Kevin Garnett spent his career tormenting opponents with his play and with his words as one of the NBA’s most ruthless trash talkers, but he learned early in the league there are some guys you leave alone.
Garnett has often recalled the time as a rookie that he wouldn’t stop barking at Michael Jordan during the first half of a Wolves-Bulls game in which he and Isaiah Rider were having hot starts, and Jordan responded by torching the Wolves en route to a Chicago win. So, when Jimmy Kimmel asked Garnett about his trash talking he brought this story up once again, but we learned something new at the end, which is Jordan, to this day, will bring it up just to troll KG every time he sees him.
“It’s definitely burned into my brain, but whenever I see Jordan, he always does the same thing every time,” Garnett said. “He always palms my head and says, ‘you remember when I gave you 40 in three quarters?!’ And I’m always like, ‘man, go ‘head.’ And then he has like this sidekick of people around him and he’s like, ‘Go pull that up.’ And this guy goes and pulls it up [on his phone], and I’m like, ‘What is this?! Who walks around with content like, teed up.’ But it was an experience where, I quit talking trash to Michael Jordan.”
I do love the idea of Michael Jordan palming KG’s head to pull him down to his level just so he can still sh*t talk about a game from 25 years ago, while having someone from his team pull up highlights, just in case Garnett has somehow forgotten about the night that, as he says, is burned into his brain. The lesson, of course, from everything we’ve learned about Michael Jordan over the past…forever, is to never, ever cross him because he will exact his revenge, never forget about it, and make sure you also never forget about it.
