Kevin Garnett, Minnesota Timberwolves legend, is not and has never been the shy, retiring type. He gave opinions when he was a player and he still gives opinions now. And they are not all gold.
Back in 2013, when Garnett was a member of the Boston Celtics alongside fellow forward Jeff Green, Garnett gave his teammate quite the lashings of praise. In an interview with CSNNE, he claimed that Green “is going to be one of the best players to ever play this game”. Similarly, upon seeing Ben Simmons in a couple of preseason games before the start of the 2023-24 season, Garnett went on his show and enthusiastically told the world that the heavily criticized, injury-plagued Simmons was officially back to his elite self. (Simmons would play 15 games that season, recording career lows in points and assists.)
Garnett, it seems, likes a long, wiry, versatile frontcourt player, for obvious reasons. Yet none has he showered with as much praise as he did Thon Maker, former Milwaukee Bucks long lean bag of unfulfilled potential.
Never Judge A Man By His Bones
Back in 2017, when Maker was a rookie and Garnett was still fairly newly retired, the Big Ticket did an interview at Bleacher Report with the late, great Jonathan Tjarks. In it, Garnett openly acknowledged his projection of himself into his opinions, but did not let that hold him back from declaring Maker as being a future MVP, largely on account of his skeleton.
Bleacher Report: You’ve done a lot of work with Thon Maker, right?
Garnett: Thon Maker reminds me a lot of myself. He loves the game. He’s a young, exuberant athlete who has a lot of tools—he has touch; he has agility; he has really, good feet. He has a really good shot from three-point all the way up to 19 to 21 feet. He has very good bones, as we say.
Thon is going to be the MVP of the league one day. Mark it down. He has the bones. He has the appetite to be able to chase something like that.]
Consider it marked. So far, Thon Maker has no NBA Most Valuable Player awards to his name.
Maker’s Career To Date
Maker played five NBA seasons between 2016 and 2021, appearing in 263 regular-season games for the Bucks, Detroit Pistons and Cleveland Cavaliers. The Bucks selected him with the 10th overall pick in the 2016 NBA Draft after he entered the league directly from Athlete Institute Prep in Ontario.
As a rookie, in the season in which Garnett spoke of his potential, Maker played 57 games and made 34 starts averaging 4.0 points and 2.0 rebounds in 9.9 minutes per game. His role increased during his second season, when he appeared in 74 games and averaged 4.8 points, 3.0 rebounds and 0.7 blocks in 16.7 minutes. He also appeared in 16 playoff games over his first two seasons.
Maker began the 2018-19 season with Milwaukee before being traded to Detroit in February 2019 in exchange for Japanese superstar Stanley Johnson. Across the two teams, he played 64 games and averaged career highs of 5.0 points and 3.2 rebounds, along with 0.8 blocks, in 15.2 minutes per game. He remained with the Pistons throughout 2019-20, appearing in 60 games and averaging 4.7 points, 2.8 rebounds and 0.7 blocks while shooting a career-best 48.2% from the field.
After leaving Detroit, Maker signed with Cleveland for the 2020-21 season. He appeared in eight games for the Cavaliers, averaging 3.8 points and 2.3 rebounds in 9.6 minutes, before being waived in January 2021. Those were his final NBA appearances – subsequent stints in Israel, China, Lebanon and the G League have not seen any of the breakout anticipated by at least one place, and a training camp stint with the Houston Rockets in 2024 came to nothing.
Over his NBA career, Maker started 65 of his 263 regular-season NBA games and recorded 1,216 points, 726 rebounds, 161 assists, 173 blocks and 96 steals. He averaged 4.6 points, 2.8 rebounds, 0.6 assists and 0.7 blocks in 13.8 minutes per game, shooting 43.5% from the field, 32.7% from three-point range and 68.0% from the free-throw line. There were tiny improvements. There were no MVP bids. It is starting to look like there probably never will be.
The Time Kevin Garnett Predicted Thon Maker Would be NBA MVP