KG by Kevin Garnett

Author:Kevin Garnett [Garnett, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2021-02-23T00:00:00+00:00

He could have approached all kinds of dudes to get the download on the league. And I know he did. But the idea that he came to me early makes me happy.

In many ways, the press did him like they did me. Media started hounding him when he was still at Lower Merion High School in Philly. Followed him to his prom when his date was Brandy. Let him know that his life would never be as private as he would have liked. As all of us would have liked.

I watched him get drafted. Watched him during those early years when it wasn’t easy. He took a beating. Everyone does. The more talent, the worse the beating. Some of his own players were making fun of him, saying shit like, “Okay, Showtime.” I remember him telling me how he felt like they were laughing at him rather than with him. Took him a while to trust his teammates. But he was able to do it, he was able to get with D-Fish and T-Lue and Brian Shaw. They were his real niggas.

I’m remembering his first All-Star Game. It was also Timmy Duncan’s first. It was my second, 1998. Madison Square Garden. First All-Star with Kob and Jordan. The press was playing up how, at nineteen, Bean was the youngest All-Star ever. The press was getting to him. Sooner or later, the press gets to all of us. The press was saying that Jordan was already polished to perfection and we’d see just how much polish Kob had going for him.

Larry Bird was coaching the East and figured Bean would be overboisterous. He was saying shit like, “Let Kobe shoot. He gonna shoot himself outta this game.” Bird was toying with him. Everyone was messin’ with him. The buildup was putting heavy anxiety on his head.

But because we were always copasetic, I could read his vibe, I could say, “Forget that nervous shit, Kob. We here now, boy. We here!” I gave him a double-dap on his chest with my fists and screamed right in his face. “We starters! We the future!”

I told him I’d be looking for him, and then some five or six minutes into the first quarter I saw him heading into the paint. That’s when I launched the Lob from God. I put on the proper touch so that bitch just stayed up there big as the midnight moon, hanging for a split second until Bean grabbed the muthafucka two-handed and dunked the shit out of it. Place went nuts.

“Told you,” I said.

“Woof,” he said. And he slipped right into the mix.

The “Lob from God” at the 1998 NBA All-Star Game at Madison Square Garden.

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