June 25th, 2008 DKCMan
A very good article from own of our very own writers. What do you guys think?
There was not one other guy on Tuesday night sighing a heavier sigh of relief than Kevin Garnett. For K.G. he has finally “cemented” his name in the all time greatest players. For so many years(13 to be exact), including 12 in Minnesota, and this being his first in Boston, all Kevin heard about was how good of a player he was, but how he had never won “the big gone”. Well, now, he has. So excuse him if he seemed a little overly excited during the post game press conference. As he said “what do you have to say now”? Garnett, who turned 32 in May, grew up in rural South Carolina dreaming of being a NBA Champion. His much maligned move to Chicago, during his senior year of high school seemed to bring him the attention he needed. Playing his high school ball in the inner city of Chicago, led Farragut to the state playoffs in Illinois his senior season, along Ronnie Fields, who may have been the better of the two athletically. Kevin was drafted fifth by the Minnesota Timberwolves in a great draft class of 1995.
For 12 of Kevin’s 13 season in Minnesota, he did not miss over 10 games a year. His injury in 1998-1999 caused him to only play in 47 of the team’s 82 games. Amazingly, especially for this day in age of whiner professional basketball players, Kevin went three straight years playing every single regular season game, and went the three years before that just missing ONE game the entire season. What a feat.
Now you ask, why is this guy a hall of famer? Let’s take a look at some of his numbers. For Kevin’s career, he is nearly shooting 50% from the field, which is pretty impressive for a 6’11 power forward. From the free throw line, Kevin has never had a single season free throw percentage of under 70.0%, and his career mark is at 78.1%. 9 of his 13 seasons, Kevin has averaged double doubles, with rebounds and points. His high rebound average topped out at 13.9 during the 2003-2004 season. Kevin also went nine straight years of averaging 20.0 points or more per game. His single season high topped out at 24.2, also in the 2003-2004 season. His career rebounding average is at an astonishing 11.2 per game, while his points per game sits at 20.4.
Some may argue that the 2007-2008 Boston Celtics would not have been a difficult team to lead to a NBA title, with Paul Pierce and Ray Allen as teammates. Yes, Pierce and Allen were awfully good, but we all know of a better threesome that has NOT win a title. Kevin’s stats may have been a little down this season, but not much. Let’s take a look at them. He did miss 11 games during this season, averaging only 32 minutes per game, 5.5 minutes down from his career average. This year, Kevin topped out at his shooting percentage for a season. KG shot a stellar 53.9% from the field this season. Kevin was simply on fire. His 80.1% from the charity stripe was 2.0% better than his career average. Kevin’s rebounding numbers were a bit down, only averaging 9.2, but still awfully impressive with his numbers being down, and the teammates he had around him! KG also averaged 18.8 points per game, which is impressive, but even that ranks as his third worse for a single season, in his career.
So why is this an argument?
Some may simply just say because Kevin has many “haters”. Others may just think his numbers simply weren’t good enough. Others argue that a true hall of famer should be able to carry his team to an NBA championship. Well Boston’s 66 regular season wins, plus their 16 postseason wins, including four over the Lakers, with a guy many people call one of the best players in all the game, in Kobe Bryant. No matter how you look at it, Kevin Garnett did what many people thought he never could do. Sure, the Celtics had an absolutely dominate team, compared to the rest of the league, but even the best teams don’t always win it all, and to win 16 games in May and June is a feat in and of itself. If Kevin didn’t do enough, in the sixth and final game- scoring a game high 26 points, and grabbing 14 rebounds, and dishing out 4 assists. From the field, Kevin was 10-18, and 6-7 from the free throw line. All of this after K.G. was bashed for his play in game five in which he only scored 13 points, but once again grabbed 14 boards. Just goes to show that no matter how well you do, some people, and some media members are blinded by their dislike, or hatred, that they will try to tear a man down as much as possible. That is what was happening with the kid, and he answered the call in the best way possible!
Draw your own conclusions on what all this material means. Simply stated, many people said Kevin Garnett needed to win a NBA title for him to get himself ingrained with the Michael Jordan’s, Dr. J’s, Larry Bird’s of the game, and he did that, and all in impressive style. Kevin Garnett is a true hero for many young American boys, and now he can call himself a NBA Champion!
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June 20th, 2008 DKCMan
Okay, so we all know about the final result of the season. Kevin Garnett finally did what many didn’t think he could do- win a title! But, let’s take a look at the numbers he put up this season!
2008 season:
- 71 games
- 32.4 minutes per game
- 53.9% from the field
- 80.1% from free throw
- 9.2 rebounds per game
- 3.4 assists per game
- 1.9 turnovers per game
- 1.4 steals per game
- 1.3 blocks per game
- 18.8 points per game
2008 playoffs:
- 26 games
- 37.9 minutes per game
- 49.5% from the field
- 25.0% from three point
- 81.0% from free throw
- 274 total rebounds
- 87 total assists
- 55 total turnovers
- 35 total steals
- 29 total blocks
- 530 total points
Kevin Garnett’s career stats:
- 998 games
- 37.5 minutes per game
- 49.4% from the field
- 28.4% from three point
- 78.1% from free throw
- 11.2 rebounds per game
- 4.4 assists per game
- 2.5 turnovers per game
- 1.4 steals per game
- 1.7 blocks per game
- 20.4 points per game
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June 20th, 2008 DKCMan
Through a haze of his own cigar smoke, Paul Pierce peered through sleepless eyes at the sea of green-clad fans and thrust his golden MVP trophy skyward.
His day had finally arrived. A day to ride in his own championship parade. A day that gave normal people a chance to wave signs, paint their faces in Celtics colors and scream their hearts out for the latest team to bring a title to town.
“We’re tired of watching these parades on TV. Now we get to enjoy our own,” Pierce said after a fantastic season that followed nine frustrating ones in his Boston career. “I haven’t had any sleep yet, so now I’m still enjoying it.”
The Celtics earned Thursday’s “rolling rally” celebration with an amazing comeback season topped off by a stunningly dominant 131-92 win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday night in Game 6 of the NBA finals. Pierce was the series MVP.
It was the Celtics’ first title without Red Auerbach, the team patriarch who died in October 2006 after being part of the other 16 championships, nine as coach. The cigars smoked by players and fans were a tribute to Auerbach’s custom of lighting one up on the bench in the waning moments of still another win.
“We wish he could be here,” Pierce said before he lit his cigar on his duck boat, “so I’m doing this to honor him.”
Players rode in the amphibious tourist vehicles like those used by soldiers in World War II. They also transported the New England Patriots after their Super Bowl championships in February of 2002, 2004 and 2005 and the Boston Red Sox after their World Series victories in October 2004 and 2007.
Now it was time for Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and their teammates to travel a nearly two-mile route from TD Banknorth Garden, the arena where the title was won in the team’s 108th game of a grueling season — 82 of them wins — to Copley Plaza near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
“We’ve seen plenty of people go through their championship parades,” Allen said, “and never did I think I would be a part of one. It’s great to definitely do it here in Boston.”
Police reported 21 arrests, mostly for disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace. But fans had one last chance to enjoy the team’s first title in 22 years and the area’s sixth in 61/2 years
“Who would have ever thought? Boston. Title town,” said Ryan Stillman, 21, who was born five months after Boston won its last championship on June 8, 1986.
Boston went 66-16 one season after going 24-58, the second worst record in the league.
The mastermind was general manager Danny Ainge, who traded for Garnett and Allen. The field general was coach Doc Rivers. Both let the players absorb the glory.
“As an executive,” Ainge said before the rally, “these guys are like my kids.”
All along the route, fans held signs declaring “Sweet 17,” the number of Celtics championships, and “Have a Cigar.”
Nick D’Ambrosia, a pennant vendor from Hamden, Conn., said when the team won Game 4 in Los Angeles, he bought a batch of $7 pennants to hopefully sell at a Boston victory parade.
“It’s better when they haven’t won in a long time. Everyone loves a new winner,” he said.
Michael Shaughnessy skipped work to bring his 4-year-old grandson Gavin Carter, a big Garnett fan.
“I like that he gets all the shots and he dunks,” Gavin said, tugging at his own miniature No. 5 jersey while Garnett himself carried the championship trophy on his duck boat.
At the start of the rally, construction workers across Causeway Street from the Garden looked down from openings in a building where windows will go. Other onlookers stood on fire escapes. Confetti cannons shot green and white paper into the air as workers stood by with brooms ready to clear them away once the parade passed.
As the duck boats pulled out of the parking lot, Bob Messina watched in his powder blue Larry Bird No. 33 Indiana State jersey. Now 37, Messina remembers the 1986 celebration at City Hall Plaza.
“I just remember Larry Bird and his curly blond hair,” he said. “I’ll never forget it as long as I live. To be here now that I’m a little bit older, I could die a happy man.”
Thursday’s rolling rally didn’t make any stops, but fans saw Pierce, Garnett, James Posey, Leon Powe and Sam Cassell chomping on stogies. And they saw 289-pound rookie Glen “Big Baby” Davis travel along the route topless, showing that not all his baby fat was gone.
Meredith Heijl, 20-year-old student from Boston was so excited to see them pass, she broke her green flip flop trying to take Pierce’s picture.
“That was the highlight of my year,” she joked, even though he didn’t wave in her direction.
Many adults at the parade were struck by the youth of the crowd.
“I think the Celtics have a new following that’s more the early 20s crowd,” said Alan Sprinsky, 55, of Braintree, who surveyed the scene from a lawn chair in front of the St. Paul’s Cathedral on Tremont Street. “I bet there’s not too many kids in school today.”
The weather helped the turnout that was 20 to 30 people deep at spots. The Red Sox celebrated in November and the Patriots in February, but the Celtics parade took place under sunny, late-spring skies that allowed the crowd to leave the winter coats at home and come out in shorts and T-shirts.
Before the rally, Celtics managing partner Irv Grousbeck unfurled a 2008 championship banner, a replica of the one that will hang from the rafters. “The first of several, we hope,” he said in a Garden hallway. Rivers commissioned the new banners for owners and players.
Co-owner Wyc Grousbeck, Irv’s son, got a congratulatory call from President Bush on Wednesday. On Thursday, the younger Grousbeck thanked fans.
“I would say you guys made it happen,” he said. “There was no way the Lakers could win when they stepped on the floor in Game 6 with the electricity in the building. I know who won the game, and it was actually the fans.”
And a bunch of cigar-puffing, trophy-toting athletes who took one last journey together before a new banner is hung next to the other 16.
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June 20th, 2008 DKCMan
If you knew Kevin Garnett’s life, you’d know why he was speechless but could not stop talking.
“Man … man … man.”
It’s what a man says when he can say nothing but wants you to know just how it feels after his life’s search has been completed.
The same way he didn’t say anything before the game when his coach went to search him out to possibly share a moment. The same way he couldn’t speak, then screamed “Anything’s possssiiibbbblllleeee!!!!” and broke down when Michele Tafoya interviewed him on the court immediately after the game. The same way he couldn’t say anything else to the greatest Celtic ever as the two embraced on the floor except, “I got my own. I got my own.”
It’s those speechless moments for a man who can’t stop talking. Those are the ones he’s been waiting for.
He breathes. Exhales. “I just want to say, other than my kid being born, this has got to be the happiest day of my life right now.” He says a few more things. Things about not sleeping for a week, things about changing his cell phone number so no one can find him. He breathes out once again. Bows his head.
“Man … man … man.”
And this is how the end of this chapter of Kevin Garnett’s life begins.
Was he waiting for this moment or was the moment waiting on him?
The moment that will eventually define a career that has placed him not only in conversations about Bill Russell but in conversations with Bill Russell. The moment when he was able to shed all the talk of what he couldn’t, can’t and won’t do on the basketball court. The moment when he showed us that he can come up big in big games, put games on his shoulders and not defer to teammates, win when questions swirl about whether he’s one of the best we’ve ever seen or just a taller, more skilled version of Scottie Pippen. The forever a No. 2 player, but not a No. 1.
It was that moment when he could answer all of the doubters, who for 13 years have believed — since he first drove around Chicago, too young to get into bars, in an Audi with the license plate that read KG PICK 5 — that he was less than the elite player he was being sold to the world as.
“You don’t understand what this moment means to him,” said Jimmy Jam, half of the famed record-production tandem Jam and Lewis, a friend who embraced KG when he first arrived in Minnesota. “On so many levels this is more than just being a world champion. He’s a ‘we’ guy. This is about everything that is good about basketball. This is about the basketball gods that are looking down on this and saying, ‘It’s time for Kevin.’”
As the walkway between “media-can-go-no-further” and Moet showers got crowded, KG hugged Brian Scalabrine as if they were depending on each another for oxygen. Brian Scalabrine!
As he watched this moment, Jam said, “For me personally, it’s almost like watching one of my sons. … From the time Kevin walked up to me in the parking lot of a grocery store and stopped me and introduced himself and asked me, ‘How do I conduct myself in Minneapolis? How do I handle this? How can I be the next Kirby Puckett?’ … Watching this is unbelievable.”
It’s the difference in being an emotional leader and a team’s leader, which always gets lost when Garnett’s legacy is discussed. And what got lost this season in us finding KG — outside of watching him give the same amount of love to a teammate who didn’t make the Finals roster as he did the man who won the Finals MVP — was how we cannot make him someone we want him to be.
All season long and most evident in these last six games, we so desperately wanted him to be more dominant, less passive, more like Sam Cassell in a crucial fourth quarter than Tracy McGrady. Throughout the Finals, doubts and statements about him “not posting Pau Gasol up all day and puttin’ in work” found more airtime on sports talk radio than Cialis spots. “Expect Great” became an inside joke as a slogan he had loaned to the WNBA.
Expect great. That’s the stigma that had been placed on him, one he had yet to overcome in many hearts and minds. And one that he’s had to live with. Until this moment in his life. When he could finally let the world know what it felt like to be Kevin Garnett.
You may not have seen that moment. It wasn’t when he came out of the locker room before the game, before the rest of his teammates, to get his 90 seconds of alone time before his band of brothers entered the stage. It wasn’t the play he made with 47.5 seconds left in the first half when, fouled by Lamar Odom and falling to the floor, he made that Julius Erving-esque one-handed shot. It wasn’t about how he lay on the court after that foul with his fist slightly pumped in the air, a picture many writers in the press box felt was the defining moment of his career.
It wasn’t found in his teaching Big Baby Davis during the game how to guard Gasol while Gasol stood right there next to them, or when he dove for a loose ball one play later, or how he capped a 13-4 run with a bucket in the lane the play after that, or when he stood under the basket on a dead ball waiting for Paul Pierce to shoot free throws and put his head on referee Joey Crawford’s head and talked to him in a way no other player in the league could because no ref would listen to any other player the way they listen to KG. It wasn’t in the 26 points and 14 rebounds he ended with in the greatest game of his life.
No. The moment that Kevin Garnett had been searching for his entire career came while his team, everyone from Doc Rivers to P.J. Brown, sat on the front of the stage singing Queen’s “We Are The Champions.” He sat between Big Baby and PX2 with the championship trophy in his hands. He closed his eyes, as if to block out everything around him, and said a few words to the trophy. Then he kissed it. He put his head on it. Then kissed it again. And held it there.
Five seconds later, it was over. That was his moment. And if asked he’ll tell you that single moment with that trophy was all he ever wanted from this career. And in the most chaotic scene seen in Boston basketball in 22 years, he found a way to have that moment. Surrounded by 20,000 other people. All by himself.
But Kevin Garnett wasn’t asked that question.
He was asked about his soul in front of a room full of media with a gold championship basketball next to him. After one last “Man … man … man” left his body.
After he had unabashedly let his emotions go in screaming to the rafters, after he had lost himself after the win, his inner kid released itself. He explained what it’s been like to be that active, hyper, ever-moving, ever-talking person who had to suppress himself to win the title. What it’s like to finally let it all out. To explain what it feels like to finally let this out of your soul.
His analogy revealed who he really is: still the kid. The beauty and innocence of what this game is supposed to be about when money, power and disrespect are not the guiding forces in your life. His answer, one of the ageless. One for the ages.
“You ever go to school,” he said, finding the perfect words, “and you had a bully mess with you every day? I know everybody ain’t no tough guy here. It’s like that bully that you go to school every day [with] and you know when you get out of your mom’s or dad’s car, you know you’re going to see him as soon as you walk through the doors, he’s sitting there waiting to pat your pockets and mess with you. Then one day you say, ‘This is going to stop today!’ You walk in and as soon as the bully pats your pockets you lay his ass out and you see the expression on his face. You’re sorta shook because you know what, you just knocked the bully out and you don’t know how he’s going to come back. The next morning when you come in and he’s not there, it’s like a sigh of relief. It’s like getting rid of the bully. It’s like I knocked the bully’s ass out! I knocked his ass clean out. That’s what it feels like. For all y’all who ain’t been bullied, y’all got no idea what I’m talking about. But for y’all who have, you understand my story.”
I think, now, we finally do.
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June 20th, 2008 DKCMan
With Russell and Havlicek sitting courtside, and Red surely lighting up a victory cigar somewhere, these Boston Celtics returned to glory like the great teams before them.
Dominant in every way.
On a new parquet floor below aging championship banners hung in the rafters two decades back, the Celtics won their 17th NBA title and a first one—at last — for Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen—their Big Three for a new generation.
After 22 long years, the NBA has gone green.
Lifted by ear-splitting chants of “Beat L.A.” early and cries of “Seven-teen” in the closing seconds by their adoring crowd, the Celtics concluded a shocking rebound of a season with a stunning 131-92 blowout over the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 6 on Tuesday night.
“It means so much more because these are the guys, the Havliceks, the Bill Russells, the Cousys,” Pierce said. “These guys started what’s going on with those banners. They don’t hang up any other banners but championship ones.
“And now I’m a part of it.”
With the outcome assured, Boston fans sang into the night as if they were in a pub on nearby Canal Street. They serenaded the newest champs in this city of champs, and taunted Kobe Bryant and his Lakers, who drowned in a green-and-white wave for 48 minutes.
Garnett scored 26 points with 14 rebounds, Allen scored 26 and Pierce, the finals MVP who shook off a sprained right knee sustained in Game 1, added 17 as the Celtics, a 24-win team a year ago, wrapped up their first title since 1986.
Rajon Rondo had 21 points, eight assists, seven rebounds and six steals as the Celtics, who built a 23-point halftime lead and obliterated the Lakers, who were trying to become the first team to overcome a 3-1 deficit in the finals.
They didn’t stand a chance.
Boston’s 39-point win surpassed the NBA record for the biggest margin of victory in a championship clincher; the Celtics beat the Lakers 129-96 in Game 5 of the 1965 NBA finals.
In the final minute, Pierce doused Celtics coach Doc Rivers with red Gatorade. Owner Wyc Grousbeck, who named his group Banner 17 to leave no doubt about his goal, put an unlit cigar in his mouth—a tribute to Auerbach, the patriarch who had a hand in the franchise’s first 16 titles.
Garnett dropped to the parquet and kissed the leprechaun at center court and then found Russell, the Hall of Famer who taught him the Celtic way, for a long embrace.
“I got my own. I got my own,” Garnett said. “I hope we made you proud.”
“You sure did,” Russell said.
Rivers pulled Pierce, Garnett and Allen with 4:01 left and they shared a group hug with their coach, who was nearly run out of town last season. Rivers lost his father at the beginning of this remarkable run, a season no one expected.
By the time Rivers was handed the Larry O’Brien Trophy, it was June 18—his late father’s birthday.
When the game clock reached zeros, Rivers reflected on his dad.
“My first thought was what would my dad say,” Rivers said, “and honestly I started laughing because I thought he would probably say, if you knew my dad, `It’s about time. What have you been waiting for?”’
It’s was Boston’s first title since the passing of Auerbach, whose presence was the only thing missing on this night. Even Auerbach, who died in 2006, got some satisfaction. Led by Rivers, Auerbach’s beloved team denied Lakers coach Phil Jackson from overtaking him with a 10th championship.
The Boston-Los Angeles rivalry, nothing more than black-and-white footage from the 60s and TV highlights of players wearing short shorts in the 80s to young hoops fans, remains tilted toward the Atlantic Ocean. The Celtics are 9-2 against the Lakers in the finals.
Boston missed its first crack at closing out the series in Game 5, but the Celtics didn’t miss on their second swing, running the Lakers out of the gym.
Bryant, the regular season MVP, finished with 22 points on 7-of-22 shooting.
He started 4-of-5 from the field and seemed intent on forcing a Game 7. But he missed seven shots in a row and everywhere he went, L.A.’s No. 24 ran smack into a wall of Boston defense as high as the Green Monster.
“They were definitely the best defense I’ve seen the entire playoffs,” Bryant said. “I’ve seen some pretty stiff ones and this was right up there with them. The goal was to win a championship, it wasn’t to win MVP or anything like that, it was to win a championship.”
Garnett and Allen were All-Stars in other cities, stuck in Minnesota and Seattle, respectively, on teams going nowhere. But brought together in trades last summer by Celtics general manager Danny Ainge, a member of the ‘86 Celtics champions, they joined Pierce and formed an unbreakable bond, a trio as tight as the club’s lucky shamrock logo.
They resisted being called The Big Three, a nickname given to Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish two decades ago.
“This is the reason we came here,” Garnett said. “This is the reason we got together, and Danny made it go down. This is it right now.”
With Garnett scoring 17 points and Pierce adding 10, Boston built a 58-35 halftime lead, and unlike Game 2 when they let the Lakers trim a 24-point lead to two in the fourth quarter before recovering, the Celtics never stopped.
They pushed their lead to 31 in the third, and with Boston still up by 29 after three, plastic sheets started going up in the Celtics’ locker room in preparation for a champagne celebration.
No team had to work harder for a championship than these Celtics, who were playing in their record 26th postseason game after being pushed to seven games by Atlanta and Cleveland before taking care of Detroit in six to win the Eastern Conference title.
They entered Game 6 slowed by injuries as Pierce, Kendrick Perkins (shoulder) and Rondo (ankle) were less than 100 percent. There was also uncertainty surrounding Allen, who stayed behind in Los Angeles following Game 5 after his youngest son became ill and was diagnosed with diabetes. The Celtics needed three planes to get back from L.A. and didn’t get home until late Monday night.
But there were no excuses, and just as they had while winning 66 games during the regular season, the Celtics got plenty of help from their bench as P.J. Brown, James Posey, Leon Powe and rookie Glen “Big Baby” Davis came in and contributed.
It was a group effort by this gang in green, which bonded behind Rivers, who borrowed an African word ubuntu (pronounced Ooh-BOON-too) and roughly means “I am, because we are” in English, as the Celtics’ unifying team motto.
The Celtics gave the Lakers a 12-minute crash course of ubuntu in the second quarter.
Boston outscored Los Angeles 34-19, getting 11 field goals on 11 assists. The Celtics toyed with the Lakers, outworking the Western Conference’s best inside and out and showing the same kind of heart that made Boston the center of pro basketball’s universe in the ’60s.
House and Posey made 3-pointers to put the Celtics ahead by 12 points and baskets by Pierce, Garnett and Rondo put Boston ahead by 18.
In the final minute, Garnett floated in the lane, banked in a one-handed runner and was fouled. His free throw made it 56-35, and after Perkins scored, the Celtics ran to the locker room leading by 23.
On his way off the floor, Garnett screamed, “That’s that.”
And so it was.
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