A Walk In The Clouds Garnett’s Not Intimidated, But Still Adjusting To Nba

The lights were bright in the Target Center arena, the crowd was cheering and the game had been stopped to let Kevin Garnett enter the contest last month for the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Garnett, 19, is the remarkable 6-foot-11 rookie who, just a few months ago, was in a tuxedo and size 13-1/2 black shoes and attending his high school prom in Chicago.

Now he is in the National Basketball Association, the fifth player picked overall in the 1995 draft. He is the first player in 20 years to go from high school to the pros and was competing against, among others, David Robinson of the San Antonio Spurs, the league’s most valuable player last season.

This was all a dream come true for Garnett who, earlier in the year, had been playing in small gyms for the Farragut High School Admirals on the West Side of Chicago against Marshall High, or Collins High, or DuSable High.

Garnett duly reported to the scorer’s table, ripped off his green-and-white Wolves warm-up jacket and was about to run into the game when an official halted him.

“Where’s your jersey?” he asked. “You can’t play without a jersey.”

Garnett was wearing a warm-up shirt.

“My jersey?” he said. He checked his chest underneath the warm-up shirt. The chest was bare. He looked toward his team’s bench. “Anyone seen my jersey?” he asked.

He hurried over and with his long arms started searching under the chairs where his team sat. His teammates were laughing.

“Kevin,” said his coach, Bill Blair. “It wouldn’t be under there. Try the locker room.”

Which was indeed where he found the missing jersey, which he had forgotten to put on. Within minutes, he was back on the floor and in the game, with jersey No. 21, and wearing his shorts in his customarily and stylishly hip-hop manner, so baggy, in fact, it appeared he needed suspenders or risked losing the shorts, too.

Beyond that, though, he has been comporting himself not like a wide-eyed rookie, but like a confident and willing-to-improve pro.

He is the first or second or third substitute in the game for the Timberwolves, who are bringing him along at a cautious but steady pace. He plays about 19 minutes a game and has demonstrated an ability to rebound, to block shots, to handle the ball and pass like a point guard, to run the fast break, and to shoot posting up like a center or shoot accurately from 3-point range.

In the Wolves’ 114-108 loss to the Charlotte Hornets on Saturday night, Garnett played 14 minutes and sank all four of his shots from the field. But he also had two turnovers in that relatively brief appearance. He makes mistakes, to be sure, but his ability and his enthusiasm give the Wolves high hopes, and the warm, fuzzy feeling that they didn’t make a mistake in signing him to a three-year, $5.6 million contract despite his never having played in college.

While there are times when he makes a mistake - he will expose the ball, as happened against the Nets last week, and have it stripped from him - and hangs his head, there are all the other times when, after say he rams home a monster dunk, that he will belly-bump at the free-throw line with a teammate like Isaiah Rider.

“He’s a phenom,” said his mother, Shirley Irby. “He’s a once-in-a-lifetime, someone who is truly blessed.”

A mother’s pride is one thing. But someone like Kevin McHale’s, the former Boston Celtic great and the vice president of basketball operations for the Timberwolves, is another. It was McHale who was primarily responsible for drafting Garnett.

McHale observed him in high school. “I saw a young man with exceptional quickness for his size,” said McHale, who is the same height as Garnett. “He had real raw ability. He was hard for big men to guard outside, and hard for small men to guard inside. And I saw he loved to play ball, he was not afraid of a challenge and when I looked in his eyes, I felt this was someone with a good sense of himself, and a sense of purpose. I put a lot of credence in the look in someone’s eyes.”

When Garnett went to training camp with the Timberwolves, he didn’t seem to be overawed, or overwhelmed. But the 2-hour, two-a-day workouts were wearing him out.

“How did you do this for 13 years?” he asked McHale.

“I just closed my eyes,” said McHale, laughing.

But Garnett also asked him another question. “What’s it like to win a championship?” Garnett wanted to know.

McHale had won three NBA titles with the Celtics. “It’s the best feeling in the world,” he replied. Then he corrected himself. “It’s the best basketball feeling in the world.”