Kevin Garnett on playing with Stephon Marbury: 'I thought we were probably gonna get a couple of titles, even with the Shaq and Kobe s***'
Minnesota Timberwolves legend Kevin Garnett says he and Stephon Marbury would have won a couple championships together if Marbury stayed. (via Knuckleheads with Quentin Richardson & Darius Miles): “I thought Steph and I was gonna be forever, and I thought out of that, we was probably gonna get a couple, even with the Shaq and Kobe s***. But yeah, at that time, man, that s*** blew me. Steph leaving Minnesota blew the f*** out of me. I didn’t understand it. To this day, I still don’t understand it. It was Stephon Marbury, it was his decision. It wasn’t an ‘Us’ decision.”
Source: Paul Terrazzano Jr. @ TalkBasket
Source: Paul Terrazzano Jr. @ TalkBasket
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“I didn’t really want to leave ’Sota, if I’m being honest,” Garnett said. “I wanted management to be on the same line of quality and expertise versus excuses and all the other things. But, yeah, I didn’t necessarily want to leave ’Sota. When I see Dame [Portland Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard] play, he reminds me a lot of myself being in this situation where your heart is loyal and you love what it loves, but it’s another line of things that you want to accomplish and the realness of you not being able to accomplish those things in a setting to where you want to accomplish those things sometimes is a very difficult thing to deal with. “And, yeah, it was very difficult leaving. It was really difficult to leave all my friends and all the people that I had invested [in] in Minnesota. It was hard. It was hard leaving all those people. It was hard leaving that fan base. But then it got to a point where I think that I had to leave. It was evident that Glen and them didn’t want to win. It was evident that they wanted to go in another direction.” -via Andscape / November 12, 2022
Garnett, however, believed his former teammate yearned to be the face of an NBA franchise rather than continue being a superduo with him. Garnett also believed that had Marbury stayed in Minnesota, the Wolves could have won a title. “Steph is going to forever have to live in that,” Garnett said. “He [expletive] up all our championship dreams. But I get it. If I’m being honest, every kid wants to be able to have his own team or be able to say he had his own team. “I always say I can’t ever be mad at someone’s decision for what they want for themselves. It’s just so unfortunate that we didn’t align with the same vision and the same goal. So, yeah, I don’t even talk about that s— because it ain’t really nothing to talk about. It was out of my control. Nothing I could do about it.” -via Andscape / November 11, 2022
“It was solely I didn’t want to spend seven years of my life in Minnesota. People were like, ‘Oh, you jealous of Kevin Garnett because of the money he made.’ You guys don’t make no sense. The rule is the rule. I got the max contract. This has nothing to do with money. I didn’t want to spend seven years of my life there, period,” Marbury said. -via Andscape / November 11, 2022