his friends from around his way breaking into garnett's circle of trust was former saint john star forward malik seely when he was in grade school during that time he was looking for somebody to look up to he happened to you know be watching the st jones game and he saw my brother for the first time i saw somebody that was skinny and it was dark skinned and at the time the light-skinned guy was in and i got the dog skin jokes and all that so in my own little way i sort of used malik as as help for my self-esteem when you know they became teammates he said that they'd be in timeouts and the coach would be talking and kevin said he'd be staring at my brother and my brother be like kev come on man the coach talk he's talking to you you're the franchise why you looking at me up until then kevin didn't like to kind of come out of the hotel because people would bug him everywhere he got autographed people wanted something from us well malik taught kevin two things you can go out and have fun and it's okay for you to say no in may of 2000 garnett's inner circle gave him a surprise 24th birthday party which celie attended about 3 45 a.m the two friends said good night i was like thank you man it's been the best birthday ever met and i remember him on the phone he hit the window he said menyana and i remember about probably 4 30 in the morning getting a call from flip saunders and he said there was an accident and malik sealy was killed i couldn't i couldn't i couldn't gather you know i couldn't i couldn't couldn't grasp it you know me i couldn't cook them all the day before the funeral there was a viewing at a small church and there were two or three hundred people there just when we thought things were going to wrap up kevin got up in front of everybody and he smiled and he broke down a little bit and he looked back up and he said i'm not afraid to cry garnett still to this day honors sealy has number two on shoes and wristbands and anything he can to to remember malik sealy so he's a loyal guy he doesn't make new friends easily celie got inside the circle and he'll probably always be there the night that they retired malik's jersey there was this feeling in the in the arena of sort of how are we going to get through this season doing the national anthem kevin and i stand at each other i heard him saying this game is for you this game is for you malik and kevin grabbed this rebound in the air like with one hand and slammed it down looked up at malik's banner and just kind of pointed his finger up to him like that's for you it was just a moment that you kind of felt like yeah everything's gonna be okay [Music] who would have ever thought that a high school player would come in and change everything but here was kevin garnett who came from nothing and all of a sudden has become as great a player as there is his all-around game is just blossoming as far as him shooting three-pointers him getting steals and blocking shots when were playing seattle it was a close game somehow kevin got switched out on gary payton who obviously is one of the best penetrating guards in our league gary didn't get to the basket because kevin got down got in the stands you have probably the most totally prehensile player since michael jordan it's like the next stage of evolution after michael jordan tim dunk is moving faster because of him chris weber is moving faster because of him you look at this whole influx of the new power forward in the league and that's really kevin's impact because they've changed their game to keep up with him although the timberwolves reached the playoffs every year since 1997 garnett has not been able to take them into the second round even after gaining their first home court advantage in 2003 minnesota lost to the lakers in six games down down down down uh obviously uh disappointed kevin garnett has magic's smile and boyish exuberance he's got bird's attitude and competitiveness and he's got kevin mchale post-up moves what he doesn't have is a great supporting cast like some of those players and you wonder if he's ever going to get to the promised land and you wonder if it's all going to come back to that 126 million contract there have been guys that the timberwolves was going to release you know trying to free up money to sign other guys and there are times when i know for a fact kevin has offered to pay amounts of guys contract so he can keep him they lost to portland in the 2000 playoffs steve smith and rasheed were like trying to console him after the game saying you know keep your head up you're going to be all right and he didn't want to hear any of that he just wanted to leave he didn't want to play anymore he's been very frustrated by that it's a challenge i've been through you know worse stuff than this i know how to lead i lead my little sister i leave my family you know the game of life is totally different game it's a lot more difficult the whole recent history of the nba might have been different if kevin garnett turned out to be a jerk but he didn't turn out to be a joke he turned out to be a great kid who could really play he said you know before a game if your car is broken down in a minnesota cold winter and you want to get it revved up just hook it up to my heart and it'll get going because i'm so hyped and so amped before a game at his age right now i don't think we've even seen the best of kevin garnett i think he makes teams better and i i think we'll eventually see a championship he still exudes the enthusiasm for the game good or bad you know you get the extremes you know if he misses the shot you see him scream you know if he hits the shot you see him yell when kevin gets his first ring jesus is gonna see so much enthusiasm it's gonna be so much fun he's gonna make people cry as minnesota's all-time leader in points rebounds steals and blocks kevin garnett has become one of the most dominant players in the game while his success has pleased the nba it has followed such a migration from high school that the league is forced to confront the issue of age specifically how young is too young for sports century i'm chris fowler [Music] you

Channel: SQUADawkins

Views: 78,309

Keywords: kevin garnett doco, kevin garnett life, kevin garnett trash talk

Id: goe8jIe6Khs

Length: 45min 29sec (2729 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 28 2022