Kevin Garnett

1976—

Professional basketball player

When most basketball fans first heard of Kevin Garnett, he was known as the high school basketball player who was going directly into the National Basketball Association (NBA) because he couldn't qualify academically to play in college. Many NBA observers assumed he was a disaster waiting to happen and too immature to succeed. But by his second season in the league, Garnett had surprised many by becoming one of the NBA's young crop of budding stars. At 6-foot-11 he has the power and size of a center, but he also has the speed and ball-handling skills of a guard. In his early days in the league, Garnett quickly silenced his critics by developing a reputation as one of the league's classy young players. After starring for more than a decade for the often-hapless Minnesota Timberwolves, Garnett was traded before the 2007-08 season to the Boston Celtics. There, along with longtime Celtic star Paul Pierce and fellow newcomer Ray Allen, he led a revitalized Celtic squad to an NBA title. In the process, he shed his reputation as a player who, despite incredible talent, could not bring home a championship.

Garnett was born on May 19, 1976, in Mauldin, South Carolina. His mother, Shirley Irby, raised three children: Kevin, an older sister, Sonya, and a younger sister, Ashley. The family lived in Mauldin, a quiet, middle-class bedroom community, for the first eighteen years of Garnett's life. Garnett showed promise as a basketball prospect early on and attracted considerable attention from college scouts. At the end of his junior year at Mauldin High School, he was named Mr. Basketball for the state of South Carolina.

Transferred to Chicago High School

A major change in Garnett's life came following his junior year in high school. He was involved in an incident in which he and several of his friends were accused of assaulting a white student, a touchy accusation in the racially tense town. His record was cleared after he participated in a pretrial program for first-time offenders, but staying in the area was problematic after that. Garnett met the coach from Chicago's Farragut Academy High School at a basketball camp before his senior year, and he and his mother moved to that city so he could transfer to Farragut. The move was a dramatic one in most every way, particularly going from a quiet southern community to a gang-infested urban environment. Garnett said he had to learn to survive in Chicago, telling Newsweek the city was "total hell—gangs, guns, crime. I had to deal with a gang leader named Seven-Gun Marcello. No fun."

The move was a successful one from a basketball standpoint, however, as Garnett averaged 25.2 points per game, 17.9 rebounds, 6.7 assists, and 6.5 blocks during his one year at Farragut. In 1995 he was named Mr. Basketball in his adopted state, selected as USA Today's National High School Player of the Year, and placed on Parade's All-America First Team. Following the season, he played in the McDonald's All-America Game, where he grabbed eleven rebounds, scored eighteen points, and was named the game's Most Outstanding Player. Scouts were unanimous in their opinion that Garnett was a top-notch basketball prospect.

However, there was one problem with the logical and traditional next step in the career of a top-notch basketball talent: Garnett was not a top-notch student. While several college programs wrestled with the question of whether to accept this marginal student with remarkable basketball skills, Garnett wrestled repeatedly with the ACT entrance exam. The question became moot when he failed for the fourth time to gain a score that would allow him to play basketball as a freshman. With college out of the picture, Garnett declared himself eligible for the NBA draft.

Jumped Straight to the NBA

Garnett's move from South Carolina to Chicago had generated a bit of controversy in the basketball world, but nothing compared to his decision to jump from high school to the pros. Everyone seemed to have an opinion as to whether Garnett was ready, physically and emotionally, to make the big step. Of the three players who had previously done so, Moses Malone had unqualified success, Darryl Dawkins had some success, and Bill Willoughby had limited success. The most recent of those players had entered the league twenty years before Garnett; another player, Shawn Kemp, skipped college basketball but did attend college for a year. On the one hand, many basketball people questioned whether any nineteen-year-old was mature enough to avoid the pitfalls of the NBA's spotlight. On the other hand, they also thought that if he could handle the attention and forego the temptations, his physical assets could make him a superstar for years to come.

The Minnesota Timberwolves, a young franchise eager to improve its future, took a gamble and chose Garnett with the fifth pick overall in the 1995 NBA entry draft. The team signed him to a contract for $5.6 million over three years. While it was thought Garnett had the potential to play nearly any position, the Timberwolves decided his rail-thin 6- foot-11, 220-pound frame was best suited to small forward until he filled out with a few more pounds. He rented an apartment in Minnetonka, a suburb of Minneapolis, and shared it with a roommate, Bug Peters, an old friend from South Carolina. Garnett allayed fears of his getting into trouble, telling Newsweek that he was basically a homebody. "I don't drink or smoke or go out much at all," he declared. "I've done all that, and it got me in trouble. I have an image to uphold. People are watching; kids are watching. I prefer staying home with Bug, playing CDs and Sega." Garnett was also largely confined to his hotel room on road trips. As teammate Sam Mitchell attested in Newsweek, "The kid's not old enough to get in anyplace where he can get into trouble."

At a Glance …

Born Kevin Garnett on May 19, 1976, in Mauldin, SC; son of Shirley Irby; married Brandi Padilla, 2004; children: one daughter.

Career: Member of Minnesota Timberwolves, 1995-2007; U.S. Olympic men's basketball team, member, 2000; member of Boston Celtics, 2007—.

Awards: Mr. Basketball for state of South Carolina, 1994; Mr. Basketball for state of Illinois, 1995; named National High School Player of the Year by USA Today, 1995; named to Parade All-America First Team, 1995; McDonald's All-America Game, Most Outstanding Player, 1995; named to the National Basketball Association (NBA) All-Star Team, eleven seasons; voted NBA All-Rookie Second Team, 1996; Olympic gold medal as member of the U.S. basketball team, 2000; Most Valuable Player, NBA All-Star Game, 2003; NBA Most Valuable Player, 2004; NBA Defensive Player of the Year, 2008.

Addresses: Office—Boston Celtics, 226 Causeway St., Fourth Floor, Boston, MA 02114.

Another place Garnett avoided trouble was on the basketball court. Not surprisingly, he didn't immediately set the world on fire with his statistics, but when his rookie season was over there was enough evidence to suggest that the Timberwolves' gamble would probably pay off. He played in the Rookie Game at the All-Star break, finishing with eight points, four rebounds, and six assists. Midway through the season he cracked the Wolves' starting lineup, and he ended up leading the squad with a 49.1 percent field goal percentage. He also broke a team record for blocked shots in a season with 131. In addition, he led the team in rebounds in half the games after he became a starter and had double digits in points and rebounds in twelve games.

As the season rolled on, Garnett attracted rave reviews from seasoned observers of the game. Atlanta Hawks general manager Pete Babcock told Sports Illustrated late in the season, "He's a special player. Earlier in the year you saw flashes of it. But he has so much more confidence now. He extends so high on his turnaround jumper and shoots so soundly, he's become very difficult to stop." Timberwolves vice president Kevin McHale told Sports Illustrated, "What this kid has accomplished is amazing. If you put him in a college situation right now, where it's not as physical and there's zone coverage, he'd be doing things that would have people in awe."

Grew into Pro Stardom

Garnett's strong play continued into his second professional season, and so did the growth in his reputation. One national magazine included Garnett in an article about the young players in the league with strong character and respect for the game. When he was named to the NBA Western Conference All-Star Team as an injury replacement in February, he became the youngest player ever selected in the history of the league. It was less than two years after he had graduated from high school, and Kevin Garnett was already a star in the NBA. People could only wonder how good he might be after his twenty-first birthday.

In 1997 Garnett signed a new contract with the Timberwolves that made him the highest-paid player in the NBA, and in any other sport. In August of that year, he turned down a six-year, $102-million offer from the Timberwolves. He held out and later signed for $126 million. He played the 1997-98 season under his original contract, with the new deal starting the following season. Garnett's contract was credited with sparking the labor dispute that delayed the start of the 1998-99 season until February of 1999, as basketball team owners insisted on a new player agreement with a salary cap to limit superstar salaries.

For years, Garnett was the undisputed star of the Timberwolves, making the NBA All-Star Team several times. However, for seven straight seasons, the Timberwolves did not make it past the first round of the playoffs. Commentators began to question Garnett's leadership abilities and his aggressiveness. Frustrated, Garnett, who was about to become a free agent, pressed the Timberwolves to upgrade the team by adding some veteran players. Management responded by acquiring established vets Latrell Sprewell and Sam Cassell. Garnett signed a five-year contract for $100 million. Given the huge contracts of NBA superstars, it was less than he could have demanded, but it left the Timberwolves money under the NBA salary cap to sign other talented players.

Surrounded by an improved collection of talent, Garnett performed better than ever in the 2003-04 season, with career highs of 24.2 points per game and 13.9 rebounds per game, the latter of which led the league. The Timberwolves earned the Western Conference's best record, 58-24, and they advanced to the third round of the playoffs before losing to the Los Angeles Lakers. Garnett won the league's Most Valuable Player award for the season, and Sports Illustrated named him its NBA Player of the Year.

Brought Title to Boston

However, Sprewell and Cassell left the Timberwolves in 2005, and the team missed the playoffs for three years straight. Again, critics began wondering if Garnett would ever lead a team to the NBA's highest levels. Garnett himself began to realize that if he was to ever be part of a championship team, perhaps it would have to be somewhere other than Minnesota. In July of 2007 the Timberwolves traded Garnett to the Boston Celtics, which were trying to become an elite team again after twenty-one years without a championship and posting the second-worst record in the league the previous season. Garnett had vetoed a trade to the Celtics earlier that summer. This time, however, the Celtics were a more appealing option, having already acquired star Ray Allen. The new Celtics, led by the trio of Garnett, Allen, and longtime member Paul Pierce, quickly became favorites to win the Eastern Conference in the 2007-08 season.

The new-look Celtics did not disappoint their fans. They quickly established themselves as the team to beat in the Eastern Conference. In January of 2008 Garnett received the most votes in the league in balloting for the NBA All-Star Game. The following month, Garnett was named a starter for the Eastern Conference All-Star Team, and two months later he was voted Defensive Player of the Year in the NBA. Along the way, he played some offense too. In March he became the thirty-second player in NBA history to score twenty thousand points in a career, making him one of only four active players to reach that landmark. After recording the best record in the league during the regular season, the Celtics trounced the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals to claim the championship. For Garnett, the victory put to rest any lingering notions that he was destined to remain a "perennial loser" and solidified his position as one of the very best players of his generation, and perhaps of all time.

Sources

Periodicals

Boston Globe, April 22, 2008.

Chicago Tribune, December 9, 2007.

Evening Standard (London), October 8, 2007, p. 15.

Jet, May 29, 1995, p. 50.

Minnesota Timberwolves 1996-97 Media Guide, p. 8.

Newsweek, December 4, 1995, p. 72.

Sporting News, December 9, 2005, p. 54.

Sports Illustrated, June 26, 1995, p. 65; March 11, 1996, p. 61; May 3, 1999, p. 38; December 29, 2003, p. 92; July 5, 2004, p. 94; August 13, 2007, p. 66.

USA Today, December 5, 2006, p. 7C; March 11, 2008, p. 8C.

Online

"Boston's Kevin Garnett Top Vote-Getter among All-Stars," NBA.com, http://www.nba.com/allstar2008/allstar_starters_080124.html (accessed September 10, 2008).

"Kevin Garnett Reaches 20,000-Point Plateau," NBA.com, http://www.nba.com/news/garnett20k_080307.html (accessed September 10, 2008).

—Mike Eggert and Bob Jacobson

Kevin Garnett 1976–

Professional basketball player

At a Glance…

Sources

Kevin Garnett underwent a marked change in his image over the course of his first two years in the national spotlight. When most basketball fans first heard of Garnett, he was known as the high school basketball player who was going directly into the National Basketball Association (NBA) because he couldn’t qualify academically to play in college. Many NBA observers assumed he was a disaster waiting to happen, but by his second season in the league, Garnett had surprised many by becoming one of the NBA’s young crop of budding stars. At 6-foot-11 he has the power and size of a center, but he also has the speed and ball-handling skills of a guard. Possibly what surprised some critics the most about Garnett in his early days in the league was that, far from being too immature to handle the spotlight, he developed a reputation as one of the league’s classy young players.

Garnett was born May 19, 1976 in Mauldin, South Carolina. His mother, Shirley Irby, raised Kevin, an older sister, Sonya, and a younger sister, Ashley. The family lived in Mauldin, a quiet, middle-class bedroom community, for the first 18 years of Kevin’s life. Garnett showed promise as a basketball prospect early, and attracted considerable attention from college scouts. At the end of his junior year at Mauldin High School, Garnett was named Mr. Basketball for the state of South Carolina.

The first major changes in Garnett’s life came following his junior year in high school. He was involved in an incident in which I he and several of his friends were accused of assaulting a white student, a touchy accusation in the racially tense town. His record was cleared after he participated in a pre-trial program for first-time offenders, but staying in the area was problematic after that. Garnett met the coach from Chicago’s Farragut Academy High School at a basketball camp before his senior year, and he and his mother moved to that city so he could transfer to Farragut. The move was a dramatic one in most every way, particularly going from a quiet Southern community to a gang-infested urban environment. Garnett said he had to learn to survive in Chicago, telling Newsweek the city was “total hell—gangs, guns, crime. I had to deal with a gang leader named Seven-Gun Marcello. No fun.”

The move was a successful one from a basketball standpoint, though, as Garnett averaged 25.2 points-

At a Glance…

Born May 19, 1976 in Mauldin, South Carolina; son of Shirley Irby. Education: High school diploma, Chicago Farragut Academy, 1995.

Career: Professional basketball player, 1995-. Drafted fifth overall by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the 1995 NBA Entry Draft.

Selected awards: Named to NBA All-Star Team, 1997; voted NBA All-Rookie Second Team, 1996; named National High School Player of the Year by USA Today, 1995; named to Parade Magazine All-America First Team, 1995; Mr. Basketball for state of Illinois, 1995; Most Outstanding Player in 1995 McDonald’s All-America Game; Mr. Basketball for state of South Carolina, 1994.

Addresses: Office-Minnesota Timberwolves, 600 First Avenue North, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403.

per-game, 17.9 rebounds, 6.7 assists and 6.5 blocks in his one year at Farragut. He was named Mr. Basketball in his second state in as many years, named the USA Today’s National High School Player of the Year, and was placed on the Parade Magazine All-America First Team. Following the season he played in the McDonald’s All-America Game, and grabbed 11 rebounds, scored 18 points and was named the game’s Most Outstanding Player. Scouts were unanimous in their opinion that Garnett was a top-notch basketball prospect.

There was one problem with the logical and traditional next step into college, however: Garnett was not a top-notch student. While several college programs wrestled with the question of whether to accept this marginal student with remarkable basketball skills, Garnett wrestled repeatedly with the ACT entrance exam. The question became moot when he failed for the fourth time to gain a score which would allow him to play basketball as a freshman, and he declared himself eligible for the NBA draft.

Garnett’s move from South Carolina to Chicago had generated a bit of controversy in the basketball world, but nothing compared to his decision to jump from high school to the pros. Everyone seemed to have an opinion as to whether Garnett was ready, physically or emotionally, to make the big step. Of the three players who had previously done so, Moses Malone had unqualified success, Darryl Dawkins had some success, and Bill Willoughby had limited success. The most recent of those players had entered the league 20 years before Garnett; another player, Shawn Kemp, skipped college basketball but did attend college for a year. Many basketball people questioned whether any 19-year old was mature enough to avoid the pitfalls of the NBA’s spotlight. They also thought that if he could handle the attention and forego the temptations, however, his physical assets would make him a potential superstar for years to come.

The Minnesota Timberwolves, a young franchise eager to improve their future, took the gamble and chose Garnett with the fifth pick overall in the 1995 NBA Entry Draft. They signed him to a contract for $5.6 million over three years. While it was thought Garnett had the potential to play any position, the Timberwolves decided his 6-foot-11, 220-pound frame was best suited to small forward until he filled out with a few more pounds. He took an apartment in Minnetonka, a suburb of Minneapolis, and shared it with a roommate, Bug Peters, an old friend from South Carolina. Garnett allayed fears of his getting into trouble, telling Newsweek he was basically a homebody. “I don’t drink or smoke or go out much at all,” he declared. “I’ve done all that, and it got me in trouble. I have an image to uphold. People are watching; kids are watching. I prefer staying home with Bug, playing CDs and Sega.” Garnett was also largely confined to his hotel room on road trips. As teammate Sam Mitchell attested in Newsweek, “The kid’s not old enough to get in anyplace where he can get into trouble.”

Another place Garnett avoided trouble was on the basketball court. Not surprisingly, he didn’t set the world on fire with his statistics immediately, but when his rookie season was over there was enough evidence to suggest that the Timberwolves’ gamble would probably pay off. He played in the Rookie Game at the All-Star break, finishing with eight points, four rebounds, and six assists. Midway through the season he cracked the Wolves’ starting lineup, and he led the squad with a 49.1 percent field goal percentage and broke a team record for blocked shots in a season with 131. He also led the team in rebounds in half the games after he became a starter, and had double digits in points and rebounds in 12 games.

As the season rolled on, Garnett attracted rave reviews from seasoned observers of the game. Atlanta Hawks general manager Pete Babcock told Sports Illustrated late in the season, “He’s a special player. Earlier in the year you saw flashes of it. But he has so much more confidence now. He extends so high on his turnaround jumper and shoots so soundly, he’s become very difficult to stop.” Timberwolves vice president Kevin McHale told Sports Illustrated at about the same time, “What this kid has accomplished is amazing. If you put him in a college situation right now, where it’s not as physical and there’s zone coverage, he’d be doing things that would have people in awe.”

Garnett’s strong play continued into his second professional season, and so did the growth in his reputation.

One national magazine included Garnett in an article about the young players in the league with strong character and respect for the game. When he was named to the NBA Western Conference All-Star Team as an injury replacement in February, he became the youngest player ever named to an all-star team. It was less than two years after he had graduated from high school, and Kevin Garnett was already a star in the NBA. People could only wonder how good he might be after his 21st birthday.

Sources

Jet, May 29, 1995, p. 50.

Newsweek, December 4, 1995, p. 72.

Sports Illustrated, June 26, 1995, p. 65; March 11, 1996, p. 61.

Minnesota Timberwolves 1996-97 Media Guide, p. 8.

—Mike Eggert