Boys Among Men Page 3

  Franks found that Garnett appreciated the game in the same way. Garnett bickered often with his stepfather, Ernest Irby. Irby did not see any need to put up a hoop in the family’s backyard when Garnett requested one. Garnett’s biological father sent checks, but was mostly absent from his life. The park became Garnett’s soothing confidant, where nothing existed except the ball, himself, and the basket. Garnett stayed at the park so late that police chased him home. He sometimes arrived so early, dribbling a ball over rocks and gravel from his home on Basswood Drive, that he beat the day’s sunrise. The game meant so much to him, something his teammates at Mauldin High soon realized. Garnett made varsity as a freshman, despite Coach Duke Fisher’s preference for underclassman to first pay their dues at a lower level. Fisher had played on the freshman team at the University of North Carolina and seared discipline and defense into his team’s DNA. Garnett accepted and excelled at both, gradually becoming more aggressive on offense. The team lost one Friday night during Garnett’s freshman season. Sal Graham, a sophomore guard, walked into the locker room and discussed weekend plans with the rest of the team. “Hey, man, you coming to the party with us tonight?” Graham asked Garnett. But Garnett was despondent. He covered his face with a towel. “We lost the game because of me,” Garnett said in tears. “He took it so personal that no matter what the score was, he felt, as a fourteen-year-old freshman, that he should have won the game for us,” Graham recalled.

  Garnett loved the aspect of playing on a team, the strength of a group with a common goal. He preferred blending in among his teammates and classmates away from the court. But the same size that helped him excel on the court prevented him from fading into the background off it. Garnett would pull a teammate into the frame when a fan wanted a picture of just him. If Garnett signed a program for a spectator, he passed it along to a teammate and had him autograph it as well. “He was so much taller than everybody else,” recalled Betty Mitchell, a guidance staff officer at the school. “You could spot him at the end of the hall. He wanted to be a regular teenager, like everybody else at the school. The adults here in the building probably put a little bit more on him than he was ready for at the time.” Garnett’s history teacher, Janie Willoughby (no relation to Bill Willoughby), became a second mother to him. Garnett couldn’t sit at a regular desk without doing contortions, so Willoughby brought in an old living room chair from her home. He was a reluctant student. She knew how to push, prod, and edge him along. He once delivered an oral report on the Boston Tea Party, pausing every few moments to ask Willoughby if he had done enough to warrant a passing grade. “No, not yet,” Willoughby patiently replied several times before finally accepting his plea to finish. Another time, Garnett helped a student as she nervously stumbled through her oral report. Garnett asked a question each time she paused to get her back on track. Willoughby beamed, thinking that Garnett did not want the spotlight on himself, but would help others on their way.

  Garnett earned an invite to the Nike All-American Basketball Festival in 1993. The nation’s top 125 high school players gathered to be judged by about 500 college coaches over a five-day period in Indianapolis. He teamed with players whose high schools treated them like royalty, a far cry from how he felt at Mauldin. The boys broke into teams for scrimmages. William Nelson, the coach at Chicago’s Farragut Career Academy, noticed all the camp’s top players walking toward other instructors. A sinewy Garnett came up to him. I got the skinniest big man? Nelson thought. That’s not fair.

  “How you all give me the little guy?” Nelson asked the tournament’s planner.

  Garnett was within earshot. “Come on man, quit tripping,” he said.

  “Quit tripping?” Nelson retorted. “You skinny, man.”

  Nelson prepared for a long day of watching Garnett being shoved and bullied on the court. He figured his team could only win by pushing the tempo and instructed them to run every possession. They did, winning 13 of 16 games behind the play of two juniors, Garnett and Antawn Jamison. Garnett experienced liberation during the games. In South Carolina, Fisher rebuked Garnett whenever he screamed after dunking. Fisher was a purist and considered the outburst a form of showboating. “Scream louder if that’s what works for you,” Nelson advised. Garnett looked at Ronnie Fields, Nelson’s star guard, whom he had befriended at the camp. “Is that your coach?” he asked Fields. “Our coach is nowhere near that. It’s like night and day. I didn’t know they had coaches like that.”

  He had grown more that summer, to the point that the Mauldin coaching staff needed a moment to recognize Garnett upon his return to South Carolina for his junior year. Every year the Mauldin Mavericks looked forward to the annual Beach Ball Classic in Myrtle Beach. The Christmas tournament brought together some of the country’s most talented high school players on the East Coast. Mauldin had hopes of a high tournament placing in January 1994. Garnett was eager to become better known nationally, like one of the team’s early opponents, LaMarr Greer. Greer played for New Jersey’s Middle Township High School and few around the country could fill up a basket like the Florida State recruit. In the game, Greer dunked on Garnett early on, letting Garnett know about it. “You’re mine,” he said. Garnett’s mind returned to Bear, the playground, and the taunts. But he was older, better, and stronger now. Garnett retaliated with his own dunk and chirped right back at Greer. “It turned into a one-on-one show between those two guys, everybody else get out of the way,” said Murray Long, Garnett’s teammate. “It was just a tremendous display of who he was getting ready to become.” Garnett and Greer went back and forth. Whenever Greer made a shot, Garnett answered. Mauldin lost, 69–62. Garnett had 35 points, only missing 2 of his 17 shots, with 7 blocks. Greer countered with 37 points and 11 rebounds. Garnett finished with 40 points, 26 rebounds, and 8 blocked shots in another tournament game that went into five overtimes, prevailing over Los Angeles Loyola. In just three games, Garnett totaled 101 points, 56 rebounds, and 21 blocked shots. “We had seen flashes of greatness before, but that stands out in my mind as when I really was able to step back and think, Wow, this guy is the real deal,” Long said.

  Garnett averaged 27 points and 17 rebounds his junior year. But Mauldin fell in the upper-state championship game in March 1994. The team was lucky to advance that far. Garnett had nearly transferred before the season to Oak Hill Academy, a powerhouse secondary school in Virginia. He had forwarded his transcripts and application to Steve Smith, the school’s coach. Garnett’s mother nixed the plan. But Garnett had already noticed the hypocrisy in others benefiting from his work and talent. It weighed on him. His Mauldin team sold out every game. Yet, the team performed in tattered jerseys. The players Garnett formed friendships with over the summer had received shoes and jerseys from sneaker companies. “He didn’t feel appreciated,” Graham said. “I can see how he felt that way. Our uniforms looked bad. They were a wreck.” Fisher’s combative coaching style also grated on the team, Graham said.

  Two months after the lost state championship, members of the team milled around on the final day of school. Some described the ensuing incident as a fight. Others characterized it as innocent horseplay. Someone had written racial epithets on the basketball players’ lockers earlier in the school year. They circled around the suspected student perpetrator this day and, according to different accounts, either playfully or forcefully punched him. The student reported a foot injury to authorities and Garnett as one of the participants, even though Garnett had only watched. His size again made it impossible for him to fade into the background.

  Garnett rushed into Willoughby’s classroom. She immediately recognized the distress in his voice. She stopped teaching her class and escorted him into the hallway. “I was just there,” he told Willoughby. “I did not throw a lick. I just looked.” A school administrator and a police officer arrived in the classroom, looking for Garnett. “If you are going to take him, do not cuff him, because he will not run,” Willoughby pleaded. “He has nothing to run from.” Police charged Garne
tt, Graham, and three others with second-degree lynching, defined in South Carolina as an act of violence by two or more people against another, regardless of race. He was taken to jail and released on $10,000 bond. “When you are looking at this kid, there wasn’t one scratch or scar and they’re looking at us like we robbed a bank,” Graham said. “Kevin was in the circle and didn’t even touch him.” Graham said that he jokingly hit the accuser’s shoulder twice. The only injury the student suffered occurred when he kicked a locker out of the frustration of having his pride damaged, Graham said. “I thought it was a relatively low-level encounter, but then the boy got real upset and kicked the locker and ended up with a broken foot,” Stan Hopkins, the school’s athletic director, remembered.

  The students avoided a jail sentence through a pretrial intervention program for first-time offenders. “[Kevin] just wanted to be a regular kid,” said Joe Broadus, Mauldin’s principal at the time. “Unfortunately, sometimes he paid attention to social acceptance more than he should have, but, in this situation, I’m not sure how he could have handled it better.” But lines had been drawn. Garnett thought he had the support of the school and community. He now believed he had neither. People treated him differently, even though he had done nothing wrong. “I think it was the biggest mistake that we as a school and as a community made,” said Mitchell, the school’s guidance counselor. “I still have a sour taste in my mouth about the whole thing that went down. I just don’t think it was right.”

  The incident and the mounting spotlight on him contributed to Garnett calling Nelson, asking to attend Farragut. “You ain’t live in Illinois,” Nelson said. “You ain’t live in Chicago. That’s the craziest thing in the world. Why you gonna come to Farragut when you live somewhere else?” Garnett insisted that he was serious. His mother now agreed to a relocation. She had tired of the skepticism toward her son and the media that constantly hounded the family. They moved into an apartment one floor above Nelson’s on Chicago’s West Side. “Kevin was with me for most of the time,” Nelson said. “His mother and his sister was always together. Guys with the guys, girls with the girls.” Not all the time. Shirley Irby worked long hours in a government office near a gang-infested area. Garnett often hurried home to watch his sister, Ashley, before playing pickup games for spare money. The Greenville News reported that Nike had paid for the move and helped secure an apartment in Chicago for Garnett and his family. Nelson dismissed those allegations. “I wasn’t even on that level,” Nelson said. “Getting players from out of town? I wasn’t even getting players from across the other side of town, so it was a joke to me.” Nelson’s team was already one of the state’s best. Garnett improved them and immediately became a leader. Nelson sometimes arrived late to practice after teaching his final math class of the day. Garnett would already have the team sweating through drills. “I could sit back and just admire what he was doing,” Nelson said. “He actually had those guys working hard. Man, I miss those days.” If Garnett took undergraduate courses in the art of trash-talking from Franks, he received his master’s from Ron Eskridge. Eskridge, an assistant coach, grew up playing in Philadelphia. He knew that you could simply talk opponents out of their game and relayed that to Garnett. “Personal, but nonpersonal,” Eskridge said of the art of talking trash. A competitor reacts to trash talk by playing harder, Eskridge said. A weak player wilts away. “Nervous man—that’s what he used to say when someone came onto the court,” Eskridge said. “That was Kevin’s favorite.”

  NBA scouts caught wind of the talented high school basketball player—possibly the best in the country—who might not qualify for college academically. Shawn Kemp’s declaration for the NBA in 1989 had caught most executives off guard and many feared being blindsided again. Kemp left the University of Kentucky without playing a game amid allegations that he had pawned two gold chains stolen from a teammate. NBA scouts had little to go on as the draft neared—just grainy video footage of Kemp playing against subpar competition. He worked out for several teams prior to the draft. In Seattle, Bob Whitsitt, the general manager of the SuperSonics, thought of an original way to gauge Kemp’s basketball acumen. “Would you mind playing a game?” Whitsitt asked Kemp at Seattle University, motioning to a game on another court that featured some of the area’s better amateur players. “Just play. We’re not going to drill you and do all the footwork and all the stuff everybody does. We’re just going to have you play basketball.” Kemp smiled, nodded, and obliged. He played for more than an hour. “I was watching him handle the ball full court, do bounce passes from twenty-five feet,” Whitsitt said. “He was the best player, knocking down three-point shots, like he was Reggie Miller.” Whitsitt reported back to his coaching staff: “I’ve got this guy that, if it really comes together and that’s a big if, he’s a combination of Dominique Wilkins and Charles Barkley. He’s got the physicality of Charles and he can just explode and jump like Dominique.” Kemp lasted until the 17th pick in the first round of the 1989 NBA draft, going to Whitsitt and the SuperSonics. There he blossomed into an NBA star. “I remember some of my peers subtly letting everybody know how stupid I was and how smart they were for not taking this high school kid,” Whitsitt said.

  Times changed. Most teams had cobbled together detailed reports on Garnett by the end of his senior season in 1995. Lee Rose routinely brought his wife, Eleanor, on scouting trips. “Now, if you can’t tell me who I’m looking at, then I’m not seeing a good player,” said Rose, the vice president of player personnel for the Milwaukee Bucks. His wife immediately pointed to Garnett. Shows you how important scouting is, Rose thought. Ronnie Fields and Garnett developed into a devastating combination. They led Farragut to a 28–2 record and the city championship.

  Most players Garnett’s height of around seven feet pushed and pummeled inside. Garnett could do that. He could also play outside among the guards. “Run a three-point play for Kevin,” Nelson would instruct. “The other coach would look at me like, Who in the hell lets this seven-footer shoot a goddamn three?” Nelson said. “Hell, one who knows he’s going to make it.” But Garnett missed a three-pointer with three seconds left that would have tied a Class AA state quarterfinal game against Thornton High School. Instead, Farragut was stunned, 46–43. Garnett sank just 6 of his 17 shots to go along with 16 rebounds and 6 blocks. “We didn’t pass him the ball,” a frustrated Nelson lamented to reporters after the game. “We had some guys who definitely didn’t play our style of ball—they wouldn’t pass it to him.”

  For years, Garnett had received grocery sacks of recruiting mail. In South Carolina, Willoughby had devoted a desk drawer in her classroom to them. Garnett sometimes came into her class, stretched out, and sifted through them. Michigan, South Carolina, and North Carolina were his favorites. He struggled to achieve qualifying ACT and SAT scores for college. He contemplated attending junior college for a year before advancing to a university. But he could not ignore the NBA scouts watching his every move. He would audition in front of them before taking the qualifying tests one more time.

  •••

  Eric Fleisher crafted the workout for Garnett in front of the executives after Garnett retained him as his agent. Fleisher’s job was to point up Garnett’s strengths and mask his weaknesses. Fleisher noted Garnett’s shakiness in front of the NBA executives and wondered if he would bottom out, as he had at an earlier private audition that only Fleisher had watched. Fleisher was the son of Larry Fleisher, the one-time president of the NBA players union. Larry Fleisher helped found the union and presided over it during the mid-1960s, when pensions and minimum salaries would rise. He worked as a general counsel for the association when Moses Malone, Darryl Dawkins, and Bill Willoughby matriculated into the NBA. His son proved pivotal to the next generation of high school players who entered professional basketball. Agents had continually approached Garnett during his senior year of high school. Garnett planned on vetting them under his terms at his own time. He requested a meeting with Eric Fleisher a few weeks before the Ch
icago workout. He knocked on Fleisher’s hotel room door at about 2 a.m., tardy by a mere seven hours. The knock stirred Fleisher. He thought Garnett had stood him up. Garnett, accompanied by five friends, wanted to talk from a position of power. He had deliberately arrived late. “I’m not signing anything,” he told Fleisher. “I’m not committing to anything. I don’t owe you anything.”

  Fleisher yawned. “Fine by me,” he said.

  Fleisher had performed his due diligence. He peppered Garnett with questions for nearly an hour. “Why do you want to do this? What are you thinking?” Garnett did not reveal his hand. Still, Fleisher predicted that Garnett planned to declare for the draft. “I think he understood the economics for a young man,” Fleisher said. “He understood that if he went to college, they were going to sell his jersey. They were going to sell tickets. They were going to get tremendous benefits and he wasn’t.” Fleisher finished the meeting and gave Garnett his card. “If you ever want to talk again, just call me,” he said. Garnett phoned about three weeks later. “Are you going to be in Chicago again?” Garnett asked. Fleisher had never seen him play and put him through an NBA workout at the Lakeshore Athletic Club. He had heard the stellar reports of Garnett’s athleticism, but wanted to see it firsthand before he attached his established reputation to Garnett’s nonexistent one. Garnett missed shot after shot at the workout. The misses made him irritated and flustered. He missed more. He became more irritated and more flustered. “He was terrible,” Fleisher remembered. “I mean honestly, truly, really bad. His footwork was horrible. He couldn’t make a shot.” Garnett approached Fleisher afterward. “But really, I can play,” he insisted. A pickup game among college players had broken out on an adjacent court. “Just watch me play,” Garnett said.