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Blogtable: Lasting memories of Kevin Garnett
- Updated: September 28, 2016
Each week, we’ll ask our stable of scribes across the globe to weigh in on the most important NBA topics of the day.
Kevin Garnett retired last week after an illustrious 21-year career in the NBA. What is your lasting memory of Garnett?
David Aldridge, NBA.com: I’m sure most will go with the “Anything is Possible!” interview after the Celtics routed the Lakers in Game 6 of the 2008 Finals, and Garnett got his long-coveted championship. That was incredible television, to be sure. But I loved Da Kid version of Garnett, earlier in his first stint with the Wolves — the one that was high-flying, getting oops from Stephon Marbury, with Kevin Harlan going nuts on the call. Garnett was so accessible in those days (that changed), and you could feel the joy and intensity pouring out of him. He was so in the moment. I think everyone believed KG and Steph would play a dozen years together and win a couple of championships.
Steve Aschburner, NBA.com: I’d like to say that it’s looking up at Garnett, all 7-foot-1 or whatever, as he huffed and puffed, fist-pumped and towered over me after he had stepped up onto the press table at the horn of Game 7, 2004 Western Conference semifinals: Minnesota 83, Sacramento 80. Garnett had gone for 32 points, 21 rebounds, five blocks and four steals in 46 minutes, dragging and willing his teammates to the greatest moment in Timberwolves history.
I’d like to say that but I can’t, because my lasting memory will be way at the front end, tracking Garnett down after the first practice of his first NBA training camp at Halenbeck Hall on the St. Cloud State (Minn.) campus in October 1995. He was so outrageously young then, the first high school player to hit the NBA in two decades, and he brimmed with enthusiasm and joy on the court, more earnest than intense in his first few seasons. In that modest setting, for a franchise desperate for something special, Wolves veterans Sam Mitchell and Doug West ran, hacked and literally slammed …
