Kevin Garnett : Passion Play 너무 길어서 영문 그대로 퍼왔습니다.

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좋은 자료인거 같아 함께 보고 싶어 올리는데 이 장문의 영어를 해석본까지 해서 올리기엔 제 능력치를 벗어나는군요..

죄송하지만 영문 그대로 올립니다. 나쁘지 않다면 읽어보시면 좋을 것 같네요..해석이 크게 어렵진 않으실 겁니다.

 

Kevin Garnett: Passion Play

After signing his six-year, $125 million contract with the Minnesota Timberwolves, Kevin Garnett reacts to a mob of reporters.
(Bill Alkofer, Pioneer Press)

The Timberwolves star has been obsessed with basketball since he was a boy. He sparked controversy when he turned down a $103 million offer and made headlines nationwide when he garnered $125 million. Then and now, he hated being the center of attention. But the Timberwolves and the NBA are banking on the kid from Mauldin, S.C.

Ellen Tomson
Staff Writer

In his hometown of Mauldin, just outside of Greenville, S.C., Kevin Maurice Garnett is remembered as the gangly kid with the ball, who pushed the curfew at Springfield Park, shooting baskets until midnight - or later - alone in the dark.

He had to play, friends say. And basketball was in his blood. Kevin's father, too, loved the game and was an outstanding player.

But Kevin grew up with a stepfather who did not encourage him to play basketball; he didn't allow a hoop in the driveway. And his mom wanted him to study more and go to college. When Kevin tried out for the Mauldin Mavericks, he didn't tell his mother. She learned he was on the high school team only after basketball season had started.

By his junior year in high school, tickets to Mauldin Mavericks' games sold out, and people stood in hallways outside the gym just to listen to Kevin play.

He was 19 when the Minnesota Timberwolves awarded him a three-year, $5.6 million contract and became one of a handful ever to jump straight from high school to the NBA.

He made history again last month, when the Timberwolves awarded him a $125 million contract over six years, the largest multiyear deal in professional sports.

Now 21, and a more than 7-foot-tall forward, he has arms like tentacles and baggy shorts that droop to his knees. Wiry, exuberant, fun-loving, sometimes howling with glee, he carries the future hopes of his team in his every leap.

He is paid all those millions of dollars not so much because of what he has done but because of what the Timberwolves believe he could do: emerge as one of the NBA's superstars, attaining the stature of Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan, and carry the team to a championship.

He lives in Minnetonka, in a new, $700,000 Frank Lloyd Wright-style house that has a basketball hoop with a clear backboard in the front semicircular driveway. He has bought himself big-boy toys, including at least six cars. The first, his "baby," was a white Lexus, and the latest is a canary-yellow Range Rover that some of his friends call "the bus."

But he is not someone Minnesotans know much about.

"I like to keep my life sheltered," he says, declining recent requests for an interview.

Those who have known him and tell his story say his life, public and private, past and present, is basketball.

Basketball is his obsession - and his escape.

"It's like all of us making it."

- Baron "Bear' Franks

Kevin Garnett was 12 when he moved to Basswood Drive in Mauldin, S.C. Minus the magnolia trees, it could be the Highland neighborhood in St. Paul: brick ramblers on hilly streets, two-car garages, landscaped yards.

Kevin was one of about 10 teen-agers who grew up together in the neighborhood. The oldest, Baron "Bear" Franks, still claims he is "king of the street."

"I got to - that's all I got to hold on to," he says, smiling and revealing dimples above a short, scruffy beard. "Kevin's got Minnesota and the NBA."

Franks is 6-4 and weighs 290 pounds. He's wearing a cap on his big head, nylon athletic pants and a black shirt with a Nike symbol. Kevin's shirt.

"We get all the good Nike stuff from him," he says, grinning again.

Franks studied business administration for three years in college and now works for Crucible Chemical in Greenville, where he helps make ingredients for Mop & Glo, ArmorAll tire cleaner and the foaming agent for Corona beer. He's 5 years older than Kevin, played basketball at Mauldin High and held the rebound record there until Kevin broke it.

Kevin was 5-10 when Franks first met him, "a lanky kid with no skills," Franks says.

But the kid was fixated on basketball.

Garnett as a child

"All he did was talk about basketball. And every time you saw him, he had a ball. Sun up. Sun down. Up and down the street. All day long."

In the summer, the boys on Basswood Drive liked to sleep late - until 11 a.m. or noon. But not Kevin.

"This is a guy who would lay down at 3 a.m. and then be up at 9 a.m. to play ball. He would think everyone else had to get up, too. And whoever did get up to play with him played all day. I mean, I liked basketball, too. But not like he did."

Kevin was obsessed with improving his skills. He talked about playing college ball, becoming a pro. Franks, who was both older and bigger, responded by pounding him on the court.

"I didn't do him no favors. I gave him all I had. And sometimes, I'd take a rebound and bounce it off his head or something. And I gave him a lot of noise. I'd tell him, 'I'm in control, controlling the game. I have you in my pocket."'

Franks says Kevin later confessed he more than once wondered if Franks liked him.

"But I always have," Franks says.

Kevin had a tremendous appetite, seemingly boundless energy and growing pains. He sometimes mentioned his bones hurt. He grew a foot taller during his high school years, and his playing didn't always keep pace with his growth.

"I remember one day, at the park, when the guys were saying he was 6-feet-6 and couldn't dunk," Franks says. "But every year, he improved dramatically. I never seen anything like it.

"He was always looking for a father figure to tell him about basketball, and that's how he bonded with us older guys," Franks adds.

"Kevin was happy-go-lucky, polite, always greeted people. But every time I saw his stepfather, it was like walking on eggshells. I think Kevin felt he was better off not being around his stepfather.

"I can't ever remember Kevin saying, 'Me and my stepdad did this or did that.' There wasn't a whole lot of love there."

Basketball served as Kevin's "getaway," Franks concluded.

"When he was lonely, he grabbed that ball," Franks says. "When he wanted to get out of the house, get away and not think about some things, he played ball."

"I was way firm. I taught him at an early age, I could only give him what he needed, not what he wanted."

- Shirley Irby Garnett

"I am the mother," Shirley Irby Garnett, 47, confirm‎s at her front door. She usually refuses interviews. She says others twist her words, and she plans to write a book of her own about her son. She closes the door after opening it just a crack.

Three days later, she has changed her mind. She opens the door, revealing her living room, where the windows are hung with lined, perfectly tailored drapes she has sewn.

"Would you like to see his room?" she asks, eyes flashing, face suddenly open and animated. She is wearing leggings and a T-shirt. She bounds with childlike energy down a hallway in the middle of the three-bedroom house, past pieces of wallboard and other construction materials. She says Kevin is paying for a remodeling job.

Kevin's old room is still furnished with a double bed and three framed drawings of black men playing basketball. But it is a room in transition.

His old stuffed animals, including a favorite green turtle, are stacked behind the door. High school literature books are piled on a bureau.

Kevin's old closet is filled now with his mother's clothes, including a fur coat she says Kevin bought her at Dayton's.

"I'm the only one he will give a blank check to," she says. "And diamonds, have I got diamonds ..."

Now that her son is rich, she has dreams: a porcelain-doll shop of her own and "Garnett Ridge," a place where everyone in the family would live together.

"I love that Mall of America - and antique shops in Wayzata," she effuses. "But too expensive ..."

She still likes to shop yard sales and thrift stores. But her son never liked it when she picked up something second-hand for him, she says.

"He found out one day I was buying Goodwill clothes," she says. "He didn't like nothing used, always wanted the best. Right to this day, he won't buy anything used or on sale."

She is a practicing Jehovah's Witness and raised Kevin according to her faith. The family did not celebrate Christmas, and Kevin did not go trick or treating.

"I like the teaching of the Bible and live by it," she says. "That's what has helped Kevin. If he continues on that foundation, he'll be fine. He's been trained."

Garnett is her maiden name. The oldest of nine children, she worked rotating shifts at a 3M plant and ran a hair-styling business to support Kevin and her two daughters.

None of her children lives with her now. She and Ernest Irby, whom she married when Kevin was 7, divorced last year, after 13 years of marriage.

When Kevin phones from Minnesota, he begins their conversation asking, "What up?" And then, "You straight?" - meaning, "Do you have enough money?"

"He's my baby," she says. "He just amazes me - not above God - but he amazes me."

She says she would like Kevin "to marry a nice, Southern girl when he is about 30 and have plenty of babies."

She never advocated playing basketball, especially as a career. Only after her son was a high school junior and a rising star did she differ with her husband and support Kevin's choice.

"I'm an advocate of education, always saved for my children's college education," she says. "My plans were for him to go to school.

"He's positive, loves people and believes in giving. I think he would have made a great social worker."

"Everyone has a father in their lives, and he's hurt by that. It bothers his mind. He's asked me, 'Mom, what do you think it would have been like?"' - Shirley Irby Garnett

Not many people outside of Nickeltown, an old and hilly black neighborhood in Greenville, know Kevin Garnett's father is O'Lewis McCullough.

McCullough, 48, is remembered there as "Bye-Bye 45." He was No. 45, captain of the Beck High School basketball team and on a fast break he would be ... gone. "Bye-Bye 45."

Kevin Garnett's father, O'Lewis McCullough, pictured in 1969, was in the U.S. Army and played on a military basketball team in Europe.

Although just 6-4, he was one of the most dominating centers in the Greenville area. A team player but aggressive, he was known for his shot-blocking ability, timing and scoring. After high school, he played for local leagues and in the Army.

"Back then, if you didn't make it to college, you didn't get looked at," McCullough says.

Most of the good players he knew all wound up like him, "getting a job, raising a family."

He met Kevin's mother a year or two before Kevin was born May 19, 1976.

"It was something that happened when we were young," he says. "Things that happened between his mother and I - that's between us."

McCullough married his wife, Frances, almost 20 years ago. He works for the Robert Bosch Corp. making diesel pumps and lives outside Charleston. He and his wife have two sons, Christopher, 11, and O'Lewis Jr., a 6-3 high school sophomore who plays basketball at Garrett Academy of Technology.

McCullough has two other sons - Isaac and Kenneth - who are older than Kevin. Kevin has met all of his half brothers, except Kenneth, according to McCullough.

McCullough says he sent weekly support payments to Kevin's mother "from day one." Kevin also visited him in Charleston several summers, when they played basketball together, he says.

Kevin's grandparents, Odell and Mary McCullough, still live in the small house in Nickeltown where they raised their six children. Before moving to Mauldin as a middle-school student, Kevin lived nearby and attended elementary schools in the neighborhood. He did not seem to know he had relatives in the area until he made friends with his older cousin Shammond Williams, now a guard on the University of North Carolina basketball team.

After that, his mother occasionally brought him to visit his grandparents, Mary McCullough says.

She recalls one day when she pointed out to Kevin all the houses in the area where he had relatives living.

"You got people here, you got people here," she told him.

She says Kevin, who was then about 11, exclaimed, "Granny, I'm rich! I got a whole lot of kin."

Kevin last visited "Granny" and "Papa" McCullough this past summer. "Papa," who worked as a stucco plasterer for 47 years, says he asked Kevin, "How many pairs of shoes you got?"

Kevin responded by taking off the white, $70, size 15 Nike Jumpmans he had on and handing them to his grandfather. He later left the house in his socks.

Kevin Garnett's grandfather, Odell McCullough, of Greenville, S.C., holds a pair of size 15 Nike shoes that Kevin gave him during a visit last summer. (Ginger Pinson photo)

The last time O'Lewis McCullough saw Kevin was during the summer between Kevin's junior and senior year of high school.

"I remember he said something to me then about how come I never came to see him play at Mauldin, and I told him to send me a schedule so I could try to take some time off to come," he says.

That never happened, though. Kevin went to Chicago for his senior year of high school, a move that took McCullough by surprise. He says he called Kevin in Chicago and left a message on an answering machine but never got any response.

He has followed his son's career by saving news articles and watching him on TV.

"I think he could be more aggressive in his playing," he says. "Two things I'd like to see him do and haven't are develop a first step to the bucket, where he can drive past a man, and learn to be more of a power forward, playing with his back to the rim. I've never seen him develop that type of shot."

At Bosch, a few of McCullough's co-workers know he is Kevin Garnett's father. Some of them asked how he felt after Kevin signed his $125 million contract. Did he have any regrets?

"I can't worry about that," he says. "I'm going to continue to do what I do each and every day: Get up, go to work and make sure everybody in this house is happy and satisfied. I've got two kids here, a family I have to keep going."

McCullough says he cannot telephone Kevin because he does not have a home number for him.

"He knows where I am," McCullough says. "If he called, I'm here for him - like I've always been. The love is out for him."

"I knew he was gifted the first time I saw him on the court."

- Duke Fisher

The kid had good hands. Good feet. Quick and always in position. Something you have - or don't.

"God-given," concludes Mauldin High School Coach James "Duke" Fisher, 54.

Steely thin, 6-4, sarcastic and gruff, Fisher played ball at the University of North Carolina as a college freshman. He wrote to his alma mater.

"Come take a look."

Kevin Garnett was quiet his freshman year, with an average of 12.5 points, 14 rebounds and seven blocks per game. The summer between his freshman and sophomore year, Mauldin had a split junior varsity-varsity team at basketball camp. Fisher observed a change in Kevin. He was more confident, playing harder. The Mauldin Mavericks had a leader in him.

Kevin worked hard for Fisher. And Fisher pushed him to work even harder. But there was no way you could break this kid.

"I'd bust him at basketball practice, I mean really bust him," Fisher says. "And then he'd go to the park and play basketball there. He'd leave one practice and go practice again. I never saw someone so obsessed."

When the high school basketball season ended, Kevin played for Darren "Bull" Gazaway, who works nights on a loading dock so he can coach during the day. He's been an Amateur Athletic Union coach for 20 years, putting together teams for an annual textile-mill tournament and for a summer ball program.

Gazaway, 45, played basketball in high school. He says he has attended one pro game in his life - "and that one had Bill Walton in it." At 5-11 and 260 pounds, Gazaway confesses he is "not exactly built for basketball."

But high school boys from Greenville and all the little nearby towns want to play for "Bull." He chooses his teams, and his teams always have the best players.

His home court is a small gym next to an old textile plant in Greenville. From the outside, the gym looks like a small warehouse. Inside, it smells musty, like an old country church.

Seventeen wooden benches line the walls, painted an institutional mint green. The scoreboard controls sit on a plywood pulpit, and the wooden backboards are grubby with red-brown South Carolina dirt. Someone has stuck yellow tape on one of the walls and scrawled on it with a black marker, "Players bench."

Just four years ago, Kevin played his last of three seasons for Gazaway. That final year, 1994, all nine team members were the MVPs at their high schools. The team won the Kentucky Hoopfest tournament, which was held in Louisville and drew competitors from several states.

Kevin was a clown, always laughing, wrestling and kidding around. When he dunked the ball, he would open his mouth and yell on the way down. Gazaway had to explain to other coaches that Kevin was not trying to bother or embarrass anyone. He was just Kevin. Having fun.

Gazaway says he spent a lot of time with Kevin on free throws. He had to get Kevin to settle down and concentrate.

"It was almost like he was too hyper to take the time for the throw, like he was thinking, 'Let's get this over with so we can play,"' Gazaway says.

When his playing began to attract public attention, Kevin was bashful about having his picture taken and uncomfortable in the limelight.

Gazaway recalls a time the team was invited to visit a basketball camp at a college. After the team sat down in the gym, a college coach walked over and greeted Gazaway and Kevin.

As the man walked away, Kevin said, "Get me outta here."

Once outside, Kevin explained, "He spoke to me, spoke to you. But not to any of the other of my boys."

He was always unselfish on the court.

"Kevin could have averaged 30 points a game - easy," Gazaway says. "But he didn't. He probably averaged about 18 points. He would pass, set up other players. He was not stingy. Just loved to play the game."

"He loved basketball. And he already knew he was going to the NBA."

- Janie Willoughby

Scouts from out-of-state showed up at the Mauldin High School games. Little kids ran up to Kevin Garnett, wanting his autograph. Nike invited him to basketball camps in Indiana, Oregon and Illinois.

Kevin received a lot of mail at the high school. He asked Janie Willoughby, who taught him U.S. history, if she would help him figure out what mail he should pay attention to. She set aside a large drawer in the credenza behind her desk as Kevin's mailbox.

He often was tired in her class, which was just before lunch. If he finished his work, he would grab an afghan from one of a collection of blankets Willoughby has in a milk crate, and he would stretch out there next to the credenza. Willoughby kept a stash of candy there for him, too. He was always hungry.

Kevin wrote and scratched his initials in and around her classroom. "K.G." on a typewriter cover. "K.G." on the outside of a door jamb. The initials are still there.

"He can shuck and jive and street talk when he wants to," says Willoughby, 56 and a teacher for 30 years. "But when it came time to do a paper, he would say to me, 'Now, I have to use proper English, don't I?"'

He was one of the most well-mannered young men she has taught and an auditory learner, she says.

"If you told him something, he never forgot it."

She recalls the time he did a paper on the Boston Tea Party and was required to give an oral report. She held the report in her hand, and he stood before the class without any notes. He easily reeled off everything he had written.

But every so often, he would stop and ask: "Is that enough yet for a 'B?"'

"No, no, no," she said, "just to keep him going."

Once, Willoughby remembers, another student was shy about giving her report on John Kennedy. Kevin encouraged the girl to go ahead, telling her he would sit near her. Whenever she stopped, he asked her a question. And when she finished, Kevin said, "OK, folks. Let's give her a big hand."

Kevin was a good student in Willoughby's class. But he struggled in other classes that required lots of reading. He didn't apply himself as much as he could have and did not accept offers of tutoring help. It seemed he had already decided his future was basketball.

Kevin averaged 27 points, 17 rebounds and seven blocks per game his junior season. When he played in the upper-state championship in March 1994, no one realized it would be his last game with the Mavericks. But it was.

In May, a white student was injured during a fight at Mauldin. Kevin was one of five black students charged with second-degree lynching, a charge that in South Carolina includes simple assault. His arrest made headlines in the Greenville papers.

Some said Kevin was an innocent bystander and that the white student was a known troublemaker who taunted black students, sometimes calling them "niggers."

Kevin did not confide what happened even to longtime friends.

"He never talked about it," Baron "Bear" Franks says. "But I do know he felt really betrayed."

Says Murray Long, a white student who was a year ahead of Kevin and played with him on the Mauldin team: "Just knowing Kevin like I do, I don't think he ever would do anything to hurt anyone, and I never understood why the whole thing was made such a big deal.

"When someone told me Kevin was arrested - for lynching - I kind of laughed. I just didn't believe it."

Kevin, who had never been in trouble before, qualified for pretrial intervention. Meanwhile, his mother decided she did not want her son to attend Mauldin High School for his senior year.

She made plans to transfer Kevin to Farragut Academy, a public high school on Chicago's West Side. Kevin already knew William Nelson, one of Farragut's coaches, from a Nike basketball summer camp.

"I had to save him," says Kevin's mother.

"Kevin is still here really. I have younger players who saw Kevin working harder than anyone else every day. Now, they work hard." - William Nelson

"Licencia de Auto," "Productos de Mexico y Puerto Rico," "Nino de Paz," read the signs in the South Londale neighborhood around Farragut Academy on Chicago's West Side. The student body is 90 percent Hispanic and from the neighborhood.

Black students are in the minority overall but the majority on the basketball team. They come from North Londale, where William Nelson, the basketball coach, grew up.

Nelson's studied, take-no-prisoners hallway persona has been a lifetime in the making. Scowling, shoulders back, way back in his tweed jacket, he struts in neat, pleated slacks, with his head turning back and forth, like he's radar for the slightest blip of trouble. Otherwise, he is looser-limbed, an animated guy who acts out anecdotes and would rather laugh than take the events of life so seriously. That includes the game of basketball.

His approach to coaching: "I take everything light. I have fun. I try to take the weight off the kids, and let the kids be kids."

If Kevin Garnett "missed a bunch" and looked at Nelson to gauge his reaction: "I'd just be laughing," Nelson says.

Still, there were times when Nelson would be wringing his hands. Kevin, with his unselfish playing instincts, would pass the ball to a freshman player instead of shooting at some crucial points in a game.

"I'd be there yelling, 'Kevin don't pass - shoot, shoot!"' Nelson says.

In his first year as a coach at a Nike camp, Nelson had been assigned Kevin, 16 and skinny, when he thought what he needed was a beast. But Nelson watched as his team, loose and relaxed, won 13 out of 14 games that week.

He saw what happened. Kevin. His presence pulled the team together.

The following year at Nike camp, Nelson heard about the fight at Mauldin. He told Kevin, "The report is out, you're tough."

Kevin, who had always been, "No, sir, and yes, sir," grew quiet. "No, it ain't like that ..." he said.

When Kevin enrolled at Farragut that fall, there were allegations in the press that Nelson had recruited him while at camp. Some stories also portrayed Farragut as a basketball "factory."

Nelson's voice rises excitedly as he responds: " I don't have a state title, a section title. There are other high schools in Chicago that are national powerhouses, with coaches sitting around with tournament rings on."

Further, he says, Nike was already well aware of Kevin Garnett. The company didn't need him, Nelson maintains, to bring Garnett into the limelight.

Other reports suggested that Nelson had received Nike money.

Nelson answers that charge with another question. Referring to his Olds 98 painted with gray primer, he asks, "Why am I still driving in this beat-up-ass car?"

The same press reports that suggested Nelson benefited from Nike largess also alleged that Nike helped pay for Kevin's family's moving and living expenses for his senior year.

Kevin, his mother and his younger sister, Ashley, lived in the same apartment complex as Nelson - Taylor Place on Ashland Avenue, across from the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center. Kevin's mother rented a one-bedroom apartment on the 12th floor of the south tower for about $700 a month, according to a leasing office employee.

Shirley Garnett worked at a pharmaceutical company and in a housing-management office to support her family. She found the cost of living much higher in Chicago than in Mauldin.

In this photo from August 1996, Kevin Garnett poses with his older sister Sonya Harris, far left, younger sister Ashley Phelps and mother, Shirley Irby Garnett. They were attending a dinner held in Kevin's honor and he was given and honorary key to the city of Mauldin, S.C.

"It was hard, very hard - to eat rice many nights, to go to the grocery store and realize you have only $20 on your Visa, having to walk when my car was stolen several times," she says. "I cried many nights."

Kevin was not as free to go out and play basketball in Chicago as he was in Mauldin. Gyms were more likely to be occupied, and not all the courts were safe late at night.

Nelson sometimes drove Kevin to community-college gyms, where he played with older guys. He also played on courts at Sheriden Park, run by the Chicago Park District, and at the YMCA and outdoor courts near Abla Homes, one of the city's worst housing projects.

As a Farragut Admiral, Kevin played with Ronnie Fields, a 6-3 guard with dazzling showtime moves and a 47-inch vertical leap.

"Kevin and Ronnie - it was like they were rock stars, it was like a damn circus," says Nelson, who besides coaching, teaches math at Farragut. "I was talking to sports agents, scouts, coaches, media people. Literally, 80 percent of the calls coming into the school were for me."

Fields' senior season was cut short by injuries suffered in a car accident and charges of misdemeanor sexual abuse; he pleaded guilty. He now plays ball for the LaCrosse (Wis.) Bobcats in the Continental Basketball Association.

"I still hope to go to the NBA," he says from the hotel room where he is living. "Kevin's career just came sooner than mine."

Kevin decided to declare himself eligible for the NBA draft after more than one failed attempt at passing the nationally standardized ACT exam for college. The Timberwolves selected him with the fifth overall pick in the draft, awarding him a three-year, $5.6 million contract.

"Other kids get a job if they don't get into college," rationalizes Darren "Bull" Gazaway, Kevin's former coach in Greenville, S.C. "That's what Kevin did - with the NBA."

"Sky's the limit." - A tattoo on Kevin Garnett's arm

Visitors to Kevin Garnett's house in Minnetonka take off their shoes to protect his cherry-wood floors and white carpet. He chose all the black and white furnishings himself. He's particular. And he's on his own now.

Departing from his mother's faith, he has celebrated the past two Christmases, buying a tree, exchanging gifts.

But she says he's promised her he will one day obtain a college degree, and he recently enrolled for a business-correspondence course through the University of Minnesota.

He bought a computer last summer and has started studying the stock market, according to his agent.

"He has a financial adviser who helps him with everything from bill paying to taxes to investing of money," says Eric Fleisher.

Living with Kevin are his younger sister, Ashley Phelps, a Hopkins High School student who plays basketball, and Jaime "Bug" Peters, who is almost like a brother to him.

Because of the long hours his mother worked, Kevin has been taking care of Ashley since he was about 14.

"Oh, man, he loves her," says Baron "Bear" Franks. "That's his little sister. The day a guy comes around for her, oooooh, he better do right. If there's a mean bone in Kevin's body, it would come out."

Peters, who is about 5-9 and not a basketball player, encouraged Kevin to excel at basketball long before anyone else recognized he had talent. He helped Kevin sneak out of the house to go play at Springfield Park, monitored his buddy's every move and watched his back while he was having fun.

The two boys - born a month apart - became friends when they were about 11, according to Kevin's mother.

"'Bug' had a Mickey Mouse watch and gave it to Kevin - just like that," says Shirley Irby Garnett.

Other friends from Mauldin have lived with Kevin, too. He trusts people who cared about Kevin Garnett, the person, before there was a Kevin Garnett, the celebrity basketball player. He does not give autographs to those close to him - an attempt, perhaps, to maintain friendships without the element of adoration.

Bridget Butler, 29, who dated Garnett while he was living in the Chicago apartment complex she helps manage, has visited him in Minnetonka.

"We're still friends," she says. "I don't think he's looking for that real romance right now. He is very focused on playing basketball."

When he is with friends, Kevin is outgoing, funny, always joking. But when it comes to his playing, he is hard on himself.

"He just always feels he could have done something different to have made the result better," Butler says.

When he is not in the public arena playing basketball, Kevin sticks close to home, spending much of his time listening to CDs, playing video games and watching basketball on tapes and satellite TV.

He changes his telephone number often. When he eats fast food, he picks it up at the drive-through window. When he buys shoes at Mall of America, he parks close to an entrance and slips out of a store quickly.

He spent last summer in South Carolina, where he bought a $217,000 townhouse at the edge of a golf course. He played basketball in Mauldin's recreation center with high school boys every day. Afterward, he would take a dozen or more of them out to eat. He liked meals of chicken, fish and vegetables and urged the boys to drink lots of juice, not pop.

When everyone pushed back their plates after eating, he told stories about the NBA and they asked questions: "What was it really like to play against Mike [Jordan]?" "When Dennis Rodman kicked that guy, what did he say?"

Driving to and from the restaurant, Kevin invited one or two kids to ride with him in his car and talked with them alone.

"He often told them, 'The NBA is a job, not just fun,"' says Chris "G-Phi" Garrett, 25, a Mauldin High assistant coach.

On Friday nights, there would be talk of going to see a movie, and Kevin would ask, "What do you all want to do?"

"What he wanted to do was go play basketball," Garrett says. "So, we'd play basketball."

In August 1996, about 300 residents of Mauldin held a dinner to honor Kevin. He was awarded an honorary key to the city. Every table was decorated with a picture of him and cantaloupes sprayed orange to look like basketballs.

During his senior year at Farragut High School in Chicago, Kevin Garnett returned to his hometown several times. Here, he and some of his friends celebrate the birthday of Betty Mitchell, a guidance office staffer at Mauldin High School. Garnett, Mitchell and Jaime "Bug" Peters, who lives with Garnett in Minnetonka, are pictured in the front row to the right.

His high school jersey number, 21, the same number he wears for the Timberwolves, was retired during a halftime ceremony on the football field that fall.

Kevin recently worked out a deal with Nike to get the company to resurface Springfield Park, where Kevin spent so many hours of his youth shooting hoops. The dedication of the park was marked by the untying of a giant shoelace and one of two free cookouts Kevin arranged.

"He comes back here and really pulls together the community," says Charles Bankhead, the father of C.W. Bankhead, a Mauldin High basketball player Kevin has dubbed "The Future."

But Bankhead acknowledges a down side: "Some kids put all their eggs in one basket, believing they can be just like Kevin, when they can't."

Everyone has an opinion about Kevin's decision to play professional ball, his money and his contract.

"What people in Minnesota should understand is that he's loyal - that counts with him - and he coulda waited a year, coulda left and made as much or more money," says Darren "Bull" Gazaway, Kevin's former coach in Greenville.

"If he went free agent, had to play out his last year and got hurt, he might have lost the gamble," says O'Lewis McCullough, Kevin's father.

"I just started laughing when I heard how much his new contract is worth," says William Nelson, his former coach in Chicago. "He used to be asking me for 50 cents for pop."

"I had thoughts ..." laughs Butler of Chicago. "I think all his friends were doing some dreaming."

"I just thought about all those zeroes," says Jamel Rome, 17, a point guard at Farragut, where Kevin played as a high school senior.

Meanwhile, Kevin Garnett is playing the game he loves against the best players in the world, testing himself, pursuing his dream.

"It wasn't a money issue with me," he said last month after signing his $125 million contract.

And his life, so far, shows it probably isn't. Basketball, the game, is worth more than money to him. If he weren't paid a cent, he would be somewhere shooting baskets. All day if he could. And into the night.

Saint Paul Pioneer Press
November 30, 1997 Sunday

[Ray20Allen]

haha

[The Truth]

좋은자료... 그런것 같네요

[Kirk Hinrich]

눈물나네요...T.T

[floradupri]

ㅠ.ㅠ 걍 지우고 시간 많을 때 해석본이랑 같이 올릴까요??

[Garnett&wolves]

지우실 필요야 있을 까요..ㅜ.ㅜ

[Lamar Odom]

그렇군요..

[kf6r91d4]

역시 가넷은... 그랬군요...

[Deftones]

굉장히 감동적이군요.

[에헤라디야...]

대충이라도 무슨 내용인지 알고 싶어요...ㅠㅠ

[랄팬호수인]

아 역시 가넷은 그런 ^^

[NO.15]

아~~ 그랬군요..

[산소같은남자]

가넷이 어쩌다 그런 큰 실수를 햇을까요? 빨리 다음기사 올려주세요~

[3kidd2]

글로벌 시대에 누굴 탓합니까 ;

[착한돼지]

그래요?.. 전좀 실망이네요 가넷...

[줄리어스조던]

해석 보고싶다 ㅠ

[火箭姚明]

ㅜ.ㅜ

[Etudelast]

tldr

[포테이토]

ㅡㅡ음...모라는거죠?ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

[게릴라s]

감동적입니다. ㅡㅡ 사진만...봐도 걍...