A

Kevin Garnett

1976-

American basketball player

In 1995, Kevin Garnett became famous as one of the first high school basketball players to be drafted directly into the National Basketball Association (NBA). Despite many people's concerns about how a teenager would fare in that setting, Garnett did extremely well in his first few years. In 1997, when at the age of twenty-two he resigned with the Minnesota Timberwolves for $126 million over six years, and became the highest-paid athlete in any team sport.

NBA Draft, 1995

Garnett was a senior at Farragut Academy in Chicago in the spring of 1995. He had already earned a great deal of national attention as a basketball player, but his SAT scores were not high enough to play college basketball in the NCAA, so he decided to take his chances with the NBA draft. He was a hot prospect, and even before the draft happened he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated under the headline Ready or Not.… Only hours before the draft started he learned that he had passed the SATs the last time he took them, but by then it was too late. In the first round of the draft, he was selected fifth overall by the Minnesota Timberwolves.

The Timberwolves were still a young team then, and in 1995 they had a new vice president, general manager, and owner. "I think we figured if [signing a high school kid] went bad, we'd just say, 'Hey, it was our first draft. We didn't know what we were doing,'" Timberwolves vice president Kevin McHale told Sports Illustrated reporter Leigh Montville in 1999. But the Timberwolves never needed any excuses.

From his first season, Garnett was an excellent player, scoring an average of 10.4 points per game and achieving a 49.1 percent shooting average. He started the season as the second-string small forward, behind veteran NBA player Sam Mitchell, but that did not last long. Several weeks into the season, Mitchell recalled to Montville, "I went to the coach and told him Kevin should be starting. The reason was simple: He was better. I was playing against him every day in practice, and I knew how good he was." But as good as his skills were, perhaps more impressive was the fact that Garnett quickly became the team's moral leader, calming down teammates who were angry and energizing those who felt tired or defeated.

From his first day in the NBA, Garnett was fighting a battle for respect. "Money comes and goes. Respect lasts a lifetime," McHale told Frank Clancy of Sporting News near the end of Garnett's first season. "He's got the right attitude." It didn't take long for Garnett to earn this respect, as he explained to Esquire's Mike Lupica early in 1997. "I think the way I've played, the way I've conducted myself, has done that…. All I ever heard from the first day was 'This is a man's league, kid.' The only way you can get them to treat you like a man is to play like a man."

Bank-Breaking Contract

In Garnett's second season, he was paired on the court with his old friend, point guard Stephon Marbury. With this combination, the Timberwolves had their best year in franchise history, making the playoffs for the first time ever. Garnett, the unquestioned star of the team, played in the All-Star game. So when he had the opportunity to sign a contract extension with the Timberwolves at the end of the season, the Timberwolves offered him $102 million over six years to stay. He refused, believing that in another year, when he would be a free agent, he would be able to make more. After weeks of negotiations, he finally re-signed for $126 million over six years.

This contract, the most lucrative ever, led to a fight between the NBA management and the players' union over the terms of player contracts, which led to a lockout that precluded a large portion of the 1998-99 season. Under the terms of the new agreement, contracts as large as Garnett's are now banned. However, Garnett and others who were grand fathered into the agreement will be able to sign contract renewals for 105 percent of their previous contract. This means that when Garnett's current contract expires, when he will be twenty-eight and presumably at the peak of his athletic prowess, he will be eligible to receive $28 million a season.

But "I don't play basketball for the money," Garnett told Sports Illustrated's Michael Farber before the contract dispute. "I don't play it for the crowd. When I didn't have a friend, when I was lonely, I always knew I could grab that orange pill and go hoop. I could go and dunk on somebody. If things weren't going right, I could make a basket and feel better."

"I'm a battery"

Garnett has long been known for his enthusiasm for the game. Even when he was working out for a group of NBA coaches before the 1995 draft, he shouted as he demonstrated to them how high he could jump. By the end of the 1999-00 season, not only did he throw back his head and howl, he had his rookie teammate Wally Szczerbiak shouting as he ran down the court after making his shots. "Last summer, I couldn't get Wally to throw his fist in the air. Now this kid is going down, shaking his head like he's crazy," Garnett explained to Darryl Howerton of Sport. "I'm spreading." That's fine with Garnett, as he told Howerton. "I go crazy trying to energize people 'cause that's what I am. I'm a battery, you know? if you're down, you can plug into me and get charged up." Although Garnett, Szczerbiak, and the other energized Timberwolves have yet to win an NBA championship, fans remain hopeful that this still-young team will soon be able to go all the way.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Address: c/o Minnesota Timberwolves, 600 First Avenue North, Minneapolis, MN 55403.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Periodicals

Ballantini, Brett. "'The Kid' Grows Up." Basketball Digest (March, 2002): 20-27.

Brauer, David. "A Season on the Brink." MPLS-St. Paul Magazine (November, 2000): 78.

Clancy, Frank. "The Kid's All Right." Sporting News (March 4, 1996): 26-29.

Farber, Michael. "Feel the Warmth." Sports Illustrated (January 20, 1997): 70-79.

Guss, Greg. "Hungry like the Wolf." Sport (November, 1996): 50-53.

Howerton, Darryl. "Energizer Buddy." Sport (March, 2000): 32.

Lupica, Mike. "The Go-to Guy." Esquire (March, 1997): 54-56.

McCallum, Jack. "Hoop Dreams." Sports Illustrated (June 26, 1995): 64-68.

Millea, John. "Lonewolf." Sporting News (November 27, 2000): 10.

Montville, Leigh. "Howlin' Wolf." Sports Illustrated (May 3, 1999): 38.

"NBA Star Launches Program to Introduce Students to Business." Black Issues in Higher Education (March 28, 2002): 16.

Young, Bob. "Marbury, Garnett Trade Barbs." Arizona Republic (Phoenix, AZ) (December 31, 2002).

Other

"#10-Kevin Garnett." USA Basketball. http://www.usabasketball.com/biosmen/kevin_garnett_bio.html (November 27, 2002).

"Kevin Garnett Player Info." NBA.com. http://www.nba.com/playerfile/kevin_garnett/ (November 27, 2002).

"Olympic Bio: Kevin Garnett." CNN/SI.com. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/olympics/news/2000/05/25/garnett_bio/ (November 27, 2002).

Sketch by Julia Bauder