Remembering Kevin Garnett: The conclusion

At the beginning of many articles, the author starts with an anecdote that doesn’t visibly connect with the content of the story, but then finds a common thread and moves on to the meat of the article. Then for the conclusion, the anecdote returns and new connections are now apparent — meaning is inferred and the symmetry of the article leads to a satisfying and closed ending. This is a natural story cycle our brains cling to, and we force that structure onto things that don’t even fit the pattern, discarding irrelevant information and reorganizing events into a tidier bundle.

We saw that this summer with Kevin Garnett’s retirement, as people rewrote his career as a sign-post for basketball history and commented on how he reflects the current NBA climate. This will cease only slightly, insofar as Garnett’s influence diminishes with the passing years; the recent Collective Bargaining Agreement was another example of our ability to connect his legacy to a seemingly unrelated event. But Garnett is more than just some metonymic construction for basketball history; he’s a real person with a unique and varied NBA career, and one who I fear will be subsumed by the sands of history.

The story of Kevin Garnett is dynamic and, unfortunately, could be overwritten by crowds of people using his career to promote or denigrate specific NBA events or movements. I tried to capture his footprint a couple years ago, and I’ve finally returned to his story to close the final chapter — I had a hard time letting go and comprehending his retirement as literal fact.

The return home

In an ode to fate, a few weeks after I wrote that retrospective on him, Kevin Garnett was traded to his first team, the Minnesota Timberwolves — as if life itself wanted a cleaner and more meaningful end to his career. The Brooklyn Nets swapped him for Thaddeus Young, who was still a useful player. It was a surprising trade, as the Wolves gained little on paper and actually expected him to sign a two-year contract in the summer, even though he appeared to be a step away from retirement. He was ostensibly the fertilizer for all the young talent on the roster; he was being paid to be a veteran presence. Garnett actually only played five games for Minnesota for the remainder of that season, marred by knee problems and soreness.

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Over the summer, however, Minnesota drafted a multi-faceted big man (Karl-Anthony Towns) with the No. 1 pick while signing Garnett for two more years[1]. It was obvious what role they wanted him to serve, as mentoring a young talent was appreciably more valuable than anything he could do on the court anymore. That’s a distressing signal for an athlete — he was shipped to the Nets to create a competitive team for a new era, and for Minnesota he was a token of their past and a developer for their future talent.

Garnett’s time with the Wolves was largely irrelevant. He played in only 38 games that final season and used a mere 11.4 percent of his team’s possessions while on the court — that’s a far cry from his MVP season where he used 29.6 percent. He was relegated to being a mid-range specialist — his overall shooting percentages were low but from 16 feet to the 3-point line his percentage was virtually the same as his career norm — but he was still a superb defensive rebounder and passer. There are only 31 seasons since 1974 where a player had an assist rate of 16 percent or greater and a defensive rebound rate of 27 percent or greater, which Garnett achieved in 2016, albeit in relatively few minutes; the corresponding list on Basketball-rRference is full of Hall-of-Famers and all-stars.

And during the season, Kevin Garnett passed Karl Malone for the most defensive rebounds in NBA history. That distinction comes with an asterisk, as the defensive rebound has only been tallied since 1974, of course, and the league has been trending toward more defensive boards and fewer offensive ones the past few decades. But it’s the type of record you can’t top without an astounding combination of longevity and rebounding might.

While Kevin’s last season was not glamorous, it added a few numbers to his ridiculous career stats. It wasn’t just limited to defensive boards. He’s ninth all-time in total rebounds. He moved past the unbreakable Kevin Willis for fifth all-time in total games, behind the iron-men stalwarts of Robert Parish, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, John Stockton, and Karl Malone, and finished third all-time in minutes played. He made more two-pointers in his career than Kobe Bryant, and only he and Hakeem Olajuwon have at least 1800 blocks and 1800 steals. In fact, no one else even has 1400 of each[2]. Only one big man, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, has more career assists, and Garnett finished with over 26,000 points, more than notable scorers like Charles Barkley and Allen Iverson.

Although we mainly picture Garnett as the hobbled warrior, his longevity is impressive. He’s one of only six players with at least 18 seasons with a VORP of +1.0 — that’s a minutes-based box-score metric that goes back to 1974[3]. It’s essentially a bare minimum for a relevant season[4]. Coupled with his high peak, Garnett is third all-time in total VORP, and he’s ninth all-time in Win Shares, which go back to the start of the NBA. He’s also the only player in NBA history who’s logged minutes as a teenager and as a 40-year-old, and the only one who’s played against the 72-win Bulls and the 73-win Warriors.

The only notable stat 2016 Garnett contributed outside of stacking his career numbers a bit higher was, naturally, plus-minus related: he had the sixth-best defensive Real Plus-Minus that season. Before people load their counterarguments, that version of RPM has no information on his previous seasons and no obvious bias in his favor. He’s had bizarrely great defensive plus-minus numbers as an old man for several teams with different systems consistently. In the first iteration of Real Plus-Minus, for 2014, he was first on defense. It’s not like his offense washed out the benefits of his defense either; Minnesota played +10.4 points per 100 possessions better when he was on the court last season. If any one player could be represented with plus-minus, like Dennis Rodman is with rebounds, it’s Kevin Garnett, and as the stat grows more influential with people perhaps a greater appreciation of him will germinate too[5.].

I understand that even people who read about advanced stats are tired of hearing about plus-minus and RAPM and RPM and all the variants, but it’s driving at the core essence of what actually matters on the court and why we care when we talk about points per game leaders and wins and triple-doubles and defensive contributions: it’s about how you help your team outscore the opponent, which is the only goal of a basketball game. Everything else is immaterial.

The media says goodbye

After a muted but surprising retirement announcement, the sports media-sphere responded with a flurry of career retrospectives, focused mainly on how his influence changed the NBA and all the crazy things he’s done or said — or some combination of the two. For many he’ll be remembered as a babbling, hobbled warrior, which is a shame because of the positive effect he had on teammates and the incredible basketball he played when he was younger. I understand the need to post inventories of his most outlandish quotes and stories; the one below is a doozy.

"Tyronn Lue: A lot of people do all their howling on the court and they’re faking just for attention, but what he does is genuine. So one day we were at his house and we were watching Puff Daddy’s show Making the Band, and in one of the scenes, some new guys came in and were trying to sing and were trying to compete against the guys who had been there. And KG just got so hyped, “Motherf—-r, you’ve got to stand up for yours! You’ve got to fight! Motherf—-r, you’ve got to come together!” He’s going crazy, he’s sweaty. And he just head butts the wall and put a hole in the wall of his house."

Source: Howard Beck

And he often has great examples of the pataphor:

"Timing is everything, and chemistry isn’t something that you just don’t throw in the frying pan and mix it up with another something, and throw something on top of that, and then fry it up, put it in a tortilla, put it in the microwave, heat it up and give it to you, and expect it to taste good. For those who can cook, y’all know what I’m talking about. If y’all don’t know what I’m talking about and can’t cook, then this doesn’t concern you"

Source: Paul Flannery

But we shouldn’t lose sight of Kevin Garnett’s primary attribute: he was tremendously skilled and athletic at his peak, and combined with his borderline dangerous intensity, few players in NBA history were ever as great. When Tim Duncan and Kobe Bryant retired, debates arose about their place in history. With Garnett, it’s about the man as an influence for other players and his personality.

Not every media account was obsessed with the non-basketball spread of his career, however. There were some stories that covered his manic personality, but they also bridged the gap and discussed how that translated onto the basketball court. One last year from Jackie MacMullan, for instance, detailed how that intensity influenced Karl-Anthony Towns. Garnett was personally tutoring the young big man, teaching him post moves and sharing philosophy. Articles from Minnesota were, of course, more praiseworthy. I just fear that the caricature of Garnett — the babbling, combative warrior — will become the standard memory. When ESPN announced his retirement, they described him as one of the best defensive players ever to play the game, rather than just one of the best overall. I know that may seem like nitpicking, but the “best players of all-time” argument is an entrenched one that’s not leaving any time soon, and I have to wonder why he is so often excluded.

Garnett played on a small-market team for most of his prime in a loaded Western Conference, and I imagine that’s largely to blame for the apathy here. But as an individual player he wasn’t an unknown — we don’t need elaborate fictions to imagine “what could have been.” We have thorough documentation of his power while on the court, and it’s awe-inspiring. We can dig through the evidence again on his teammates and his help and how superstars can affect teams, and I think, objectively, we can arrive at a similar location: it’s astonishing Garnett was successful as he was in Minnesota, given the circumstances.

Kevin Garnett lit up the visible stat-sheet like few others in almost every conceivable way, and he’s the king of plus-minus, which infers value without the use of any box-score stats. So if he looks amazing through two different systems, and he experienced an elite level of success when given good teammates, why is there still a reluctance to call him one of the greatest players ever?

By the end of an article, we’re supposed to come to some conclusion about the material presented with some satisfying ending to a loop presented at the beginning. We present death as rebirth, someone’s demise is supposed to lead an inspiration for the next generation. Kevin Garnett’s retirement with the Timberwolves is supposed to be about the Wolves of the future and how they will achieve what he never could have for the franchise, and how he could guide the “next” version of himself in Karl-Anthony Towns to future success. Garnett is the returning hero, imparting wisdom unto his first team as his career ends in a circle. He is also immortal, as he may have fallen individually, but the versatile, outside shooting big man is alive and proliferating.

But the truth is bleaker. As much as we want to believe this is the start of a new chapter, it is not. The flame can be extinguished to never return again. The chain is broken. Kevin Garnett was an endlessly fascinating personality with immense basketball gifts whose career is filled with remarkable accomplishments and statistical oddities that are hard to match — and we will never see him in uniform again. Prime Kevin Garnett left us years ago, and it’s not possible for that version to return to the basketball court. And that’s it: he’s not coming back to the court in the form of Karl-Anthony Towns or Anthony Davis or Joel Embiid or Thon Maker. We’ve gotten all the Earthly minutes possible from him, and we won’t see him again.

Careers end, and all that’s left are the video clips, the stats, and the fragile memories that are constantly being rewritten as we attempt to reconcile what we experienced with what we think we experienced.

And Kevin Garnett’s story has finished.

[1. In retrospect, the argument about Jahlil Okafor versus Karl-Anthony Towns looks silly, but it was real. And, as I wrote at the time, the right choice was the one for the versatile player with the varied gifts, which is what Garnett symbolizes as much as anything.]

[2. Clifford Robinson is the closest with 1390 and 1402, respectively.]

[3. The list includes Tim Duncan and Jason Kidd with 19 each while Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, Karl Malone, and Reggie Miller have 18. Dirk is close with 17, and Vince Carter’s at 16 which could actually turn into 17 if he keeps up his play with the Grizzlies.]

[4. For instance, none of Garnett’s seasons with the Nets or late-period Wolves count, but each Boston one does.]

[5. Anything is possible.]