Kevin Garnett, welcome to The Daily Social Distancing Show.
Thank you, man. Thank you, Trev. Thank you for having me.
Yeah, man, it's too dope to have you here.
First things first, like, why-why is it so dark?
What-What's going on over there?
Um, you know what, we're not in the studio.
Um, I like indirect lighting myself.
-I don't like direct light. I don't like -(laughing)
a bunch of light hitting me.
You know, I was trying to tell the producers
I got a high level of melanin, so y'all just gonna have to deal
with some of this darkness today, you know?
I'm-I'm bringing some balance to the whole Trevor show today.
-You know? -All right, all right. I feel it, I feel it.
We got, like-- we got-- we got an ebb and flow going here.
Okay, I like that. I like-- Well, welcome to the show
either way. I can see you.
I can feel your presence. And, uh, before we get into the book,
let me say, first of all, congratulations
on making it into the NBA Hall of Fame.
And, man, you did it in style as well.
Because you're a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
That's pretty amazing. How does it feel?
It feels amazing, man. You know... (clears throat)
As you would know, putting-putting all your time
and effort into a craft and believing in yourself
and wanting to, you know, grow a-a passion that's within you,
uh, is-is not ideal in a-- in a... (chuckles)
in-in a Black home.
Uh, thinking big, dreaming big, um, all of those things.
Going to having a vast imagination and chasing a dream,
um, only to find yourself in your dream
and now you're in it.
Now what do you do?
So to be able to be-- able to, um,
reach heights, reach dreams,
uh, I-I couldn't-- Listen, I couldn't have wrote this.
You know? I couldn't have came up with this
in my-- in my wildest imagination.
Your-your induction into the Hall of Fame
comes with a-a bittersweet story to it, you know,
because you were inducted along your-your peer
and your friend Kobe Bryant.
You know, now, he was a-a fellow giant in the sport.
And-and one thing I've really always wondered about is
how you could be friends with somebody
when you guys wanted to kill each other on the court.
Because you would watch the games,
you know, when it was Celtics/Lakers,
it's just like-- it's just like, "Gah! I want to kill you."
And it's like you guys are friends off the court.
Did-did that ever spill over?
Were you ever too friendly on the court
or ever too aggressive in life?
Uh, no, I think Kobe and I had a great balance
of respect for each other, where--
I think when you hit the floor, um, as gladiators,
you have a respect but within the lines.
But it's free game, you know?
It's all about advantage.
Um, and you're trying to look for that advantage every minute,
every second of the game.
And when you come off the court, it's a lot less, uh, intense,
a lot more intimate.
Uh, the conversations are-are obviously long-running
and-and they're in-depth.
Um, but when you're between the lines, there are no rules,
um, only respect.
And, uh, if you don't have respect,
then it goes another way.
But I think Kobe and I had a great understanding
of each other.
Um, I met him when he was-- when he was very young.
We-we started off, you know, when we were very young
in the relationship, and we-- and we-- and we kept that
throughout our whole times in the league.
So it's only right that we go in the hall together.
Yeah, man, it's-it's been an amazing journey
that you've been on, and I feel like you're one of those people
where, every time I learn more about you,
I like you more. You know?
Obviously, I loved you as a basketball player,
'cause I was, like, "KG is killing the game."
You know, and then, in an Uncut Gems, I was like,
"Man, this is a new side of KG I never thought I would see."
But now, we get to live your life with you
because you've released a memoir that's coming out this week,
KG: A to Z: An Uncensored Encyclopedia of Life,
Basketball, and Everything in Between.
And you've literally written it like an encyclopedia.
-The book goes A, B, C, D, all the way to Z. -That's right.
Talk me through why KG decided to write a book like that,
'cause, I mean, that's not how everyone writes a memoir.
I'm not a memoir guy. I'm more of a mathematician,
I'm more science, I'm more into history,
I'm more into my world geography.
You know, I'm not a...
You know, when I read a bunch of papers, I skim through.
I'm not always seeing the "the," the "a."
-And you know, I'm a skimmer, you know? -Right.
And, um, I wanted the book to be able to be followed very easily.
I... Sometimes when I read stuff, I get lost in how...
the format, the paragraphs are really in depth.
So I wanted to be able to write something
that was easy to follow,
and you know, something that you can enjoy.
It is enjoyable. Man, because you have lived a life.
Everything in your book gives us insights into something.
You know, if people love KG on the court,
there's parts about KG on the court. There's parts about...
Like, just when you learn things about who you are as a person...
Like, you... you for instance, you have, like...
You're a very serious player,
but you love messing with people, you know?
Um, one of my favorite things you did--
and I never used to understand this,
'cause, you must remember, I only learned about basketball
maybe, like, seven years ago--
is I would always see you hitting the ball away
when people would shoot after the time out has been called.
And I was always like, "Oh, did they get the point?"
And people would be like, "Nah, KG just does it."
I was like, "Why is he doing that?"
Everyone was like, "I don't know."
But now we know. It was because
you were trying to mess with people
who were trying to get their rhythm going.
It's-it's a combination of things, Trevor.
Like, you know, confidence,
on this level, when you play with guys in the league,
only thing they need to see is the ball go through
-a couple of times, or even one time. -Right.
Reggie Miller, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, guys who...
LeBron, guys who can actually beat you
by just a blink of an eye, have that switch.
And I used to be mindful of that switch.
And when guys would try to, you know, be shooting,
or have themselves a bad shooting nights,
I would... I would just, I would...
Part of it being an A-hole, too.
You know, kind of, you know?
You know, poking the bear a little bit.
But a lot of it was just to throw off rhythm
and to really make someone, really, like,
like, "You know what? Stop doing that."
And-and that's... You know, it...
The more I can mess with you, the more I saw it effecting you,
the more I would probably do it, but yeah, it was effective.
Yeah, man, you might call yourself a bit
of an A-hole at times, but, man, there are parts of this book
that show us how complicated and dynamic you are as a person.
You know, I really appreciated how you talked
-about struggling with attention deficit disorder. -Yeah.
How you struggled, you know, living with dyslexia
and learning how to learn without that,
or with that impediment in your life.
It seems like something a lot of people wouldn't share,
especially self-doubt.
You know, when people think of Kevin Garnett,
we don't necessarily ever think of self-doubt being
in a sentence with your name.
Why do you think it was so important
for you to share that with people and say,
"Hey, these are the things
that KG has struggled with off the court"?
Trevor, I wanted to give people confidence.
I wanted to be able to say, it's okay to have ailments.
You know, we're all human. Everyone's not perfect.
We all have flaws.
Um, growing up, I didn't necessarily know
what was going on.
I didn't know why, you know,
things appeared the way they were,
and why I was processing the way I was.
So, in this whole book, I wanted to be able
to have the reader be able to grab some solutions
from-from what I...
from some of the things I was talking about.
Uh, that doubt you speak on,
-it's the same doubt that drives you. -Mm-hmm.
It's the same doubt that pushes you every day.
-Right. -And you know, the message in that,
in having the ADDs or these deficits is
to continue to push through.
I never let any of this hold me back, I figured it out.
It was an odd way of figuring some of this stuff out,
but it worked at the end of the day.
And the message here is to continue to push through
no matter, whatever it is.
There is a solution to everything.
I really like to believe that.
So, I wanted to share that with everybody,
to show the human side of me, too.
-Right, right, right. -You know, people see me, and this...
and this great athlete, and you're running and jumping
and all this, and they don't really understand
that, you know, you know, it's a whole bunch
of other things that go into the makeup of a person.
So I wanted to show a more human side.
Yeah, man, the book takes us into all the things that go
into the makeup of this human in particular.
One of the scariest stories to read in the book--
because it just shows
how much a person's life could change in an instant--
is when you talk about being in high school
and getting into a fight, defending your friend
who is getting beaten up by these white kids.
And the next thing you know, you were being put up
for lynching charges, which is a capital offense,
where you were in South Carolina.
I mean, this is... this is a scary world
for you to be in, when you think to yourself,
that one thing could have changed your life,
and there might be no Kevin Garnett
in the Hall of Fame right now.
Facts. Facts. And, um, this where... (clears throat)
the saying "Bad associations spoils useful habits"
come into play.
And you know, I was a young kid at the time.
And I'm a very loyal person. People know me for that.
And you know, you get yourself in situations,
and you don't really think when you're young.
-Right. -You just more react, you know?
(coughs) In going through that situation,
it taught me to actually think
before actually responding or actually reacting to things.
Um, I was very fortunate to be able to go through that process
and come out of it, and find a rainbow at the end, if you will.
-Mm-hmm. -Um, I took a negative, you know, I took myself,
uh, and I was completely invested
in whatever the consequences was.
And I went through that process, and I came out on top,
and I like to think that it made me a better person.
Um, I like to think that, um,
it made me shrink my, uh...
my so-called circle of friends, too.
It made me rethink a lot of things that were going on
in my life as a young individual.
And, um, I can honestly say that was a pivotal point
in my life to where a lot of things changed for me,
-along with my attitude and how I saw things. -Yeah, man.
I feel... I feel you. I mean, I could relate to the parts
of the book where I read, when I went, "Man, just one mistake
"as a kid can change your life,
depending on how you get punished for that mistake."
So many people don't get punished.
And the people who do, it's, like, that was it.
That was the mistake that changed your life forever.
And I don't want to spoil parts of the book.
So, I want people to read it
and just really appreciate that story.
You do an amazing job in everything that you do.
You know, you crushed it in the NBA, you know.
You crushed it in the film that you were in.
And I'll tell you now, you've crushed it with your memoir.
Thank you for writing it, thank you for being different,
thank for you being Kevin Garnett
and thank you for joining me on the show.
Trevor, I appreciate you, man. You're the dopest, man.
Keep doing your thing, too, man. I'm a huge fan.
And, uh, I'll look for you in the future.
Much appreciated, my dude.