Kevin Garnett has surely kept himself busy after leaving the NBA in 2016, and reportedly wasn’t interested in coming back to the league when the opportunity presented itself this season.
Tyronn Lue told Dave McMenamin on ESPN’s NBA Lockdown podcast that the Cleveland Cavaliers pursued the option of Kevin Garnett returning after losing Andrew Bogut to a fractured tibia for the rest of the year.
Bogut was a big signing after the trade deadline for the Cavaliers for both depth and playoff experience, but suffered his injury just a minute into his first game with the team against the Miami Heat.
Lue said that the injury gave him the idea to talk to Garnett, and see if the NBA legend was willing to return and help out his team in Cleveland.
“I was like, ‘Man, you should come back and play for me,'” Lue said in the podcast. “He was like, ‘Man, you all have a lot going on over there.’ That was before we hit our stride like we’re playing well now.”
According to Lue, Garnett said that if Lue, who was an assistant coach in Boston for Garnett’s time with the team, and Garnett’s former teammate James Posey, also a coach for Cleveland, were playing, the answer may have been different.
Next: Every NBA team's greatest playoff moment
“He was like, ‘If you and [James] Posey were still playing, I would come,'” Lue said. “He said, ‘But y’all are coaching and y’all are going through what you’re going through.’ He said, ‘Ah, I’m going to sit this one out.’ I said, ‘OK. We’ll call you next year.'”
Since retiring, Garnett has worked as a consultant for teams like the Los Angeles Clippers, where former Celtics head coach Doc Rivers and friend Paul Pierce call home, and also with the Milwaukee Bucks. He also works for TNT as part of their pregame coverage team.