Kevin Garnett
The franchise. Twelve seasons, an MVP, the 2004 run, a bitter departure, a homecoming — and finally, this season, the No. 21 in the rafters. No player is more synonymous with Timberwolves basketball.
Everything the Timberwolves have ever been — the ceiling, the heartbreak, the identity — runs through a skinny 19-year-old who stepped off a plane from Chicago in 1995 and never once took a possession off.
| Vitals | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 19, 1976 — Greenville, South Carolina |
| High school | Farragut Career Academy (Chicago), via Mauldin HS (SC) |
| Drafted | No. 5 overall, 1995 (straight from high school) |
| Seasons as a Wolf | 14 (1995–2007, plus the 2015–16 homecoming) |
| Number | 21 — to be retired during the 2026-27 season |
The arrival. Minnesota took Kevin Garnett fifth overall in the 1995 draft, making him the first player in two decades to jump straight from high school to the NBA. It was treated as a gamble. It lasted about a month as a gamble. By his second season, KG was an All-Star; by his third, he had signed the six-year, $126 million extension that was, at the time, the richest contract in American team sports — a deal so seismic it became a talking point in the lockout that followed. Minnesota, a franchise that had never mattered, suddenly employed the most important young player in basketball.
The run. From 1997 through 2004, the Wolves made the playoffs eight straight seasons. The first seven ended in the first round — an annual ritual of hope and a gut punch, some of it self-inflicted (the secret Joe Smith agreement cost the franchise a fistful of first-round picks at the exact moment it needed to build around its star).
Then came 2003-04. Flanked at last by real help in Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell, Garnett authored one of the great individual seasons in modern history — 24.2 points, a league-leading 13.9 rebounds, and 5.0 assists a night — and won league MVP. The Wolves took the West’s No. 1 seed, survived Sacramento in seven (KG’s 32-and-21 in Game 7 remains the single greatest game ever played in a Minnesota uniform), and reached the 2004 Western Conference Finals, falling to the Lakers in six with Cassell’s hip held together by tape and prayer. It is still the deepest playoff run in franchise history.
The departure. The roster around him aged and thinned, the playoff streak died, and in July 2007 the unthinkable became merely inevitable: Garnett was traded to Boston in a deal built around Al Jefferson and draft picks. He won his championship the following June — and a Defensive Player of the Year award along the way — in green. Wolves fans watched with a complicated pride that this fanbase has never fully untangled and probably never will.
The homecoming. In February 2015, at 38, Garnett came back in a deadline deal for Thaddeus Young — less a basketball transaction than a repatriation. He mentored Karl-Anthony Towns, screamed at rookies about defensive stances, and retired in 2016 having played more games, scored more points, grabbed more rebounds, and blocked more shots than anyone who has ever worn the uniform.
By the numbers
Minnesota regular-season stats, per Basketball-Reference:
| Season | GP | PPG | RPG | APG | FG% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995-96 | 80 | 10.4 | 6.3 | 1.8 | .491 |
| 1996-97 | 77 | 17.0 | 8.0 | 3.1 | .499 |
| 1997-98 | 82 | 18.5 | 9.6 | 4.2 | .491 |
| 1998-99 | 47 | 20.8 | 10.4 | 4.3 | .460 |
| 1999-00 | 81 | 22.9 | 11.8 | 5.0 | .497 |
| 2000-01 | 81 | 22.0 | 11.4 | 5.0 | .477 |
| 2001-02 | 81 | 21.2 | 12.1 | 5.2 | .470 |
| 2002-03 | 82 | 23.0 | 13.4 | 6.0 | .502 |
| 2003-04 | 82 | 24.2 | 13.9 | 5.0 | .499 |
| 2004-05 | 82 | 22.2 | 13.5 | 5.7 | .502 |
| 2005-06 | 76 | 21.8 | 12.7 | 4.1 | .526 |
| 2006-07 | 76 | 22.4 | 12.8 | 4.1 | .476 |
| 2014-15 | 5 | 7.6 | 5.2 | 1.6 | .581 |
| 2015-16 | 38 | 3.2 | 3.9 | 1.6 | .470 |
Wolves career totals
Franchise ranks
- 1st Points
- 1st Rebounds
- 1st Assists
- 1st Steals
- 1st Blocks
- 1st Games
- 1st Minutes
Every counting category that matters belongs to him — franchise leaderboard.
Accolades
- 2003-04 NBA MVP
- Hall of Fame '20
- 15× All-Star (10 as a Wolf)
- 2003 All-Star Game MVP
- 9× All-NBA (8 as a Wolf)
- 4 straight rebounding titles ('04–'07)
- 12× All-Defensive
- NBA 75th Anniversary Team
Lore
The Malik Sealy tragedy. On May 20, 2000, Malik Sealy was killed by a drunk driver while driving home from KG’s 24th birthday celebration. The Wolves retired Sealy’s No. 2, and Garnett spent the rest of his career honoring him — the point to the sky was for Malik. The franchise’s saddest chapter, and the one that revealed the most about who KG was to his teammates.
“This is war.” Before Game 7 against Sacramento in 2004, Garnett delivered an infamous press-conference riff comparing the game to war — “loadin’ up the pump” and all — that earned him a national news cycle and a same-day apology. He then went out and put up 32 points and 21 rebounds in the biggest game in franchise history. Both halves of that sentence are the most KG thing that ever happened.
The intensity canon. The pregame head-butt of the basket stanchion. The knuckle push-ups. Trash talk delivered to opponents, teammates, referees, and occasionally nobody at all. None of it was an act — teammates have spent two decades confirming the practices were harder than the games. Reportedly that edge went over the line at least once: a 2005 practice altercation with second-year forward Rick Rickert became one of the era’s most retold locker-room stories.
The twenty-year cold war. After the 2007 trade, then-owner Glen Taylor suggested KG had “tanked” his final stretch in Minnesota — and the relationship between the franchise icon and the franchise went into the deep freeze for nearly two decades. Garnett refused number-retirement overtures while Taylor owned the team. It took new ownership formalizing a reunion in December 2025 — KG as team ambassador — to end it. His Target Center return this past April came with former teammates and a Montell Jordan performance; the No. 21 finally goes to the rafters this season, on a date to be announced.
Anything is possible. He proved it here first.