Kevin Garnett Is Still Breathing Fire

Kevin Garnett is standing in his office, tucked into the back of a spacious home west of downtown Minneapolis. On a shelf behind him stands a photo taken with Barack Obama, the 2003 All-Star MVP trophy—a game in which he had 37 points, nine rebounds, and five steals—and other cherished keepsakes from his unparalleled 21-year NBA career.

But Garnett’s focus isn’t on any of that. He’s staring at the back wall, almost in a trance, his eyes boring a hole into a huge painting of the Larry O’Brien Trophy. In statue form, professional basketball’s ultimate prize stands about two feet tall and is covered in 24 karat gold. Garnett’s rendering is nearly twice as large, two-dimensional, and sketched in black and white inside a silver frame.

For years, it was suspended over Garnett’s bed. “I used to wake up to this every day,” he says. “Wake up, look at it, believe it. Wake up, see it, believe it. Wake up, ingest it, believe it. Every day. So much that when I went to Boston, I’d go to sleep thinking the same thing. Then it happened.” Even five years after retirement, months before his May 2021 induction into the Hall of Fame, the artwork still grips him.

Garnett shakes his head. His gaze drops to the floor as he turns back toward the rest of the room. I’m standing in its doorway, behind a small camera crew that’s in the middle of shooting Garnett’s documentary, Anything Is Possible, which debuts November 12 on Showtime. The air in the room suddenly shifts. Garnett narrows his eyes, grips the back of his office chair, and lets his voice drop an entire octave.

“I see everybody with their shoes on,” he says. Garnett is not only one of the most important and talented basketball stars who’s ever lived, but also the most maniacally intense (he once got so worked up watching P. Diddy’s Making the Band that he headbutted a hole in his own living room wall). During over 55,000 minutes of NBA action, along with countless more in practice and on his own time, he embodied a violent squall.

“Leave your shoes at the front,” Garnett orders. “Y’all notice I got white floors, y’all notice I got white carpets.” My heart starts racing and I avoid eye contact, unsure what this offense might lead to. But Garnett exhales and claps his hands, and his entire body relaxes. As I speed-walk to the front door and kick off my Jordans, he smiles and asks one of the crew members how his family is doing.

There are many reasons why there will never be another Kevin Garnett. Some revolve around his transformational skills. Garnett was a 6’ 11” menace with uncanny post moves, outside range, and inside touch who could also handle the ball. He was selfless, always committed to making the “right play,” wanting to pass even when his team needed him to score. Before he came into the NBA, there was nobody like him. In the 20 years since, every scout in the world has searched for the exact same thing.

Garnett’s 15 All-Star appearances reflect how unstoppable he was on offense, but there aren’t five players in history who were more imposing on defense. He could protect the rim, guard the post, and lock down all five positions in space. Trying to score on him was like searching for a secret escape pod on a spaceship packed with Xenomorphs.

Today’s league is molded in Garnett’s image, preferring players with broad skill sets over honed specialists, infatuated with positionless basketball. In 2003, when he was the best player alive, Garnett told Sports Illustrated that “being versatile is what makes me different. I don't worry about over-defining my position. I don't fall into discussions of where I fit in. I'm just a basketball player. I do what has to be done to get it done."

Most of the other reasons relate to Garnett’s legendarily competitive mentality. He framed it through the lens of two questions written in his memoir: “What if Magic Johnson came from the hood? What if Magic had a DMX attitude?”

He was fueled by supernatural passion every night. The spittle. The breathless rage. The aggression that had opponents scrambling for holy water. Garnett ran hot, but it all served a purpose. Few have ever been more invested in the game’s psychological warfare.

“When you saw me bang my head on the back of the goal before the games, it was just about preparation,” Garnett tells me. “You ever see ‘Bones’ Jones fight? Before Jones fights, he does this weird thing where he goes... [here Garnett slaps his chest several times] That’s muscle activation. Sometimes the screaming would just be a release, man. I’ve got so much fucking energy that I had to just...sometimes, drinking Gatorade, I’d spit it right up in the fucking air.”

I ask if he can describe where he’d go mentally during games. “You know the feeling you get when you enter a dark room and you can’t see anything? And now you’re using your sense and your touch to kind of gingerly get through? Well, imagine running full speed through that dark, and then whatever you hit, you hit.”

Garnett continues: “To be a professional athlete, I truly believe you have to be a little—you’ve got to be a lot more willing to run through the rope... Some people get off on that. I would hear Arnold Schwarzenegger sometimes talk about having orgasms when he would lift. [In Pumping Iron, Schwarzenegger compared the feeling of lifting to “coming.”] And I went, ‘Fuck, what? Fuck outta here.’ But then when I would run and I would work on these moves and I would actually see my shit working, and then I’d get in a game and, He went for it! Oh, shit. How’d he go for that shit? And I understand. I understand the chase.”

We’re talking in Garnett’s kitchen on a chilly autumn day; he’s wrapped in a plush maroon hoodie, light blue skinny jeans, and tan, size 15 house slippers. I’d spent the previous few hours watching as Garnett guided the documentary crew around the perimeter of his basement “Hall of Memories,” a barren white room that, aside from a pop-a-shot and pool table, is almost exclusively accessorized by framed photos—magazine covers, action shots, moments of him laughing, snarling, dominating. Each one contains its own anecdote. When he talks about some of them, he sounds like a monk. In front of others, he’s Ric Flair hyping himself up for a title match.

Upstairs, the main level of Garnett’s house is glazed by curtain walls that are at least 20 feet tall, overlooking a sprawling backyard. There’s a grand piano, a tête-à-tête sofa, and neoclassical furniture bookended by two large fireplaces. The walk to the kitchen leads past a fish tank that could be scrubbed by a scuba diver.

I ask Garnett if he feels contrite about his record as a transgressive trash talker, from allegedly calling former Pistons forward Charlie Villanueva “a cancer patient” to berating Celtics teammate Glen Davis until he cried on the bench. Garnett mentions Joakim Noah, and how getting into the younger big man’s head yielded a competitive advantage the first time they squared off. “If I’d have known he was a huge fan like that, I probably wouldn’t have went so hard, but I’m in competition,” he says. “I’m a dragon. I’m out here [breathes fire].”

Then Garnett touches on one of his more notorious skirmishes, the time he allegedly said some very personal things about Carmelo Anthony’s then wife, La La, during a game: “I’ve never said anything about anyone’s family. I’ve never said anything to Melo about La La. I’m a Frosted Flakes man. I’m not a Honey Nut Cheerios guy. I never knew where that came from. Let me clear that up.”

Other regrets might include the first dozen years of his career, when Garnett’s loyalty to the highly dysfunctional Minnesota Timberwolves superseded his bone-deep desire to win. In the end, the Timberwolves took advantage of Garnett’s greatness in a way not every franchise would have. Only three of his teammates had All-Star appearances with Garnett: Tom Gugliotta, Wally Szczerbiak, and Sam Cassell. After seven straight seasons of first-round playoff exits, Garnett finally reached the Western Conference Finals in 2004 (the same season he won MVP). But Cassell injured his hip, and the Wolves eventually lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in six games.

But Garnett prefers to talk about “what ifs,” of which he has only a few. “I’ve often wondered what playing with [Kobe] would’ve been like. Beside [Kobe], you know? What would we have been like? If playing with [Paul Pierce] was like this, then playing with [Kobe] would’ve been like what?” Garnett’s voice is barely above a whisper. “I often wonder too, [about] coming to Boston earlier, in ’04, ’05... I play with that idea.”

For those who missed Garnett’s prime or weren’t around to witness the extraordinary way he tormented opponents (and teammates) with his harsh, take-no-prisoners mentality, Anything Is Possible captures who he was on the court, while outlining why the NBA’s global rise might not have been possible without him. In the rough cut I saw, Garnett is an unguarded, singular tour guide through a narrative that’s crucial to understanding why the league looks the way it does today, from player empowerment to style of play to cultural aesthetic. As with Michael Jordan and The Last Dance, Garnett was involved in the production of Anything Is Possible and had a say in everything he was and wasn’t willing to include in it. But according to co-director and co-producer Eric W. Newman, Garnett was mostly hands-off.

“You have the sensitive things from his journey, whether it's [Stephon] Marbury, whether it's Ray [Allen], how much he wanted to talk about them, how much I had to twist his arm at times, but really not that much,” Newman says. “It's just a question of how do we want to portray those things in the story. But not a lot of push and pull with him. He trusted us to go and do what we set out to do.”

When talk about the documentary first began in 2019, Garnett wanted it to focus on his trailblazing preps-to-pro journey. In 1995, Garnett became the first player in 20 years to go straight from high school to the NBA, a decision that led Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Tracy McGrady, Dwight Howard, and over 30 other prospects to follow in his footsteps before the NBA prohibited the jump in 2005.

“I had a special place for n-ggas that came out of high school, just in case they wanted to talk to me, if they wanted to build,” Garnett said. “And it was hard because, you know, when you're battling against a young Dwight [Howard] or you're battling against a young Kwame [Brown] or a young Darius Miles, or even a young LeBron, you're trying to keep a certain level of respect, but then you don't want to be so comfortable that a motherfucker is comfortable with you, if you understand what I'm saying.”

Isiah Thomas is a key character in Garnett’s coming-of-age. Over 25 years ago, as an executive for the Toronto Raptors, Thomas was in a random Chicago gym, watching a pickup game, when Garnett strode in and took the floor. He was still in high school. Two other players on the court: Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen.

“I had targeted him as the person that I wanted to draft and start our franchise with,” Thomas tells me. “But being in his presence...it was overwhelming. You felt his energy, his intensity, his passion, his love for his craft in high school, beyond anybody else who was in the gym. It was one of the most poetic, beautiful experiences I had had or felt from a young player.”

Garnett—who was introduced at his Hall of Fame induction by Thomas earlier this year—gets wistful thinking about that game, after which Thomas told him he could play in the NBA right now. “I felt like if that pivotal part of my life doesn’t happen, I don't know if I’m sitting here,” he says. “I don’t know if the story is the same, I don’t know if the results are the same. I’d like to be able to say, Man, you know, but Isiah was an intricate part of me having confidence in myself and taking those steps, because once you take those steps, you can’t take steps backwards.”

Garnett’s personality is mythically impenetrable. He can be hilarious, serious, unfiltered, tight-lipped, nonsensical, and brilliant all in the same five minutes. He’s the center of countless rumors that would be brushed aside if they were about almost anyone else. His eccentricity allows just about anything that’s whispered about him to, at the very least, be considered possible. His grapevine covers an entire football field.

But even though Garnett’s origin story is well known, there’s truly nothing like hearing him tell it. During his first on-camera interview for Anything Is Possible, Garnett was recounting his very first draft workout in front of NBA coaches and front office executives when suddenly he stood up, glared at a mic dangling over his head, and began to roar. “This is epic shit we're getting,” Newman thought to himself.

Garnett has a million stories to tell, even if they aren’t connected to the most meaningful parts of his journey. Take the time the Notorious B.I.G. invited Garnett up to smoke weed in his Cleveland hotel suite at the 1997 All-Star game.

“The Midwest is known for pimps. I don't know if you know this, but, you know what I'm saying: Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, there's pimpin’ going on,” he tells me. “And I saw this big long-ass limo. I'm young. I'm like, ‘DAMN, LOOK AT THE LIMO! THIS SHIT BIG AS SHIT!’ So then B.I.G. got out the joint, and I just remember it was two chicks under the fucking coat! He had this big-ass mink on, and I was like, ‘Damn, is this pimpin’ going on? What the fuck?' And he was... [Garnett suddenly inhales deeply, as if he can’t breathe] I was like, Oh, this n-gga got asthma or something.”

He never went up to the room (unlike Allen Iverson), but part of him now wishes he did: Biggie was murdered exactly one month later. Garnett tells at least 10 stories like that while I’m in his presence, not including several that were off the record. In each one, he turns the English language into his own amusement park; everyone within earshot was granted a VIP pass.

Garnett also changed the NBA’s business when he signed a six-year, $126 million contract at the age of 21 that contributed to a lockout and, a season later, the departure of presumptively jealous costar Stephon Marbury. Owners thought salaries were spiraling out of control, while players suddenly caught a glimpse of exactly how much money their employers were making off their sweat. Understandably, they wanted more, although what they got after the lockout were longer rookie-scale deals and max contract protections for the owners. When I ask Garnett about the labor strife that was amplified by his historic deal, and everything that’s happened since, he’s simultaneously proud and bitter.

The latter feelings come from the bull’s-eye that contract put on his back. From his point of view, jealousy sprouted around the league. “Everybody I played after that felt—mmmm, it felt personal,” he says. “People that I thought were cool, when it crossed the lines, that coolness kinda went away and it became a real battle. It became real intense.”

But as someone who simply leveraged his pending free agency to make as much money as he could, Garnett believes his record-setting contract eventually helped push players into understanding their power as a collective body, even if that process at times felt glacial.

“A lot of motherfuckers went with owners in secret deals and dumb shit like that,” he says. “I never gave in to the higher society. I called the higher society out and really put owners on the fucking forefront with the real issues. I didn't believe in the partnership with the league. I believe that the partnership worked if the league actually respected and wanted to hear what the players had to say, and what the players were actually bringing to the table… My generation actually was a little more together on the topics.”

Not even a decade later, Garnett threw the weight of his looming free agency around again, narrowing his desired destinations with full recognition that the Timberwolves had two options: trade him where he wanted to go, or lose him for nothing. It was a subtle prelude to LeBron’s “Decision,” player empowerment, and the superteam era.

The Celtics, Lakers, and Phoenix Suns were all on Garnett’s list. He remembers Steve Nash making a regretful phone call on behalf of Suns owner Robert Sarver, saying that Garnett would not only have to take a pay cut if he came to Phoenix, but that “they wasn't keeping all the pieces that I was asking for or requesting,” he says. “Steve Nash came to me and was very disappointed. He also apologized on behalf of Phoenix and ownership, and he was very, very, very deliberate about how much he wanted to play with me.”

Garnett had reservations about going to play in Boston, even after speaking to Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge. That’s partly because before he made a final decision, he wanted to talk with Kobe. The only problem: Bryant was touring China for Nike and, from Garnett’s point of view, couldn’t be bothered to discuss a future as teammates. “I needed to have a conversation with him. I couldn't talk to Phil [Jackson, then coach of the Lakers] or none of that. I'm not a phone guy, you know what I'm saying? But it's [Kobe], you know what I'm saying? It was just kind of water under the bridge. At least it felt like that.”

The two never connected. Later that summer, Garnett ran into Antoine Walker at an event celebrating Gary Payton’s renewal of his marriage vows; the former Celtic helped convince him that Boston was where he could win. (It also helped that Ainge traded for Ray Allen on draft night.)

Garnett then launches into a story about the first time he saw Bryant after becoming a Celtic, quickly staging a one-man show in which he played both parts at two opposite volumes and temperaments.

“‘YO, MAN, YOU WAS TRYING TO GET IN CONTACT WITH ME?’ 'Man, get the fuck outta here.' 'NAH, NAH, I'M SERIOUS, MAN. I GOT THIS SHIT LATE, MAN. DAMN MAN.’ ‘It's all good.’ 'NAH, IT AIN'T GOOD, YOU IN THAT WRONG COLOR, MAN. WHAT THE FUCK, MAN. HOW YOU GONNA GO TO BOSTON OF ALL PLACES.’ ‘Man, nah, you gotta chill.’”

Garnett then sits back. “It was all good. I always loved playing against [Kobe]. But yeah, it probably would have been a different level playing with him.”

As for two other legends Garnett crossed paths with, during a video call a few months later, I ask him about the difference between Michael Jordan and LeBron James. “It's a different level of respect,” he replies. “Michael Jordan I looked at as fucking God. And I thought he was my version of what basketball looked like. And with LeBron, it was more like the little homie. Here's the little homie growing up, and man, little homie is getting better than everybody! God damn!... I definitely talked some shit to him. I've definitely said some crazy shit to him. He's definitely said some crazy shit back to me.” Garnett also praises LeBron for carrying the NBA as long as he has: “You've gotta have that in you to be able to have those shoulders to carry it. No man is perfect in this shit, and there ain't no telltale book on how to do this shit. He's done a great fucking job. I just felt like it was only right to give him that respect.”

Now 45, Garnett probably isn’t in playing shape, but he’s tall and lean enough to look the part. His shrewd understanding of how the league operates on the floor and behind the scenes should be appreciated by any of its 30 teams, but Garnett can’t see himself taking a role that’s anything beneath ownership. Before Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor sold the team to former baseball player Alex Rodriguez and tech entrepreneur Marc Lore in May, Garnett attemped to buy in with a different ownership group. (Taylor claims Garnett never bid, while Garnett has said Taylor went back on “an understanding” that was broken when his coach and later team president Flip Saunders died.). “I'm going to be in someone's ownership [group], if not my own at some point. You already know how it works when it [comes to] opportunity,” Garnett says. “You gotta wait on yours.”

Instead, “storytelling is my passion now,” Garnett says. He introduced himself to a wider audience two years ago in Uncut Gems, the propulsive, neurotic Safdie brothers film starring Adam Sandler. Garnett played himself, and his natural intensity was pitch perfect. “I don't necessarily want to do something that I'm not passionate about, or that I can't be very, very expressive in,” Garnett says. “But I'm not opposed to doing another film. It's just got to be the right fit for myself, and in what we're doing.” (Garnett loves all kinds of movies, but his all-time favorite is Serendipity, the 2001 romantic comedy starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale. “It took me, and I never let it go,” he says. “Like, that's some shit that I would totally be on, being free-spirited and all that. Every time I watch Serendipity, I feel like I'm watching it for the first time, you know what I'm saying?” Even just discussing it, he can’t help but get worked up. “Each time I'm like, No! Get back on the elevator! Go, go! Like, fuck.”)

Much of his energy today is spent working with his production company, Content Cartel, developing projects that he believes can motivate others. Talking about his childhood, he says, “I was totally a dreamer, as I am today. But there wasn’t a lot of places where I could go and get answers. I’m from the South, man. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to South Carolina, but this is how much opportunity is in South Carolina [Garnett holds his index finger a centimeter from his thumb]. And when you do get this much opportunity, what are you gonna do with it? Thinking outside the box and being different is probably one of the hardest things you can ever do, because people are gonna look at you like that, right? But when you embrace that and you wear it [Garnett pauses to wrap himself in an invisible blanket], it gives you confidence to say, ‘Damn, that n-gga just walked through here with some slippers and nothing on,’ you know what I’m saying?”

Garnett inspires in other ways too. The day after my visit to his home, I drive from my hotel to meet him in George Floyd Square, a neighborhood he’s familiar with but hasn’t visited in years. “For a minute, just for myself, I wanted to actually feel what the people felt and go down and touch arms and embrace the people,” he says when I ask why he wanted to make that trip. “I know some of the rougher parts of Minneapolis very well. I know some of the people that are in there. And I thought it was my duty to go down and at least say what up and just check on everybody.”

As Garnett walks the streets, people start to flock. He posed for selfies, bumped elbows and fists. A few minutes later, he walked into the Original Just Turkey Restaurant, a few doors down from Cup Foods, where a giant mural of Floyd’s face stands tall, adorned by flowers and signs that read, “Justice + Peace” and “Black Lives Matter.”

Inside, he was peak Garnett. “Tell me what’s the number one thing in here?!” he shouted toward the cashier. “I don’t want nothing too heavy!” She asked if he’d like cheese on it. “Naaaaaaah.” He then started to ride an invisible exercise bike. “That’ll put y’all on a treadmill,” he said to nobody and everybody, as Just Turkey started to fill up with spectators.

As he waited for his food, Garnett swapped stories with the crowd, listening with that expressive face and glistening teeth. He nodded along to critiques of the modern game, small ball’s flaws and the post-up’s crawl toward extinction. In the next breath, he praised Stephen Curry, saying, “He can shoot that motherfucker deep,” while pantomiming a jumper and holding the follow-through, his knuckles nearly scraping the ceiling. “As soon as he come across half court, you better pick that little n-gga up!”

When he stepped out and started to walk toward a neighboring restaurant called Smoke in the Pit, a woman spotted Garnett from across the street. She ran over, stubbed her blunt out on the sidewalk, and pushed through the doors to get a closer look.

Even though Anything Is Possible will introduce Garnett to an entire generation of basketball fans who weren’t fortunate enough to catch his prime—those unfamiliar with the transfixing aura he generated in the imagination of so many, as a superhero and super-villain—it’s hard to wrap your arms around what he still means to the millions who felt something inside stir whenever they watched him.

When he exited Smoke in the Pit, another woman cradling a basketball and a ballpoint pen ran up to Garnett, asking for an autograph. “That ain’t gonna work, ma,” he said, without breaking stride. She turned to me, dejected, and pointed at my backpack to see if I had a Sharpie. I shook my head.

About 30 minutes later, I saw her running up the street, red hoodie snapping back off her head. Under her left arm was the ball. In her right hand were four Magic Markers. Garnett took one, signed the ball, and gave her a hug. I congratulated her and asked where she got the markers.

“I ran home,” she giggled, out of breath. “Had to for KG.”