Kevin Garnett is expected to play again next season

The Big Ticket isn’t ready to call it quits just yet.

After 20 long and brutal seasons, Kevin Garnett has decided to hang up his sneakers and call it a career.

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Alright, so he isn’t actually doing that, but the fact that you would have instantly believed that to be true really says something. It just seems like the past couple of years have been filled with the whole world waiting on the edge of their seats for Garnett to retire. He has been playing for bad teams and usually looks to only be going through the motions, so retirement appeared to be the next logical step.

Garnett has thrown a lot of curve balls in his NBA days, and he’s throwing another one to a lot of us as it looks like he will be returning for another season.

No definitive word yet, but rumbles out of 'Sota persist that Kevin Garnett is still leaning toward coming back for season No. 21 in '15-16
— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) April 13, 2015

20 seasons was such a nice number to end on, but I guess 21 seasons for No. 21 is equally as gratifying.

The Minnesota Timberwolves said that this wasn’t just a short rental when they traded for Garnett at the deadline and that they expected him to resign with the team, but that looked like optimistic chatter that carried no weight at the time. It looks like they were right after all.

Garnett turns 39 years young next month, and the only other active players older than him are Andre Miller (just turned 39) and Tim Duncan (turns 39 in less than two weeks). Unlike the other two, The Big Ticket came to the NBA straight out of high school, so he has more seasons under his belt. If he does in fact play next year, he will tie Robert Parish and Kevin Willis for the longest NBA careers of all-time. Surely Garnett has to be aware of that, and that might have something to do with his decision. Players are always going to say individual stuff doesn’t matter, but saying that you had the longest career ever is really something to be proud of (especially when you were as good of a player as Garnett was).

If he does return next year, the big question should be if he will actually play or not. The Timberwolves don’t get as much attention as other team’s do right now, so it would not be a shock if people didn’t know that Garnett hasn’t even really been playing for Minnesota. Since being traded to them February, Garnett has only played in five games. He has currently missed 19 straight games, and he won’t play again for the remainder of the season. Garnett’s leadership and presence around young players like Andrew Wiggins is probably priceless, but it would be nice to see Garnett play more than he is right now.

Garnett is currently on the last year of his current contract, so he will have to work out another deal with the Timberwolves if he wants to return.

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