Kevin Garnett: No question, he's one of of the best to ever play
http://www.startribune.com/511/story/256755.html
The first time Kevin Garnett walked through this room, he and the rest of
the world were nine years younger and the room itself was in Cleveland.
Two days before the 1997 NBA All-Star Game, the annual media session on
Friday was as much about the past as the present and Garnett, merely a
piece of the league's future, was lucky even to be invited.
He had been named as an injury replacement to the West squad, an understudy
for Shaquille O'Neal, and showed up at a hotel banquet hall that had been
transformed, by the NBA's grasp of history, into a living, breathing Hall
of Fame.
Julius Erving to the right of him. Bill Russell to the left. John Havlicek,
Bob Cousy, Moses Malone and Elgin Baylor, all part of the league's celebration
of 50 years, a gathering of its 50 greatest players. Garnett, nearly swallowed
up by his oversized sweater and baggy jeans, had a silly grin plastered on his
face that wouldn't leave. At one point, he met and shook hands with Wilt
Chamberlain. You'd swear there was a thunder clap.
Fast-forward nine years and shift the room to Texas: Garnett shows up as
one of the superheroes, one of the brand names.
He is a picture of casual cool that falls well within the league's dress
code. A few of the 2006 All-Stars, in fact, seek out Garnett before he
settles in. Then, for the better part of an hour, an international array
of reporters from Charlotte to China peppers him with questions about the
weekend, LeBron James, the influx of overseas talent, Ron Artest, favorite
sneakers, the Phoenix Suns, playing hurt and Oklahoma City.
There are the expected zingers, too, about the Timberwolves' record, the
spotlight this weekend on old pals Flip Saunders and Chauncey Billups,
and two or three different versions on Garnett's frustration level, his
impatience and his desire-maybe-even-desperation to win a championship.
Comfortable in his ninth run through this, the Wolves star alternately
stops them cold or deftly deflects them.
As in: "I have a lot of friends in the league. Chauncey happens to be
one of them. Flip. But I think it's great. I'm never jealous of anything."
As in: "What's not frustrating? I'm frustrated when I've got to sit at a
red light. ... It's a transition that, y'know what, next year [if] we're
one of the top teams in the league, I've got a totally different set of
questions coming from you guys. It's how you look at it. I'm not one to
give up just 'cause times are rough. That's a coward."
As in, with a laugh: "Sorry I didn't give you all what you wanted for your
newspapers. I apologize for that. But that's what it is."
What Kevin Garnett is these days is an NBA elder statesman. Only seven of
the other 23 All-Stars are older and, by draft, only O'Neal has been in the
NBA longer.
So how does Garnett like being, as he would say, an "old head?"
"It's cool," he said. "You know what, I can remember my first years when
I'm sitting here and I look over and how the whole room, a Mike [Jordan]
comes in and he sucks all the media [over]. I just watched Yao [Ming] come
in, a couple guys who pulled me to the side, asked me some advice, stuff
like that.
"I'm an ambassador and I embrace it. I've been in both spots and I can
understand. This is nine. Doing nine in anything is difficult."
'Admiral' comparison
At this point in Garnett's career, he is said to be most similar to
longtime San Antonio center David Robinson. Through each man's first
10 seasons, their statistics are minor variations on each other,
Garnett's (20.5 points, 11.1 rebounds, 4.5 assists, 1.7 blocks) coming a
little more out on the floor, Robinson's (24.4, 11.5, 3.0, 3.4) more
traditionally in the paint.
Robinson is an apt comparison, too, for reasons that have nothing to do
with stats.
By generation, by position and by rivalry, Tim Duncan is a more obvious
choice, yet Garnett has more in common with Duncan's retired teammate.
Robinson, like Garnett, was the player who salvaged and anchored a
franchise when he arrived. Robinson, like Garnett, took an unconventional
path to the NBA, coming from the Navy rather than directly from high school.
And Robinson, like Garnett, wasn't able to push San Antonio over the top
with the crew he had, until Duncan dropped into their laps in the 1997 draft
lottery. All that took was for Robinson to go down for 76 of the 82 games in
1996-97 with a bad back, for San Antonio to fall from 59 victories to 20 and,
even then, for the team to elbow past Boston for the No. 1 spot overall.
Management's role? Well, Gregg Popovich was shrewd enough to fire Bob Hill
after a 3-15 start, take over the reins himself and guide the club to a
17-47 finish for maximum lottery balls.
With Duncan, Robinson won an NBA title in his 10th season, at age 34,
after the lockout-shortened 1999 season. He won a second four years
later as a part-time contributor, then retired. Duncan went on last
spring to win another, establishing himself as the best player in Spurs
history and, arguably, the NBA's top power forward ever.
To put all this in Timberwolves' terms, Garnett would need to get hurt
or otherwise miss a significant chunk of a season, his team would have
to sink to the bottom and then it still would need some industrial-strength
luck to land the first pick in precisely the right draft.
Garnett as Duncan? Sure, if Christian Laettner or Isaiah Rider had been the
David Robinson piece. That's the locker room into which Garnett walked in
October 1995. So now, all these years later, his name gets brought up with
the likes of Ernie Banks, Rod Carew, Barry Sanders, Dick Butkus, Marcel
Dionne, Bob Lanier and George Gervin, renowned athletes who never got to
a championship round or game.
Would Robinson be viewed differently today had help not arrived? Remember,
he was ringless and 31, with plenty of individual acclaim, when he was voted
to that top 50 list.
"We don't want to think about that," Avery Johnson said Friday. Johnson,
the Dallas coach who will direct the West All-Stars this evening, was a
point guard on the 1999 Spurs.
Hill, in the Twin Cities Wednesday after resurfacing this season as Seattle's
coach, said: "David wanted to win a championship. But David has so many
wonderful things in his life, he could have looked back at his career,
had he not won one, and been OK with it. He's a very special human being."
How special? Hill talked about visiting Robinson at his San Antonio home
and finding not simply a terrific basketball player but a Renaissance man.
"He has a black grand piano in his front room," the former Spurs coach said.
"He sat down and played Mozart or something. He's unbelievable. Then, at the
end of the tour, we're in his music studio upstairs. And he played a keyboard,
sang a song and danced. I mean, he's like no one you've ever met before."
Still, Robinson without rings ...
"Those of us who know him and had the opportunity to coach him wouldn't look
at him differently," Hill said. "I think the public's perception of him,
yeah, they would.
"But if you ever get a chance to have dinner with him, do it."
Discomforting sympathy
When Billups and Garnett played together, the guarded Wolves star trusted
his pal with the keys to his house. They're just as close now, speaking by
phone frequently.
"It's been really tough on him, man," the Detroit point guard said of this
year's 23-29 record. "That's my guy, I love him to death. I know he's
struggling."
Said Indiana power forward Jermaine O'Neal: "You feel for KG because he's
one of the rare guys who plays with that emotion, plays with that edge every
single night. It's hard to bring that -- you go through certain things where
you come to the gym kind of down -- but when I watch KG, I see him pumped,
ready to go, doing his best. And you feel sorry for him."
It has come to this? Sympathy?
Shudder.
Perhaps more in the NBA than in any other sport, though, it breaks down
to them that's got and them that ain't. If Bill Russell is king for his
11 championships with the Boston Celtics, only those with one or more
attached to their names can enter the inner circle of greatness.
The next level, by this way of thinking, belongs to those who tried but
failed; Patrick Ewing playing in one NBA Finals, ditto for Ted Williams
and the World Series, Dan Marino and the Super Bowl.
That puts Garnett and those still shaping their legacies in a box:
Stick it out where they are and risk falling short, or go chasing a
championship with no guarantees. Oscar Robertson moved late in his
career and won in support of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Karl Malone grabbed
at O'Neal's and Kobe Bryant's jerseys in 2004 and still fell short.
Reggie Miller stayed put in Indiana, Charles Barkley got to Houston a
year too late and Gary Payton has moved four times since Seattle with
nothing to show for it.
Too bad, Johnson said, that there can't be multiple winners every year.
"If a team would win in the Finals and then you would have another Finals
and you would [keep going] and have three or four winners ... but you only
have one winner and 30 teams," the Mavericks coach said. "In the last, what,
11 years, you've only had four different teams that have won it? So it's a
rare opportunity."
If latching on to a winning team, the way Glenn Robinson won with the Spurs
last June, didn't enlarge him, then missing out while shouldering the biggest
load shouldn't diminish Garnett, Allen Iverson, Jason Kidd or Dirk Nowtizki,
many said.
"Absolutely not," said Hall of Fame center-turned-broadcaster Bill Walton,
who led Portland to a title in 1977 and was a key sub on Boston's 1986
champions. "I used to think that way. But they give everything that they
can. To me, it's the effort to win. That is all I care about. ... Winning
a championship? That's the hardest thing. You need everything to fall into
place. LeBron [James], his stature and his level of success is out of his
hands. It's really the same with Iverson and Garnett."
Sonics guard Ray Allen was a teammate of Garnett for about a minute on draft
night in 1996 before being traded for Stephon Marbury ("I'd probably still
be there," Allen said Wednesday). In 10 seasons split between Milwaukee and
Seattle, he has reached one conference finals.
Refuses to be defined by it, though.
"I won't let it define me because I might be unlucky, who knows?" Allen said.
"Or I might have been on a team that was good enough to win it, it could have
been [Minnesota], who knows? What's going to define me is what I do every
night, how hard I come to play and how much my peers and my teammates respect
me. That's what defines us all."
To Allen, every season starts as an opportunity to win with the team you're
on, given the right approach. "You almost sell yourself down the river a
little trying to chase it," he said. "You can't tell me San Antonio has the
best talent ... those guys just play hard and they play together. It doesn't
have to be in another city. You can do it in your own."
It gets tricky, though. Harder rather than easier, because with the first
slip in a star's game, the whole notion of loyalty can vanish. As committed
as Garnett has been to the Wolves, some fans and even team management might
not hesitate to look around for a new way to win.
"That's a part that, as a player, you can't worry about," Jermaine O'Neal
said. "We understand the nature of the game. As soon as your ability runs
out and they feel like they can't get what they're ultimately looking for,
they're going to trade you. As a player, you've got to recognize that.
"I don't think KG is worried about that. He's a guy who's going to sit down
with the organization and really evaluate the team and give it one real last
run over the next five, six years."
Then maybe play his own brand of Mozart, do his own kind of dance.
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