How Will We Remember Kevin Garnett?
By Justin
Dec 26, 2014; Boston, MA, USA; Brooklyn Nets forward Kevin Garnett (2) sweats before their 109-107 win over the Boston Celtics at TD Garden. Mandatory Credit: Winslow Townson-USA TODAY Sports
But we’ve forgotten one lost soul, someone who is conceivably playing his last season — a champion and an MVP, that no one seems to care about.
This is a special time in NBA history, as one generation of NBA stars takes a final curtain call. Steve Nash was one of the first to go — the back problems that worried the Mavericks a decade ago were too much for his 40 year-old body to handle. Ray Allen is likely next. Kobe’s team is so awful they would rarely enter national discussions if it weren’t for the purple-and-gold, but they’ve been a lightning rod for attention and so has Kobe’s quest for higher scoring totals. Tim Duncan is caught in a time loop, his stats changing by small amounts season to season while San Antonio remains a contender yet again. Pierce is platooning with an eclectic cast in Washington, chasing the playoffs and fighting for seeding. Nowitzki is the centerpiece to an offense that’s taken a buzzsaw to the league, destroying most in its path.
The media has taken special care to ruminate on the careers of these players and to value every last game we get from them. We’ve already had retrospectives on Kobe, as he guns his way into the sunset, with writers asking us to savor his offensive (polarizing) genius. With his torn rotator cuff, we’re going to have a lot of content about his legacy and what he can do with the rest of his career, if anything. But we’ve forgotten one lost soul, someone who is conceivably playing his last season — a champion and an MVP, that no one seems to care about.
Kevin Garnett is playing in darkness, the proverbial tree fallen in the forest with no one around to hear. There are few mentions of his exploits anymore or his slow climb up career leaderboards, edging closer to 26,000 points and 15,000 rebounds. He’s far past his prime, a shell of his former glory — essentially a role player on a mediocre Eastern Conference team. His talents were brought in to build an instant contender for the Brooklyn Nets and that experiment failed quickly. He is a star approaching his end with a handful of still useful gifts for playoff teams — he’s leading the league in grabbing the highest proportion of available defensive rebounds and he remains a defensive savant, especially in covering pick and rolls – but still languishing with a disappointing cast and inferior talent. This is unfortunately emblematic of his career and, in a certain way, a fitting poetic end for a legend whose prime was partly wasted on teams devoid of talent.
The Young Wolf
Kevin Garnett was drafted by the Minnesota Timberwolves in 1995 right out of high school. This was a controversial decision at the time because direct preps-to-pros players were rare and were not considered to be physically or mentally ready for the NBA game. There were in fact only three “true” high school players who played in the league before Garnett and the last one was drafted in 1975[1. There’s a distinction here: there are also players like Shawn Kemp who did not play college ball but also did not play in the NBA immediately after high school graduation, not to mention all the players who played professionally elsewhere before the NBA.]. Garnett’s success gave rise to the preps-to-pros era and influenced generations of talent, from Kobe to Howard, from McGrady to LeBron, to make a similar leap.
Minnesota, however, was an expansion team in 1990 and had not improved in that half-decade before Garnett arrived. They were regularly at 20 wins with an average adjusted point differential of -6.1. For reference, there are about 3.4 teams that bad on average since 1990. In 1995, the T-Wolves had an adjusted point differential of -8.8, which is getting into the territory of truly ineffective — then they drafted the Big Ticket.
In his rookie year, the Timberwolves were a little better – they won five more games and their point differential rose by three points – but they still had issues. Flip Saunders took over as coach, and inserted Garnett into the starting lineup midway through the season. The franchise also dumped their first “star,” the famous college player Christian Laettner they drafted third overall who had led them in rebounds and blocks three years in a row and points once, for expiring contracts. Laettner was a more effective player than most people realize too with a well-rounded game like his passing and jumper, and more advanced stats loved him too. It was also Isaiah Rider’s final season with the team — they were building around the young wolf and Gugliotta at both forward spots.
Garnett’s rookie season was impressive in a few respects if one accounts for his age. He was on the second all-rookie team and there were hints of what he’d become. You can see his NBA debut in this YouTube video here all gangly limbs and bouncy energy:
Then there’s his season high versus the Celtics, of all teams, where he scores 33 and displays the kind of skill that would lead to an MVP later:
It was a fine season and one of the best we’d see from a high school rookie — his versatility was intriguing as he was swatting shots and spotting up from 22 feet. But he wouldn’t blossom until next season. It’s difficult to overstate just how long ago that rookie season was. No other active player logged minutes in 1996. He was teammates with Spud Webb, Sam Mitchell (he’s been a coach, sometimes an assistant, for over a decade now), and Terry Porter (also a coach since 2002.) Dante Exum was born three months Garnett’s rookie season began. He played against Sarunas Marciulionis, Robert Parish[2. Fun little aside: Garnett played against Parish who played against Havlicek who played against Dolph Schayes who played during the first season the league was called the NBA.], Doc Rivers, and, most incredibly, Magic Johnson. So yes, he’s the last active player who’s gone up against Magic Johnson in an NBA game.
The Early Play-by-Play Era
Mandatory Credit: Sam Sharpe-USA TODAY Sports
When you hear folks talk about how Garnett looks like one of the greatest players ever with advanced stats, this (plus/minus) is one of the flag-bearers.
Not too long ago, the NBA released play-by-play logs for every game from 1997 to 2000. For the uninitiated, play-by-play logs give an account of every easily recordable action in an NBA game, line by line with a time stamp — things like “player A makes a two-foot jump shot (assisted by player B.)” You can also infer who was on the court and when, allowing you to calculate the infamous plus/minus, a metric that loves Garnett. He shows up at the top or near the top of most of the multi-year models, including a 14-year one, and has a long string of first and second place finishes in the season by season models. Via
, you can see his four first-place and four second-place finishes. When you hear folks talk about how Garnett looks like one of the greatest players ever with advanced stats, this (plus/minus) is one of the flag-bearers.
Ironically, Garnett is the one active NBA player who has played at a time when play-by-play logs were not available. However, that information was available starting in his sophomore year, his breakout all-star season in 1997. Playing nearly 39 minutes a night, he filled the stat sheet just about everywhere and helped lead the franchise to its best season ever — 40 wins and their first trip to the playoffs. This early Garnett era is forgotten by most and unknown to younger NBA fans. In his early days he played a lot of SF, as strange as that sounds now. He didn’t want to be labeled a center and insisted on being listed as 6′ 11″ and with his long arms he had the reach of even great defensive centers[3. DraftExpress listed him as 6′ 11″ without shoes, and given the normal height inflation of one inch (look at Rasheed at 6′ 10″) he is indeed a seven-footer by conventional methods.] This article from SI refers to him as seven-feet:
"The Timberwolves’ Kevin Garnett, though widely thought to be 7-foot, is listed at 6-11 at his insistence. Why? He doesn’t want any coach to get the notion to stick him at center.North Carolina had a parade of not-quite-7-footers, including Brad Daugherty (6-11 3/4 in the press guide) and Warren Martin (officially 6-11 1/2), until Matt Wenstrom matriculated at Chapel Hill in 1993 at 7-1. Why didn’t Dean Smith round up for all those years? According to one pale-blue source, the Tar Heels coach long feared that a listing at 7-foot carried with it the pressure of outsized expectations."
Of course, this was the late 90’s when teams were probably at their biggest – Portland sometimes used gigantic lineups with Sabonis at center and Rasheed Wallace at small forward, and even in 2004 Rasheed logged some time there — but imagine the terror you could create with an athletic guy who had the wingspan and standing reach to be a center, running around at small forward. The perimeter-oriented Garnett was not the player we know now, less of a rebounding maestro and more of an active offensive force, but his team, which would be the case for years and years to come, played better when he was on the court. In fact, the earliest adjusted plus/minus model available saw him ranked 11th in the league.
The team lost in the first round to a weird Rockets team with Olajuwon, Barkley, and Drexler. Garnett’s stats were basically the same in that three game series compared to the regular season except for his efficiency, although it was still better than the efficiency of the team’s other two lead scorers, Gugliotta and Marbury. It was, however, a successful season overall for the team and Garnett, who may have made the all-star team only as a replacement for Shaq but was still a positive force and had seemingly limitless potential.
Young Garnett was saddled with Starbury. Why is that a problem? Because Marbury was a parasite on successful teams with the magic ability to make one better by leaving them.
This era , however, was also defined by the other major personality on the team: Stephon Marbury. Before the 1997 season, the Timberwolves, in an eerie coincidence,
to the fifth overall pick Ray Allen, for the fourth overall pick, Marbury. For moving up one spot in the draft, Minnesota gave up their first round pick next season – the incompetence of their front office will be an ongoing theme.
Young Garnett was saddled with Starbury. Why is that a problem? Because Marbury was a parasite on successful teams with the magic ability to make one better by leaving them. In 1998, the Nets had a +1.9 adjusted point differential and 43 wins — that’s a decent, above average team. The next season, after receiving Marbury a month into the year (he played 31 out of 50 games), their point differential fell to -3.2 with a 26-win pace, prorated for an 82 game season. The biggest change was that Cassell was injured for the first part of the season and then he was traded for Marbury, who got his stats while the team was significantly worse. The next season, 2000, they were outscored again (negative point differential) with only 31 wins. 2001 was the worst one: 26 wins and a -5.3 differential.
Sometimes it’s telling who you’re being traded for. After Kidd was charged for domestic abuse, the Nets decided to take a risk on him and traded him for Marbury. They improved to 52 wins and an adjusted point differential of +3.7, subsequently making the Finals two years in a row. It was one of the largest turnarounds ever. Phoenix went from 51 wins to 36, dropping three points in point differential. At the time Marbury was seen as a star point guard and averaged well over 20 points a game with 8 assists. This detail can be lost with time, but the numbers were deceiving. We have few tools to evaluate defense back then, but his defensive RAPM values[4. regularized adjusted plus/minus with a Bayesian prior] in 1998, 1999, and 2000 were -3.8, -2.5, and -2.0, respectively. Even Basketball-Reference’s new metric, Box Plus-Minus, saw him as a horrid defensive player.
Also, he reportedly drove off one of Minnesota’s best players:
"“Saunders says Gugliotta had told Minnesota he would re-sign with the Timberwolves–if they agreed to trade Marbury.”"
Nonetheless, Marbury’s most successful seasons were with Garnett in the late 90’s. Minnesota followed its first playoff season with another in 1998, reaching 45 wins and the franchise’s first winning season.
It was at the beginning of the season that Garnett’s first huge contract was signed, a six-year, $126 million dollar behemoth that shocked the league and scared owners everywhere else, partly leading to the 1999 lockout. That’s no knock on him as a player, of course, and we don’t historically adjust all-time player rankings for salary with anyone else. When players are offered huge sums of money for an extension after their rookie contract, they almost always accept. Garnett improved too, averaging 18.5 points, 9.6 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 1.8 blocks, and 1.7 steals per game. As a sign of things to come, while Minnesota was better, they had a lower seed because the Western Conference was more competitive and lost to the second seeded Sonics in the first round in a hard-fought five game series. Garnett played fine, but Marbury had horrendous shooting percentages and they were without the injured Gugliotta, their 20.1 point per game scorer.
For the next season, Garnett passed the sacred 20/10 barrier with averages of 20.8 points, 10.4 rebounds, 4.3 assists, 1.8 blocks, and 1.7 steals per game — it was those kind of all-around per game stats that would vault him into the national conversation as the next superstar. Cracking 20 points was tougher in that lockout season too because offense was down everywhere and Garnett carried a larger burden after Gugliotta fled to Phoenix. In fact, the 20-10-4 club is even more special. If you’re wondering why certain scorers aren’t well-liked by basketball-reference’s new metric BPM, it’s because statistical testing has found that volume scoring is more valuable when that player is a passer too. Big men who fill up the stat sheet with points, rebounds, and assists are usually special players — and Garnett is tied with Kareem with the most seasons 20 point, 10 rebound, 4 assists seasons with at least 1500 minutes played, at nine. (If you throw in defense or blocks/steals combined, Garnett looks even better.) It was his first time on an all-NBA team, voted onto the third team, and he was only 22 years-old.
The lockout season was an end to an era in Minnesota, and it was for the better: they traded Stephon Marbury midseason as he wouldn’t agree to an extension because he didn’t like the city or the weather. It was one of Minnesota’s best trades ever and they got Terrell Brandon back with a first round pick that turned into Wally Szczerbiak in the summer of 1999. They limped into the playoffs with a 0.500 record and were eliminated by the eventual champion Spurs as the eighth seed. However, Garnett did not have a lot of support — they lost Gugliotta for nothing. Their other leaders in minutes that season were Joe Smith, Sam Mitchell, and Dean Garrett. But that wouldn’t keep the team from improving.
The Ascendance
Mandatory Credit: Steve Dykes-USA TODAY Sports
With a season clear of Marbury and 71 games from Terrell Brandon, the Timberwolves hit 50 wins, and it was a new era for Garnett too. He was more of a power forward full-time and crashed the glass hard, turning into one of the best rebounders in the league, which would remain true to this very day. Few recall this, but he was actually second in the MVP voting — Shaq dwarfed the MVP news that season. Duncan and Garnett were the same age, 23, and finishing that high over arguably Mourning’s best season, Grant Hill before the injuries, the last great one from Karl Malone, and one of the last from Gary Payton at that age was a special recognition. He had arrived, and it coincided with a bigger punch on defense, as he joined Duncan on the All-Defensive first team.
Garnett receives a lot of criticism for his shooting percentages in the playoffs, especially in 2000. But that’s a bogus complaint, as it was only four games. In fact, the Blazers, with a frontcourt of Pippen, Rasheed Wallace, and Sabonis, were swarming him, and he showed his adaptability by averaging an incredible 8.8 assists a game. For example, a metric like PER takes efficiency into account, and he still registered a 20 PER in that series. Shooting percentages are volatile and can’t be used in such small game sets to prove anything. Kevin Pelton found this out when looking at summer league games: rebounding percentages carry over, but shooting percentages do not. In fact, let’s look at a histogram of 4 game consecutive samples from his 2000 regular season to see if a 44 true-shooting percentage would be a freak occurrence:
Out of 78 four game sets, seven have a TS% between 40 and 45, or 9%. Since he was facing a tough defense and 44% is close to the 45 to 50% range, which was much more frequent, there is no evidence to support the conclusion that this wasn’t part of a natural variation in shooting percentages that every player has. Percentages are volatile.
In fact, if you remain unconvinced, I set up a test for his scoring in the playoffs. When players are up against better defenses, their efficiency typically declines; this is normal. To see if Garnett’s declines at an abnormal rate, I calculated an expected rate based on the defense he saw in the playoffs for every game from 1999 to 2011. The result? There is no statistical significance in how his efficiency changes, and his usage actually slightly increases. If you factor that in with points per possession, he is virtually unchanged from what one would expect based on the opponent defense[4. Note: you can’t state that superstars “should” remain just as efficient against better defenses. For one, that would negate the meaning of a better defense. Secondly, even guys like Olajuwon and Shaq saw their efficiency drop versus good defenses.].
Minnesota, in the shadow of giants like the Spurs and Lakers, squeaked into the playoffs again in 2001 with 47 wins in what was one of the toughest conferences ever. Garnett put out a copy of his previous season where he finished second in the MVP voting. It was yet another season filling up the stat-sheet in numerous ways, doing nearly everything for a shallow team lacking talent. This is the part where the sports analyst chimes in to provide a worn-out cliché about making your teammates better and stepping up when it matters. Yes, this season marked yet another first round exit, but they were an eight-seed versus a Spurs club with 58 wins. Garnett didn’t get outplayed either as he averaged 21 points and 12 rebounds with 4.3 assists per game, on excellent efficiency, shooting well and rarely turning the ball over.
Duncan, meanwhile, had similar averages, but his shooting percentages fell below average, a criticism commonly directed at Garnett. As strange as it seems given their longevity, that was the second and last time the two have ever faced each other in the playoffs. The only other instance was 1999 when the Spurs steamrolled the league en route to a title. Garnett, however, at least matched Duncan’s production, and he was reportedly so hyped-up at playing Duncan that he was “almost hyperventilating.” Most fans and NBA writers judge players on how they perform under the spotlight versus the best competition, and here we have Garnett excelling against arguably the best player of his generation, who happens to play the same position — but this is ignored for other playoff series and instances where Garnett comes up short.
The team had little talent outside of Garnett, but they had Terrell Brandon as one of the more overlooked players from his era and he excelled with Garnett. He was the consummate point guard, averaging 8 assists with Garnett. But he was 5′ 11″ and wasn’t the same caliber player as other dynamic duo partners like a Kobe or Pippen. Nonetheless, he was one of Garnett’s few above-average teammates and they established the team, still bereft of talent, as a perennial 50 win team in a tough conference. Think of Brandon like Ty Lawson — he was a quick point guard who kept turnovers down, a capable scorer too as well as a decent ball-hawk. But how did it fail and how did, according to the critics, Garnett squander this opportunity? Brandon had only two full seasons with Minnesota, having a partial season in that weird 1999 lockout year and succumbing to injuries in 2002. He retired at 31 years-old and never played again.
It was a dark period for Minnesota. The Wolves were caught in a tampering scandal with Joe Smith, promising him a lucrative contract later if he signed now below market value. Minnesota lost three first round draft picks (it was five at the time but two were rescinded). The awfulness of the franchise’s decision here is that they acted illegally just for Joe Smith, a wholly unremarkable player, and it hampered their ability to add talent to surround Garnett. Yet even when they drafted, their hands were left grasping nothing. Over an eight year span, the team drafted William Avery, Rashad McCants, and Ndudi Ebi. The best player drafted was Wally Szczerbiak. They did select Brandon Roy but then swapped him for Randy Foye. But those were minor events compared to Malik Sealy being killed by a drunk driver in 2000. He was killed on the way home from Garnett’s birthday party. Sealy and Garnett were close friends. The tragedy is still with him today.
Despite the dark cloud surrounding the franchise and their inability to build talent around their star, the Timberwolves soldiered on and added another 50-win season in 2002 even with Brandon’s injury. Their lead point guard in this time period was a young Chauncey Billups, who was a backup the season before. He was not yet the all-star we’d come to remember, but his smooth shooting and low mistake game was a good complement to Garnett. This was also Szczerbiak’s breakout season, averaging nearly 19 points a game with superb percentages across the board. He was not a spot-up three-point shooter either, taking only two a game while relying on midrange shots and creating his own with a variety of moves including post-ups, fakes, spins, and cuts. For instance, he was assisted on only 66% of his two-pointers that year – a shooting specialist like Korver is generally assisted on 90% of his shots inside the arc. He picked up a lot of attention too since he was a white American player in a league filled with African Americans and a growing subset of foreign-born players.
However, his defense was average at best and was neither a dynamic scorer nor playmaker – he never cleared 20 points a game. More advanced stats found his impact lacking, and if you don’t believe that, then reference Minnesota’s best season in franchise history two years later: he was injured and barely played despite their 58 wins. Szczerbiak was an all-star that season because before the break Minnesota was on 55-win pace and coaches thought the team deserved two all-stars and couldn’t think of anyone else deserving.
In truth, Minnesota had a mediocre supporting cast surrounding a gargantuan Garnett season. He had the big man gold standard 20 point, 10 rebound season, but he also had five assists, orchestrating much of the team from the high post, topped off with his usual frenzied, destructive defense. Alas, it wasn’t enough, as they were swept in the first round by a Dallas team with Dirk, Nash, and Michael Finley. Garnett averaged an absurd 24 point, 19 rebound 5 assist line, but Dirk scored 33 a game and the Wolves had no chance at stopping a superior team with one of the greatest offenses ever. They were without Brandon and had to defend a team that often used either the three-point shooter LaFrentz or Dirk at center, throwing off Minnesota’s slow seven-footer Rasho Nesterovic. Garnett lost in the first round again, but that was expected: he hadn’t had homecourt advantage yet.
Garnett at least was very … quotable. When asked if he was surprised Minnesota didn’t sell-out versus Jordan and the Wizards:
"“Yeah, I’m a little surprised. But nowadays, with snipers and Bin Ladens running around, don’t nothing really surprise me anymore. Kind of messed up to say, but, somebody told me they seen a flying monkey. There is flying monkeys, too! Flying squirrels and all kinds of sh–. Doesn’t nothing surprise me these days.”"
This was also the first season where zone defenses were legal and the Wolves were pioneers here. Saunders used a 50 and a 3-2 matchup zone, which are hybrids of zones where defenders guard nearby players with more traditional man defense, especially the ballhandler. The scary part is that Minnesota used Garnett at the top of the 3-2 zone, harassing opposing guards as the gatekeeper. It was an unfair weapon, a spry seven-footer with the quickness of a guard and the intensity of a madman, deployed in unorthodox defensive schemes. Somehow he still grabbed the second highest total of defensive boards in the league. You can see some of their zone coverage in this game versus Los Angeles in the playoffs, though what’s more evident is their full court press they used with Garnett as a free safety at halfcourt:
Naturally, after a promising season from the young Billups, one of the few good things in the franchise outside of Garnett, they let Billups leave for Detroit (Even though he only played two seasons there, Garnett is the godfather for one of his daughters). Instead they had Troy Hudson, a small inefficient guard who had never had a big role before or since, starting for the team and playing 2600 minutes. To compound the problems in the backcourt, Wally World had an injury-plagued season and only got on the court in 53 games. The team had to rely on what would be bench fodder for contenders — Anthony Peeler, Kendall Gill, Gary Trent, and Marc Jackson (the center with 311 career assists, not the point guard with 10,334.) This was the general direction of the franchise, their success dissipating within a year and any momentum they try to build with their players is turned into dust.
it’s hard to imagine anyone human doing more for his team: Garnett led the team in points, rebounds, assists, blocks, and steals, which has only happened three other times in NBA history.
Admirably, the team actually won one more game than the previous season, though their adjusted point differential was lower. They had one of the better offenses in the league in 2003 and a decent defense despite only having one plus defender on the team. Garnett again had very little support as Szczerbiak had the aforementioned injury-stricken season and the offense was often in the hands of Hudson and Peeler. Critics would counter that Kevin should have been doing more for the team and that superstars “make” their teammates better, but it’s hard to imagine anyone human doing more for his team: Garnett led the team in points, rebounds, assists, blocks, and steals, which has only happened
three other times in NBA history
. He was voted onto the All-Defensive 1st team, posted-up near the basket, hit shots from 20 feet, conducted the offense from the elbows, set screens, guarded the perimeter, guarded the interior, rarely got into foul trouble (he was somehow 12th out of 14 guys in fouls per minute), and got to the free throw line more than twice as often as anyone else on the team.
This granted the team homecourt advantage for the first time ever. Unfortunately, they had an unlucky draw: the returning champion Los Angeles Lakers. Their second best player was Kobe or arguably Shaq; Minnesota’s was Szczberiak. Throw in a seemingly superior set of role players like Horry and Fisher with head coach Phil Jackson, and it’s a wonder how LA had one fewer win in the regular season. Minnesota lasted six games before bowing out with Garnett averaging 27 points, 16 rebounds and 5 assists, with decent percentages. It was another first round out.
The criticism piled up, like this piece where he’s derided as a “superstar role player” who can’t lead a team to victory because he supposedly can’t score in the fourth quarter. Comprehensive stats weren’t available back then, so we can’t point out things like how he was scoring 27.7 points per 100 possessions in the fourth quarter in 2003 compared to an average of 28.8. That’s slightly less, indeed, but the difference is negligible. For instance, he scored at a 28.2 rate in 2002 in the 4th quarters versus an average of 27.9 – the idea that Garnett can’t be a franchise piece because of his fourth quarter scoring is silly and completely inaccurate. For more ammunition in this illogical debate, in 2003 Minnesota was 5-3 in games decided by three points or less, and they were 11-5 in games decided by five points or less. Close games were not an issue for the Wolves.
Minnesota once again reinvented itself, and it coincided with the franchise’s high point – to date even. They brought in Sam Cassell who, although not a superstar, was the quintessential crafty big point guard with a deft shooting touch, posting up other guards and directing the offense. Unfortunately, the supporting cast was still fairly weak with a full complement of role players with lopsided weaknesses and strengths. The third “star” was an over-the-hill Sprewell, a slasher who had lost his explosiveness, shot well below the league average, and was a year from retirement. Hassell was a fairly good defensive wing, but he was a terribly limited offensive player who somehow only scored 5 points per game in 28 minutes. Fred Hoiberg was an undersized and unathletic guard who was only in the league for his shooting, and he didn’t last long – but his shooting that season was nearly off the charts. Sadly, Mark Madsen was sixth on the team in minutes played. He should have never risen above end-of-the-bench duty or occasional spark plug. Gary Trent was a better player in his prime, but this was his last year before retirement and it showed. The last two relevant rotation players were awful: Ervin Johnson and Olowokandi. The former all-star Szczerbiak only played 673 minutes.
Sprewell, by the way, made this famous comment after the 2004 season:
"“Why would I want to help them win a title? They’re not doing anything for me. I’m at risk. I have a lot of risk here. I’ve got a family to feed. Anything could happen.”"
Nevertheless, the Timberwolves won 58 games and advanced to the conference finals. Garnett had his best season in 2004 and one of the best ever. He was a near unanimous MVP, with three errant votes going to Peja Stojakovic and Jermaine O’Neal. He did everything for the team save for answering phones. While keeping his responsibilities elsewhere, Garnett also managed to increase his role in the offense, taking as many shots per possession as noted scorers like Kobe Bryant and Paul Pierce. He was still a devastating player on defense, mucking up opposing player action everywhere on the court, and led the league in defensive rebound rate, pulling down a mammoth number of boards. It was a season for the ages by conventional measures and more advanced ones. He nearly swept all the popular advanced metrics, for what it’s worth: a PER of 29.4, near the hallowed mark of 30; a Win Shares per minute measure of 0.272 where Duncan was the closest at 0.249; Basketball-Reference’s new box plus/minus has him with a rating of 9.2, which has only been bested by seven other players since the merger; and a rating of 8.6 in RAPM, an adjusted plus/minus model with no box score stats – the next closest guy was at 5.6. The only major stat where he wasn’t first was a variant of what’s now ESPN’s RPM where Shaq was ahead by one-tenth of a point at 10.4 compared to 10.3, respectively; but that’s a per possession rating and Garnett played nearly 800 more minutes. While stats are not perfect, obviously, it’s still useful information and people create narratives from numbers – it’s why Jordan and LeBron are exalted figures, as well as Wilt Chamberlain and ring-less players like Karl Malone. By those measures, Garnett pretty clearly had one of the most amazing seasons ever, and it shouldn’t be forgotten.
The playoffs started well too. After years of first round defeats, the Timberwolves controlled the playoffs by snaring the first seed and cruising through an easy series with Denver. The second round featured a tough Sacramento team featuring Webber, Stojakovic, Bibby, Divac, Brad Miller, and Doug Christie; they actually had a similar adjusted point differential rating, suggesting they were nearly as strong as Minnesota. Matched-up against Webber, Garnett destroyed his all-star counterpart — averaging about six points more a game on better efficiency with nearly twice as many rebounds. In game seven, the conventional test of mettle if anything is, Garnett had a monster performance with 32 points and 21 rebounds capped off with a one-man ten point run in the fourth quarter with his team down[5. Before game seven, Garnett also had one of his most infamous quotes ever: “It’s Game 7, man. That’s it. It’s for all the marbles. … Sitting in the house, I’m loadin’ up the pump. I’m loadin’ up the Uzi. I got a couple M-16s, a couple {9mm guns}. I got a couple joints with some silencers on them. I’m just loading clips, a couple grenades. I got a missile launcher … I’m ready for war.”]
As we can ask with every Garnett season in Minnesota, how did it go wrong? Their opponent in the conference finals was that absurd Shaq-Kobe-Malone-Payton team who, even with the sort of chemistry issues you inevitably have with four legends on the same team, were a dominant squad and were just off a series dispatching the reigning champions, the Spurs, into an early summer vacation. Glancing at Minnesota’s team page for a moment, and one would see that Garnett, again, failed to lead his team as they lost in six games, but it’s missing an important detail: Cassell was plagued by back and hip issues throughout the series playing only 64 total minutes, missing time starting with the fourth quarter of game one[6. Bizarre explanation you won’t forget: their coach Flip Saunders claimed Cassell injured his hip doing his signature “big balls” dance after hitting a big shot versus Sacramento, which subsequently cost them a chance at a title.]. Since he and KG were by far the two most important players, this was debilitating. Darrick Martin was forced to start three games against the formidable Lakers, matching up with Gary Payton.
So this was the zenith of Garnett’s time in Minnesota, marred by an injury to a key player at the worst time, right as Garnett had his greatest individual season. He kept fighting in this fruitless effort, matching his season averages, as he went up against the intimidating Karl Malone-Shaq frontline, leading a band of role players into battle. This was the epitome of his time in Minnesota, furiously jousting with low odds and coming up with nothing.
The Lost Years
Oct 29, 2014; Boston, MA, USA; Brooklyn Nets center Kevin Garnett (2) during the fourth quarter of Boston
For the optimist, this should have been the start of a successful empire in Minnesota, building off a trip to the conference finals. For the critic, Garnett’s inability to build on this as the sole superstar was incriminating. But he was hardly to blame. Following what was one of the greatest seasons by conventional measures, Garnett was largely the same across the board — a little more efficient shooting the ball but with a worse team defense. However, the Timberwolves missed the playoffs by a hair even though they won 44 games, and he was summarily dismissed as a fraud superstar, booted from the MVP talks.
These three seasons missing the playoffs are a black mark on Garnett’s legacy, but they really shouldn’t mean anything without proper context.
Garnett did not underachieve with his opportunities here like with Cassell in his prime. Cassell was injured for much of the season, playing only 1522 minutes. The shallow team was exposed, making last season’s 58 wins even more remarkable. This was Sprewell’s last season, shooting terribly and gunning nonetheless. Troy Hudson was the starting point guard half the time and by most measures he was terrible, even for a bench player. Hassell started at shooting guard while scoring 9 points per 36 minutes on below average efficiency. The rotation at center bounced between epic draft bust Olowokandi, Ervin Johnson, elite towel waver Mark Madsen, CBA player John Thomas, and Eddie Griffin with his career 45.0 TS% mark who missed the previous season spending time at an alcohol rehabilitation center.
Hoiberg and Szczerbiak could at least provide shooting, and coupled with Garnett’s consistent game the Wolves managed a top-five offensive rating. You can see the highlights of a 47-point explosion here, where he drains jumpers from all angles inside the three-point line and tortures Phoenix’s defense in the paint.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M9A4y40ygI
Historically, a superstar missing the playoffs in his prime seems bizarre and calls into question whether or not the player really was a superstar. But this is a lazy argument, backed up by very little actual thought or context. For most of the NBA’s duration, making the playoffs was much easier due to the smaller league – making one of the 16 spots in a 22-team league is different than a 30-team league. Jordan never missed the playoffs with Chicago, but one year his team gained entry even with 30 wins (his foot injury season) and made it another year when healthy with a paltry 38 wins. Moses Malone near his absolute peak was on a 40 win team, yet they made the finals, not just the playoffs. Compounding Minnesota’s problem was one of the toughest conferences ever – if they had been in the east, they could have gotten homecourt advantage with a slightly easier schedule and the fact that Boston was the third seed with 45 wins.
With a vacuum at the top of the NBA, this surprising playoff miss resulted in one of the oddest MVP races ever with the surprising Steve Nash taking home a trophy. Garnett, after nearly winning unanimously, fell to the bottom near the likes of other players who received a sliver of votes like Gilbert Arenas, P.J. Brown, and Marcus Camby. The Wolves didn’t choke down the stretch either, as they won eleven of their last fifteen games and four of their last five. It just wasn’t enough and they lacked the requisite firepower on the roster to clear 50 wins.
Responding to the failure of missing the playoffs, Minnesota decided that, given all the available evidence of how the team was successful and when, they should trade Sam Cassell for Marko Jaric. Cassell was a year removed from an all-star season, though the Wolves were understandably concerned about his age. Jaric was an intriguing prospect … years ago. He was a tall point guard, sometimes acting as a point forward, but he was a poor shooter even near the rim and was already 27 years-old at the start of the season. Cassell was in the final year of his contract, and the Wolves signed Jaric to a six-year, 40 million dollar contract, which almost immediately became deadweight. Most appalling is that the Wolves sent out a first round pick to make the trade happen with protections for the top ten slots for the first six years. The worst case scenario is that Minnesota would finish in the bottom ten until the protections came off – which is exactly what happened, and this coveted draft pick was packaged in a deal to bring Chris Paul to L.A.
Cassell, meanwhile, had one of his best seasons ever playing 78 games and leading the Clippers to what was then the franchise’s best season ever, making the semifinals and losing to the Phoenix Suns in seven games in what was an even series (the Clippers actually outscored the Suns over seven games); Jaric never improved as a player and was out of the league by age 30.
The Timberwolves won 33 games in 2006 with an awful offense that would keep them from even legitimately chasing a playoff spot. One may question how Garnett, who was still in his prime, managed to do so poorly, but this was undoubtedly one of the worst rosters surrounding a superstar in modern history. It was a team of limited talent and selfish players who were tagged with character problems. Szczerbiak was probably their only above average player, and naturally he was traded midseason for Ricky Davis, who was the corporeal representation of anti-basketball, a notorious stat-padder most infamous for trying to get a triple double by shooting at his own basket at the end of a game.
When LeBron was drafted, Davis remarked that he thought LeBron was going to be just another addition to help him score. He was a flashy, selfish gunner, playing for the big dunk and not the team. The rest of the roster was a graveyard for draft busts and head cases ranging from Olowokandi and Mark Blount to Nikoloz Tskitishvili and Eddie Griffin. Garnett is a notoriously intense player focused on winning and competing, and it’s a wonder how he even survived that season mentally. And it wouldn’t be the last.
Minnesota won 32 games the next season. They didn’t have Szczerbiak anymore. Mark Blount was third on the team in minutes played and Ricky Davis was first. Despite the supporting talent, they weren’t even that bad: a -3 adjusted point differential will keep you out of the deep lottery.
These three seasons missing the playoffs are a black mark on Garnett’s legacy, but they really shouldn’t mean anything without proper context. First of all, in the modern NBA a single player cannot “carry” his team to the playoffs all on his own. You still need some contributions from teammates, even mediocre ones. A single superstar is not worth 40 wins on his own – that’s ludicrous. Modern analysis usually states that stars at most are worth about 20 wins, and a “replacement level” team – one comprising of players you’d sign to minimum level contracts to fill out the bench or more of the rotation if it’s a bad team – would win 12 to 18 wins, depending on how you define the replacement level. So Garnett on a 33 win team contradicts nothing about his star-status.
In fact, the major problem here with perception is that people are notoriously awful at evaluating supporting casts. Most sets of non-star players are lumped together and considered to have the same value. The Blazers can return the same core and swap Robin Lopez and J.J. Hickson, and improve by 21 wins – surprising most NBA fans, causing most people to doubt them for the 2015 season, because how good could they really be just making changes with their bench and a role player at center?
We can calculate an approximation of how strong this supporting cast is using basketball-reference’s new metric BPM and taking the BPM from the nearest season[7. You use the nearest season so someone can’t say Garnett was “stealing” their stats, making them look worse on paper.] without Garnett for every player. For example, Ricky Davis didn’t play with Garnett in 2006 (when he was in Boston) and in 2008, so you take the average of his BPM. If you do that for 2007, Garnett’s supporting cast has a net rating of -12.9, which for a complete season would make them one of the worst teams ever and roughly translates to 12 wins. (It’s a little better when you adjust for diminishing returns or how teams play better behind than with a lead, but not by too much and the point stands.) You can do this for 2006 as well and even with other metrics – you come to the same conclusions that without their star power forward it’s a truly dreadful team. They didn’t make the playoffs not because Garnett is a false superstar; they didn’t make it because it’s a team game and his teammates were bad. Check out how poorly his team fared when he was on the bench in 2007: they scored at a rate of 97.3 points per 100 possessions and gave up 112.5 points – and they managed to nearly play teams evenly when he played.
Surprisingly, it’s common for superstars to miss the playoffs or dip under 0.500 in their prime, despite what most NBA writers imply. Let’s look at a list of the top 20 players by MVP shares, a fairly good proxy of the best players ever, and see which ones missed the playoffs during their best years. Right away you have Kareem Abdul-Jabbar missing in two consecutive seasons both in Milwaukee and Los Angeles – he’s inarguably one of the greatest players ever and missed during the apex of most players at ages 27 and 28, respectively, contrary to what Bill Simmons thought in one of his articles when criticizing Garnett, who he would later come to love as a Celtic.
A year after his 50 points per game season, Wilt Chamberlain missed the playoffs with a 31 win team despite playing 3806 minutes and averaging 44.8 points per game with 24.3 rebounds. After Shaq left, Kobe Bryant played with a dreary team in 2005 bereft of the typical LA Laker talent, winning 35 games, although at least he had Odom and Caron Butler. Moses Malone missed 23 games in 1978, but it doesn’t entirely explain how bad the team was: 28 wins; next year he would win the MVP. Bob Pettit, one of the first superstars, won 29 games in 1962 during one of his best seasons. Only a couple years from a championship, Olajuwon missed the playoffs in 1992 at the prime age of 29. Barkley missed twice, once as a 24 year-old and another time one year before an MVP season when his team won only 35 games; he then jumped ship and joined a talented Phoenix Suns and immediately won an MVP and went to the finals.
"“At the same time, if you’re an alleged superstar in your prime and your team can’t even make the playoffs … well, did Kareem ever miss the playoffs?” – Bill Simmons"
Yes. It happened twice. And both times the team had a losing record[7. in 1976, the Lakers missed the playoffs but had a better record than the central division winner, who only gained entry to the playoffs because of that. That division winner? The Milwaukee Bucks.].
"“Can you name another alleged “superstar in his prime” who missed the playoffs for two straight seasons? … Isn’t it his job to carry a crappy team? What do you think Barkley was doing in the late-’80s and early-’90s in Philly?” – Bill Simmons"
Barkley was busy missing the playoffs twice during that time-frame.
Yet here’s possibly the best antecedent for Garnett’s nightmare in Minnesota: Oscar Robertson, lauded as much as almost any past superstar, known for his intensity and all-around game, missed the playoffs three seasons in a row, reaching a low point of 36 wins in 1970. He had never even reached the conference finals, and as an older player joined a superstar in Milwaukee and won a title right away in one of the most dominating seasons ever by a team. He also missed the playoffs in his rookie season when he nearly averaged a triple double.
Garnett was the center of many arguments about his value and if the problem was his teammates or him. For a cogent test, we could give him some great teammates and coaching and see how the new team responds and how Minnesota fares without him – and he got that opportunity the next season, as Garnett, a loyal player by all accounts, agreed to go to the Boston Celtics. And thus ended Garnett’s time in basketball’s Siberia, the best years created by one and a half injury-plagued seasons from Sam Cassell and two and a half from Stephon Marbury, and an era marked by a high-degree of incompetence in the front office and bad luck.
Unfortunately, there was a final tragedy. Eddie Griffin was struck by a train and killed in the summer of 2007. Griffin had a locker next to Garnett, as the franchise hoped a positive influence would steer his life in the right direction. It was the second death the team had faced in recent years and Garnett left with the funeral as one of his last memories of his former home.
The Boston Redemption
Although this sounds strange now, at the time the Boston Big Three weren’t considered serious contenders for a title. They weren’t even regarded as a lock for their own division.
The Garnett trade was one of the largest ever completed, as he was sent to the Celtics
for five players and two draft picks
. The centerpiece of the trade for Minnesota was Al Jefferson, a low-post maestro who was coveted for his throw-back game. Ratliff was the required expiring contract, the elbow grease needed to push the Garnett contract through. Gomes, Telfair, and Gerald Green were the three other youngsters thrown in to balance the scales with Green’s potential more alluring. One first-round pick turned into Wayne Ellington, who never had traction beyond bench duty, while the other was a return of their own protected draft pick they gave up in the Szczerbiak trade. Boston was left with a bare-bones roster surrounding the three stars since they gave up even more assets to bring in Ray Allen like a highly-valued 5th pick in the trade, which was turned into Jeff Green.
There were other Garnett trades hinted at too like one with the Warriors. But, again, the pieces were too highly valued compared to the old star player who had “failed” in previous seasons. Here’s one piece that suggested that Biedrins – yes, the guy who couldn’t hit free throws and was out of the league at an early age – was too much to surrender along with Ellis, Patrick O’Bryant, and Brandan Wright. Another failed destination was Phoenix, which Garnett preferred because of its warm climate and his friendship with Nash. Ultimately, the deal fizzled because the Suns were unwilling to part with Amare Stoudemire – what could have been. Garnett would have certainly shored up their defense and rebounding while providing a good pick and pop option for Nash on offense.
Although this sounds strange now, at the time the Boston Big Three weren’t considered serious contenders for a title. They weren’t even regarded as a lock for their own division. They were third in an ESPN prediction pool for Eastern Conference champion behind Chicago and Detroit. Even Hollinger didn’t pick them. No ESPN writer picked them for champion and they received little support in a GM survey where most votes went to the Spurs, Suns, Mavericks, and Pistons. Noted NBA prediction experts Hollinger and Neil Paine tagged them for 51 and 48 wins, respectively. They were old, they didn’t have depth, and Garnett had lost his luster: how is this guy a true superstar with almost no playoff success? How valuable was he?
Few teams in NBA history separated themselves from their peers like the Celtic.s
Boston was an exceptional team right away and any doubts about the team’s cohesion or talent were shelved. They had one of the greatest seasons in modern league history with 66 wins, an adjusted point differential over nine, a defense that one of the best in NBA history, and outscored teams by 5.2 points per game in the playoffs on the way to a title. In the Finals, they beat a strong Laker team that would win two titles in a row, decimating them in the Final game with a margin of victory of 39 points. They did this with the supporting players of Perkins, then only 23 years-old, a second-year Rondo only 21 years-old, James Posey, Eddie House, half a season from Tony Allen coming off a knee injury, and some backup minutes shared by a young Glen “Big Baby” Davis and Leon Powe. They also coasted down the stretch to the point where their big three were playing under 30 minutes per game in the final month. This did not look like a defensive juggernaut – but few teams in NBA history separated themselves from their peers like the Celtics. And they weren’t just a “very good” defense thanks to coaching and smart players; they were historically elite. For his efforts, Garnett won Defensive Player of the Year and came up third in the MVP voting.
Minnesota, meanwhile, even with gaining a nice cache of young players and a promising soon-to-be all-star to replace Garnett, was crushed the next season, dropping 10 wins and three points in adjusted point differential. They were awful, one of the worst teams in that timeframe. Garnett clearly was not the problem. In fact, the Wolves have still yet to make the playoffs since he left, reaching a low point of 15 wins and an adjusted point differential of -9, which borders on pathetic. And history is weird: they drafted another Kevin, one named Love, who put up some of the most singular statistical seasons in recent history echoing Garnett in his ability to score, rebound, and assist. Paired with a notable point guard they, of course, managed to miss the playoffs, causing everyone to question Love’s value as he fled for another city in the east. Though for whatever criticism people had of Garnett and his ability to be a star, it should have died in that 2008 season – the Celtics were all-time greats and Minnesota was exposed for its true colors: bereft of talent.
The next season, the Celtics started with a 27-2 record before Christmas, outscoring opponents by about 11 points a game. By the all-star break, they had a 44-11 record with a point differential of nine points – they were still dominating other teams. Unfortunately, in a game after the all-star break, Garnett strained his knee going up for an alley-oop. He only played four more games that entire season in limited minutes and was shut down for the playoffs. Their defensive rating fell by nearly six points after the break, and they were unceremoniously defeated in the second round. For a team relying on its veteran stars, they could waste no early seasons together while they were still young enough to compete. Garnett had spent years toiling with lesser talent, finding his best teammates traded or getting injured at inopportune times. A decade of playing 40 minutes a game and 3000 minutes a season had caught up with him and his body was starting to fail. His career minutes were at 33,000 before Boston —that’s roughly the same amount as Magic Johnson, Baylor, Chris Mullin, and Ben Wallace had during their entire careers – and it showed. He overtaxed his body for years in Minnesota compensating for his lack of help and when he finally got help he was spent.
The Garnett that people remember will be the Boston Garnett, alas – the hobbled warrior past his prime with a smaller role on offense and limited minutes. Back in 2004, Bill Simmons wondered who would win a “high dunk” competition and KG was his first thought – during most of his time in Boston, fans lamented his lack of vertical lift. The 2010 season was another one limited by injuries, as Garnett missed long stretches of the season, and Boston regressed to 50 wins. He had an offseason surgery to remove bone spurs and missed ten games due to a hyperextended knee. This came to a head in the 2010 finals, a rematch of a couple seasons before versus the Lakers. He was only able to play 31 minutes a game in the Finals and looked like a shadow of his former glory at times, but still had the presence of mind and defensive instincts to add a major force on at least one end of the court. Naturally, the Celtics suffered an injury at the worst juncture – their starting center, Perkins, was injured in the sixth game halfway through the first quarter; he didn’t play again that series. Since the Celtics were a shallow team that relied on its starting lineup and its defense as much as any team has, it should be no surprise they lost the next two games. And that was the last time Garnett played in the finals.
The Garnett that people remember will be the Boston Garnett, alas – the hobbled warrior past his prime with a smaller role on offense and limited minutes.
It’s also pertinent to note that the Eastern Conference wasn’t a cakewalk during Boston’s best years. They suffered through the brunt of some of LeBron’s best teams both in Cleveland and Miami, as well as the Magic at their best with Dwight Howard, the waning years of Detroit, and a resurgent Chicago team. The 2010 Cavaliers, for instance, won 61 games and were by most conventional measures one of the best teams to never win a title – and Boston beat them fairly easily, and followed that by defeating the previous season’s Eastern Conference champion, the Magic.
The 2010 Cleveland series, by the way, had a curious moment at the end of the last game where Garnett was seen speaking to LeBron on the court like something out of Lost in Translation. He was later asked what he said and responded, “Loyalty is something that hurts you at times, because you can’t get youth back. I can honestly say that if I could go back and do my situation over, knowing what I know now with this organization, I’d have done it a little sooner.”
It’s tough to discern how much of an impact that had on LeBron’s decision to join Miami – even LeBron may not know completely because of subconscious forces in his mind – but Garnett and his own big three created a landscape distorting event in the NBA and initiated an era we are still in that obsesses over creating new “big three’s” and bringing stars together for a quick shot at a title. Coincidence or not, Garnett was ahead of the curve here and wanted to control his own destiny rather than wait for his incompetent front office to bring in the talent. This, however, painted him as an enemy to many NBA fans – in the traditional view, players should be subservient to the owners and GMs. Garnett broke that mold and fans everywhere reacted negatively to the idea of the best players joining forces, even though the most popular periods in the league coincided with a lack of parity and star-laden teams dominating. For this he was labeled a heel.
Some criticism of Garnett focuses on Thibodeau’s role in structuring Boston’s defense and how Garnett was lucky to find a system that catered to his strengths. Thibodeau would leave Boston for Chicago for the 2011 season and would quickly become one of the league’s most respected defensive coaches. The Celtics responded with the second best defense they had in the Garnett era and one of the best in the modern era. They were at their best, of course, when Garnett was on the court, holding opponents to a defensive rating about nine points better than average, and this fell to three points when he was on the bench. Luckily it was one of his healthiest years too, playing 71 games. As useful as coaching is on defense, Garnett was the driving force and a leader on one of the greatest defensive teams in NBA history.
The Celtics frontcourt, by the way, wasn’t even healthy that year, as Perkins barely played and then got traded, and Shaq and Jermaine O’Neal managed to play 61 games combined. Shaq also only played 17 total minutes after February 1st, including the playoffs.
The Celtics were never quite the same after the Perkins trade, as they had traded their starting center for a backup forward in Jeff Green, essentially. They lost in the second round versus that other superteam, the Miami Heat. The following lockout season was the last of the “big three” era, and they started out slow with a losing record far into the season. They finished strong, however, with the best defense in the league where it was just a shade under last 2011’s defensive rating relative to the league average. For what it’s worth, they were a below average team when Garnett sat and one of the best when he played.
It was his first season at center too after a career at both forward slots. He managed to play 60 out of a total 66 games in what was his last year on an all-defensive team. They pushed deep in the playoffs, eventually meeting Miami in the conference finals. It was one of Garnett’s best post-seasons too with a high usage rate and his usually stellar defense. But they lost the series in a tough seven-game series against the eventual NBA champions. Garnett played well – Allen and Pierce didn’t make their shots – in what was their last opportunity to take home another title. But they exceeded expectations, winning in their first year together and maintaining contender status for a couple years past the expected expiration date.
The 2013 season was Garnett’s swan song with Boston. It was the last for Paul Pierce and Doc Rivers too, and it will almost definitely be the last all-star season for KG. It was a weak season for Boston, alas, as they scraped by with a mere 41 wins (in 81 games) with a pedestrian defense. The problem wasn’t Garnett though – when he was on the court, they allowed 99.3 points per 100 possessions, which would have bested even the league leading Indiana Pacers for best defensive rating, and they were below average without him. The team wasn’t full of defensive stalwarts either, giving heavy minutes to Bass, Jeff Green, and Jason Terry. This was also the season where Rondo went down with an ACL injury and the Celtics improved without him – some may argue that in Garnett’s last Boston seasons Rondo was the key player, but the data does not confirm this assertion.
With the Celtics no longer good enough to contend for a title and a painful rebuilding process on the horizon, Garnett and Pierce were traded for assets, and that was the end of the era.
The Brooklyn Coda
Jan 21, 2015; Sacramento, CA, USA; Brooklyn Nets forward Kevin Garnett (2) directs the defense during the first quarter of the game against the Sacramento Kings at Sleep Train Arena. Mandatory Credit: Ed Szczepanski-USA TODAY Sports
After the paradise of Boston, Garnett ventured into a new experiment with the Brooklyn Nets, who had just moved into their Brooklyn arena a year earlier and wanted to make a splash with a deep playoff team. Among the other stars invited to the circus show were Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, Paul Pierce, Andrei Kirilenko, Jason Terry, and Brook Lopez, as well as Shaun Livingston and FIBA gold medalist Mason Plumlee – it’s a team that excited NBA fans and predictions were in the 50’s win range with ESPN, for example, pegging them at 53. Of course, we all know this story now. They were a train wreck the first couple months of the season, and they vastly underperformed expectations, partly due to injuries and partly due to unanticipated roster chemistry issues.
Garnett had remained a surprisingly effective player deep into his 30’s in Boston, but he swiftly lost a lot of production in Brooklyn. He had been a fairly active scorer for a center the year before, but he fell below the average usage rate and his efficiency tanked hard thanks to a declining free throw rate and percentage of shots converted around the rim. He was a near liability on offense and was lucky he could at least stretch the floor and pass. However, he set a career high in defensive rebound percentage, grabbing a higher proportion of available rebounds than he ever has before, and Brooklyn needed it: when he was on the court they rebounded at a top-three rate and when he was off the court they ranked last.
The Nets had a schizophrenic season. After a 9-17 start, they found a style that worked and outscored opponents by about two points per game, eventually reaching 44 wins. They knocked out a strong Raptors team in the playoffs too – and the core of that Toronto team is destroying everyone in the Eastern Conference now too. The key change was downsizing, using Garnett or Plumlee as the center and Pierce or Teletovic as the power forward. Even with smallball the Brooklyn defense stayed intact thanks in part to Garnett. The season wasn’t a total nightmare, but it’s a black mark on Garnett’s legacy as the Nets surrendered many assets for “win now” veterans who were unable to bring them to 50 wins.
Sadly, there is even less help in Brooklyn this season even though this is in all likelihood Garnett’s last. They have a losing record in an awful conference, battling with the dregs of the east for a playoff spot. He’s fighting in darkness for a lost cause. In a way, this is a fitting end to Garnett’s tale, a tale of a player giving maximum effort at every possible moment and loyal to a fault, finally leaving the team that couldn’t support him right as his body was about to fail. He’s an example to some people of a player who “isn’t good enough” to be mentioned with the legends because his teams didn’t win enough, and he’s an example to other people of why we need context when comparing players and their teams. In either case, he was an extraordinary talent who bounced between two extremely different environments, offering a wide range in realities.
Who Is He?
Jan 4, 2015; Miami, FL, USA; Brooklyn Nets forward Kevin Garnett before a game against the Miami Heat in the first half at American Airlines Arena. Mandatory Credit: Robert Mayer-USA TODAY Sports
In the social media era, this means we have more opportunities to mock him as some has-been whose exploits are forgotten.
Garnett was the catalyst to the high school generation, influencing some of the best players ever to come straight to the league skipping college. He was a mobile, versatile big who liked to pass and play on the perimeter, ushering in an age of stretch power forwards and smallball where the basketball world was revolutionized by his predecessors. His gargantuan contract ignited an NBA lockout and changed how his peers got paid. He ganged up with two other all-stars in Boston, signaling and probably influencing the super-team era where players tried to choose their own teammates. He was the last player to play against Magic Johnson, and he’ll retire soon after playing guys half his age.
Now he’s a punchline and an afterthought at best. His intensity, which made him a supreme teammate, now makes him the butt of jokes. A former announcer in Minnesota was asked for a one sentence description of Garnett and replied, “All out, every night, heart and soul — Game 13 in Atlanta, Game 61 on a Monday night against Charlotte, Game 6 of the Conference finals, doesn’t matter.”
In the social media era, this means we have more opportunities to mock him as some has-been whose exploits are forgotten.
But what are these criticisms? Why do you make fun of player who competes so hard? Why do we discredit someone who cares less about scoring and more about all other aspects of the game? In a way, he’s perfect for a great team because he can fit with anyone.
The story of Garnett is, in many ways, the story of his teammates.
Additionally,
on analyzing how a player’s efficiency changes as the opponent’s defense gets better – i.e. looking at which guys “step up” versus better competition. Most players have a coefficient for efficiency around 1 and their usage rate doesn’t change. David Robinson’s an exception with a coefficient around 1.3 to 1.4, depending the seasons chosen. So yes, Robinson’s a lot less efficient versus elite defenses, and his usage even declines a tiny amount. Garnett? It’s been consistently under 1, and his usage increases more than most players. So yes, this means Garnett’s scoring
improves
more than you’d expect as the defenses get better. This is true even excluding his Boston seasons.
If you’re a great team, you likely already have an elite scorer, and Garnett’s scoring issues are vastly overstated and unsubstantiated. If you want to build one of the greatest teams ever, you will want an elite defense, and he can provide that even at the power forward position, or center, while filling in the key areas on the checklist of every playoff team: spacing, rebounding, playing off-ball, screen-setting, and passing. That’s absolutely ideal for a contender, and any notion that Garnett is not made to be a “winner” – this manically intense, versatile competitor – should be burned and forgotten forever.
The story of Garnett is, in many ways, the story of his teammates. Whenever his supporting cast is mentioned, critics invariably point to how Tim Duncan has never been in the lottery and brought his team a title in 2003 with little help. This overlooks the fact that not all subpar supporting casts are the same. Gradations are ignored, lumping all non-all-star lineups into the same bin. Then there are the aggressive anti-stat folk where Garnett is the lightning rod, representing all their fears and concerns about statistics, and shut down any attempt to elucidate on why Garnett shines so magnificently in advanced stats. The story of Garnett is not one of a player overrated by stats who couldn’t do enough for his teammates. Rather it’s nuanced, far-reaching, and can’t be understood taking a quick snapshot of his career. The story of Garnett is about a player who suffered for years in a basketball wasteland, burdened with mammoth responsibilities and overseen by incompetence incarnate, and one who found redemption in another city right as his body started to fail him, but he never stopped fighting against the endless night and to this day is waging another pointless war on an adrift team while no one watches.
Garnett isn’t going to play much longer. And he deserves a better goodbye. It’s not about advanced stats or his plus/minus prowess, although they hint at something special behind the numbers. It’s about the slow-burn of his career, the story of redemption, and how a player can impact the game in almost every possible way but still come up short. It’s human frailty. It’s about limits. And soon, he will be gone. I’m afraid most of the NBA world will forget what he really means. I’m afraid we won’t know how to say goodbye because we don’t even know who he is.
But soon the last game for Kevin Garnett will end, and that will be it. Just silence.
All team efficiency and point differential statistics from Basketball-Reference