Image via Complex Original
At this point in his career, you would think that we would know just about everything there is to know about Kevin Garnett. He's been in the NBA for about two decades now and, despite spending the first half of his career playing with the Timberwolves, he's been under a microscope for his entire tenure in the league because of freakish talent, his ridiculously effective trash talking, and his ability to remain relevant as he's grown older. So surely, there's not anything that we don't know about KG, right?
Wrong. Bleacher Report just published "A Man in Full: An Oral History of Kevin Garnett, the Player Who Changed the NBA" by reporter Howard Beck. It features about 40 NBA players, coaches, executives, and more discussing KG. And we read a lot of new stories about KG in it. Here are 10 Things We Learned From Bleacher Report's Oral History of Kevin Garnett.
He thought about attending the University of Michigan before declaring for the 1995 NBA Draft.
According to former sneaker company executive Sonny Vaccaro, KG was a big fan of the Fab Five when they were at Michigan and was considering going to school there. But Vaccaro advised him to enter the draft because of the money that he'd make in the NBA.
"He may or may not admit this, but he was going to go to Michigan," Vaccaro told BR. "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."
He went through an entire workout without socks once and played so hard that blood was dripping out of his shoes by the time it was over.
KG's intensity on the basketball court is legendary at this point. And his personal trainer Joe Abunassar added to that legend by talking about the time that KG worked out with guys like Chauncey Billups and Al Harrington sans socks and pushed himself so hard that his feet were bloody by the time it was over.
"He played every game," Abunassar told BR. "He was dunking on guys and blocking shots—all with no socks on. Hours he was playing. When it was over, there was blood seeping through the front of his shoes. Part of his feet and toes were just bleeding. It was unbelievable."
He crushed Joakim Noah's soul with his incessant trash talking during Noah's rookie season in the NBA.
There are a million and one crazy KG trash talking stories. But he saved some of his best venom for Noah, who didn't even see KG's trash talking coming the first time he was subjected to it.
"He asked Noah if he could rub through his hair, like a female or something," Paul Pierce told BR. "And I know that kind of made Noah hot…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, 'Fuck you, Noah.' I was like, 'Whoa.' This kid fresh out of college, looks up to KG, just said he had his poster on the ball, and he tells him that! It crushed him. It crushed Noah."
He doesn't talk trash to other players nearly as much as it might seem.
KG is always talking trash. If you watch him on the court, his mouth almost never stops moving. But according to at least one former teammate, most of his trash talk is directed at himself, not others.
"Most of that stuff he's saying is to himself," Sam Mitchell told BR. "It's funny, people think he's talking trash, but he's on himself about mistakes. If you listen to him, he's always talking about 'Kevin this,' 'Kevin that,' 'Kevin, what the F you doing?'."
He was pissed off when the Timberwolves decided to sign Wally Szczerbiak to a long-term deal in 2002.
KG was never to type of guy to air out his grievances through the media. But according to Steve Aschburner, who was the Timberwolves beat writer for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune at the time, he was upset when the team decided to give Szczerbiak a contract extension.
"The look on Garnett's face—he was working his molars over the fact that this guy's going to be here long-term now," Aschburner told BR, "and being paid a whole bunch of money and that's going to get in the way of certain kinds of improvement they could make in that team."
To their credit, the T'wolves did make KG happy in 2003 by pulling off trades for Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell, who helped the team reach the Western Conference Finals in 2004. But KG didn't like the deal that Szczerbiak received.
He almost ended up on the Lakers before the Timberwolves traded him to the Celtics in 2007.
KG has actually talked about this in the past. But in the BR piece, Phil Jackson himself revealed that he wanted to work out a deal for Garnett.
"When I realized that [Garnett] was available and wanted to leave Minnesota," he told BR, "I put a big push on [to acquire him]."
The Lakers reportedly offered the Timberwolves Lamar Odom and Andrew Bynum in exchange for Garnett.
He almost ended up on the Cavaliers in 2007 as well.
Can you imagine KG playing with LeBron in 2007? It almost happened, according to KG's agent Andy Miller.
"Cleveland was involved," he told BR. "They were a distant third in the whole thing."
He also almost told the Timberwolves that he didn't want to be traded at all in 2007.
According to Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor, KG was all over the place when it came to the idea of him being traded to the Celtics. At one point, he even reportedly told Taylor not to trade him. But Taylor pulled the trigger on the trade and sent him to Boston anyway.
"We went to Boston and I got a deal with Boston and took it to Kevin and he says, 'No, I don't want to be traded.'…Then they went out and got [Ray] Allen," Taylor told BR. "I went back to Kevin and said to him, later on, 'Well, they're still here, they want you.' I thought he said, 'OK,' to me. I really did…I don't know if he remembers it that way quite or not. But he has said at different times, 'I wished I could have stayed there.' But I thought I asked him. I thought he agreed. In thinking back, my guess is Kevin wasn't sure which way he wanted to do it, and I made the decision for him."
He used to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before every Celtics game—and forced his teammates to do it, too.
Paul Pierce remembers KG telling the Celtics' ballboys to make PB&J sandwiches for him and all of his teammates.
"Every game," Pierce told BR. "We didn't even have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches until he got to Boston. So then he made our ballboys make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for everybody. When KG was eating them, everybody started eating them."
He put a hole in the wall of his house once after he got angry about something he saw on MTV's 'Making the Band.'
This is our new favorite KG story. Tyronn Lue talked to BR about the time KG lost his mind during an episode of Diddy's reality TV show.
"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," Lue told BR. "And KG just got so hyped. 'Motherfucker, you've got to stand up for yours! You've got to fight! Motherfucker, 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."
What's more KG than that?