Former NBA MVP and champion Kevin Garnett is set to retire from the NBA after 21 seasons, bidding farewell to fans via a video posted to Instagram Friday afternoon.
“I’m just thankful, man. I can’t ever put that into words, I’m just thankful,” Garnett says in the voiceover on the video. “I’m just thankful for everybody and the love — I never would have thought that people’d love me like this, but for it to be reality is just something else, man.”
A video posted by Kevin Garnett (@tic_pix) on Sep 23, 2016 at 2:42pm PDT
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Garnett came to us as a fresh-faced 19-year-old kid and leaves as a highly decorated 40-year-old NBA veteran.
At the peak of his career, Garnett was as good as anyone at the power forward spot, including the recently retired Tim Duncan. A 15-time All-Star, Garnett made the All-NBA team nine times, four-times as a first-team selection. The four-time rebounding champion left his mark defensively as well, winning four consecutive rebounding titles from 2004-07.
Garnett posted his best numbers during the 2004-05 season, scoring 24.2 points and grabbing 13.9 rebounds while blocking 2.2 shots per game en route to winning league MVP honors and leading the Timberwolves to the Western Conference finals.
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But his best performance came in the 2007-08 season when he left Minnesota and joined the Celtics to team up with Ray Allen and Paul Pierce to end the franchise’s 21-year NBA title drought. Garnett came up big in Game 6 of the NBA Finals against the Lakers, scoring 26 points and grabbing 14 rebounds to help bring the franchise its league-record 17th NBA championship.
Above all else, though, Garnett will be remembered as the man who paved the high school-to-NBA road that brought us Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, LeBron James and a host of other players over the following decade.
