“To me, Isiah was the real president of Chicago” — Kevin Garnett always had an immense respect for Zeke. The words taken from Garnett’s autobiography come close to the incident that became a turning point in his life. The incident goes back to the time when Garnett played a 1 v 1 against Scottie Pippen.

Appearing in a recent episode of Club 520 podcast, Garnett was speaking of his competitive nature. And it was this nature that did not let him back down against Pip. Another factor, as accepted by KG, was the fact that he was young and wild and moved with a lot of guys. “Scottie Pippen got us some shit, and I don’t know what he thought… But, yeah, I quickly, you know, got him to understand where he was. But that wasn’t a good moment for me because I felt like, you know, you come into an NBA setting, you don’t want to be rowdy,” he said.

This is one of the rare versions of this incident that details this additional factor. A more popular version of the story includes Garnett infiltrating the gym where Michael Jordan, Pippen, and the rest of the team were practicing. KG managed to watch around 1 hour of practice before being noticed and called by the guard. “You too young to be out here. You just a high school kid,” Pippen told Garnett after noticing him. But MJ gave him a chance to play 1 v 1 against Pip.   

And Garnett did not let the opportunity go wasted as he held his own against the player 10 years older than him. Now, both versions of the story have Zeke’s part in common. “Isiah Thomas in the corner watching all this…. I talked to him about 3 hours, and after that 3 hours, I knew exactly what I was doing. Yeah, straight up,” KG said, on Club 520 Podcast.

Isiah Thomas’ words to Kevin Garnett and the impact

After witnessing KG’s 1 v 1 with Scottie, the former Detroit Pistons star praised him for taking on Pip, whom Thomas termed as the best player in the league. “Boy, you could play in the league right now,” Zeke told Garnett. As mentioned earlier, the former Celtics star has displayed immense respect for Zeke in his autobiography.

So it was obvious that this coming from his icon would have forced Garnett to reconsider his options. In his autobiography, the former Boston Celtics star describes the above words as something that stopped time for him. He was so sure of Thomas’ advice that he felt like not to wait and let his high school coach, William Wolf Nelson, know of his plans.

The NBA champ recalled in his autobiography that Wolf was a little skeptical of the decision. He reminded KG of his dream of playing college ball. “”Dreams change,” I told Wolf. “This new dream is something I can grab onto. Right now,” Garnett wrote. And as destiny would have it, Garnett skipped college and made it big in the league without any college ball experience.

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