Getty Kevin Garnett, angry ex-Timberwolves forward
Kevin Garnett will be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
The Minnesota Timberwolves’ fifth pick in the 1995 NBA Draft out of Farragut Academy High School in Chicago,Illinois spent his first 12 seasons in Minnesota and was later traded to the Boston Celtics.
Garnett won a championship with the Big 3 era Celtics that included Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and Rajon Rondo.
Before the Celtics days began with a championship in 2008 and even being crowned the NBA’s MVP in 2004 with the T-Wolves, Garnett and Stephon Marbury had a thing going under head coach Flip Saunders.
They were young, they were exciting but unfortunately, the duo lasted for two and a half seasons.
Marbury requested a trade and landed in New Jersey with the Nets.
On today’s episode of the Scoop B Radio Podcast, I discussed the Timberwolves days with Stephon Marbury and Garnett’s recent Hall of Fame nod.
GettyStephon Marbury in Beijing
Check out a snippet from our dialogue below:
Brandon ‘Scoop B’ Robinson: Kevin Garnett is a Hall of Famer. It was announced that he will be inducted in the NBA Basketball Hall of Fame. How cool is that to see his name on that list?
Stephon Marbury: It’s super cool for him. It’s deserved. He’s done a lot for basketball. He’s definitely made his mark on the game. Kev LOVES basketball. That’s his passion. That’s his love. When he gets on the court, that’s his life right there.
Brandon ‘Scoop B’ Robinson: Do you ever think ‘what if’ if guys stuck together in Minnesota?
Stephon Marbury: I really don’t play the ‘what if’ game because ‘if’ doesn’t really exist. But playing with Kev was always fun. I loved playing with Kev. I loved playing in Minnesota. I just couldn’t give seven years of my life living in Minnesota. I grew up in New York in the melting pot where there’s Black, White, Chinese, Puerto Rican, Italian – all different types of races. And entering Minnesota, it’s predominately white. After me leaving Georgia Tech where I lived in Atlanta. So you go from a melting pot, to a place where there is a lot of black people to where you go where it’s 6 percent black people, it was a culture shock to me. So I was evaluating my life. Not just basketball. I’m not saying that I couldn’t have stayed there and played there, but with the snow, how cold it was (it was like 40 below), you’ll wake up and on some days you’ll go outside and if you don’t have this-and-this, you could die. I’m like, ‘I don’t want to die from this – I know I’m going to die one day, but I don’t wanna die from going outside to my car’ … Now if my car stops working and I got on jeans and a regular jacket and I can’t – and I don’t have all the things I’m supposed to have in the car which you should –blankets and all of those different things… it was just a different way of living and I wasn’t really down with it. Like going ice fishing and all of that. It really wasn’t something I was down for. Now I’m older so I can adjust to anything, right? But it was a different thing at 18-19 years old. It was great though.