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| KG works hard to rein in his intensity as he contemplates his breakfast order. |
BOSTON, MA (Sportsman’s Daily Wire Service) On the court he’s a scowling, howling, prowling force of nature. Few modern athletes exude the unbridled passion of Kevin Garnett. From the moment he joined the Celtics, Garnett was the team’s unquestioned emotional leader to whom veteran stars Paul Pierce and Ray Allen happily deferred. But even before their shaky game 4 against the Cavaliers, a game in which coach Doc Rivers questioned their focus and fire, there are signs that Garnett’s inability to throttle back his frightening intensity is beginning to take its toll on his teammates.
“I love KG, I do, and you’ve got to love the intensity he brings from the opening tip to the final whistle,” says a member of the Celtics’ second team who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The problem is, the dude can’t turn it off. After the game, during dinner, at breakfast the next morning…he’s just super wound up. The morning before game 4, we’re in the hotel restaurant finishing breakfast when I sense his two eyes burning a hole in my uneaten croissant. ‘Yo, you gonna eat that croissant?’ The table went silent for about eight seconds. It got real tense. I was planning on saving it for later, but when KG’s working the scowl, you give him what he wants.”
Cavs’ starting forward Wally Szerbiak played alongside Garnett in Minnesota for six-plus seasons. “Is he nuts? I don’t know that I’m qualified to say. But you tell me, is following you home and spending the night – uninvited, no less -- after a mid-season loss in a meaningless game to make sure you understand that you can’t be missing open looks with the game on the line…is that what a completely sane, well-adjusted human being does? Look, I’m not saying anything his teammates don’t already know: being around KG can be uncomfortable.”
During the regular season, the Celtics responded to and welcomed KG’s monomaniacal focus and relentless intensity; however, as the playoffs rolled around, KG reached new heights of intensity, which is starting to unnerve, mentally exhaust, and in the case of Ray Allen, terrify his teammates.
“Pierce is a tough hombre, he can take it, but Ray’s low-key, all the barking and scowling and in your face shit has started fucking with his head," said the anonymous Celtic. "He can deal with it on the floor, but when KG shows up at your kid’s 8th birthday party and raises pin the tail on the donkey to playoff-level intensity – and traumatizes your son and his friends – well, it’s a major problem. The dude’s got no off switch.”
KG’s legendary intensity makes it hard for him to wind-down. In Minneapolis, he’d wander the streets at all hours of the night, occasionally showing up at Prince’s Paisley Park compound unannounced to sit in on all-night jam sessions; during his time with the Celtics, he’s been known to take in the last set at several popular jazz clubs, haunt a downtown Dunkin Donuts for a chocolate milk and jelly donut, and chat up the drive-through attendants at a local 24 hour Burger King. On at least eight occasions, Boston police reported stopping a “manic, muttering, 7 foot tall dark-skinned African American” on suspicions of vagrancy.
“You’d think Boston’s finest would have realized after the third or fourth time it was KG – you don’t see a lot of 7 foot homeless guys wearing about $2 million worth of jewelry in their ears and around their neck,” said Celtics’ GM Danny Ainge, who was called into the precinct house on at least three occasions to identify the Celtics star. “Then again, an amped up KG prowling deserted city streets at 3 am is a scary thought. You’ve got to love his intensity…but you’ve got to know when to ease up. I need three cups of Starbucks just to be on the same wavelength. I don’t know how Doc or anyone gets through to him when he’s baying to the rafters.”
Garnett agreed to wear a microphone during the second half of their fourth game loss to the Cavaliers. “We were always curious what he was saying when, during a break in the action he’d start yammering to no one in particular,” says a TNT production coordinator. “What we picked up was completely unintelligible – the foaming at the mouth rantings of a madman. About ninety seconds in he bit the damn mic off like a wild animal biting off its trapped leg. Afterwards he apologized and offered to let us mic him during the off-season – though as anyone who’s seen him clearing a table or taking out the trash, no one attacks the off-season with Garnett’s insane fury.” |
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