Back in Boston, Kevin Garnett enjoys ‘Gino Time’ one more time
The Boston Celtics did an awful lot of winning during the six seasons that Kevin Garnett wore kelly green. Between his 2007 arrival in a blockbuster trade with the Minnesota Timberwolves and his 2013 departure in a blockbuster trade with the Brooklyn Nets, the Celtics rolled up a regular-season record of 314-161 with six straight playoff berths, three trips to the Eastern Conference finals, two NBA Finals and that magical championship run to hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy with fellow future Hall of Famers Paul Pierce and Ray Allen on a 2007-08 team that will go down as one of the best in league history.
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More to the point, they did a lot of big winning during the KG era, especially at home. When they did, in the late stages of yet another comfortable victory, the game operations crew at TD Garden would throw a favorite clip from an old episode of “American Bandstand” up on the JumboTron, featuring a bearded dude in a tight Gino Vannelli T-shirt cutting it up to the strains of the Bee Gees’ “You Should Be Dancing.” Celtics fans loved watching it, but not nearly as much as Garnett himself. As ESPN.com’s Chris Forsberg wrote in a fantastic piece on the connection between Garnett and the video, the Celtics have been playing that “American Bandstand” bit since 1996, but its popularity and cachet reached a whole new level during KG’s tenure, thanks in large part to Garnett’s reaction to it.
The legendarily intense power forward would gaze up at the big screen with a giant smile on his face, mimic Gino’s moves and make a point of introducing new teammates to the clip. The Celtics played the clip during a big win over Garnett’s Brooklyn squad last season, but KG said after the game that he was so upset by the Nets’ performance that “I didn’t even get the really deep Gino in my system,” terming his inability to connect with Gino “my low moment for the night.”
Garnett got the chance to reconnect on Monday, when his Timberwolves visited Boston and found themselves on the business end of a 113-99 Celtics win. And this time, KG — whom Wolves coach Sam Mitchell held out of the game for rest after he’d played 10 minutes in Minnesota’s Sunday win over the Nets — was able to lock in not only to what he was seeing on the big screen, but also what he was hearing from Boston fans expressing their gratitude for the brilliance he brought to the court during those six seasons.
Garnett signed a two-year, $18 million contract to remain with the Timberwolves this summer, but many expect the 2015-16 season to be the surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer’s last ride through the league. If it is, then Monday will mark his final visit to TD Garden as an active player, and no matter what kind of back-to-back-avoiding maintenance plan Mitchell had in mind, Celtics fans were intent on letting KG know just how much he continues to mean to them. From Adam Himmelsbach of the Boston Globe:
Time and again, chants poured down, urging Mitchell to put Garnett into the game.
And there was variety, from “We want KG!” to “KG! KG!” to “Thank you, KG!” when the crowd was resigned to the fact that the former Celtics great would not take the court. Celtics forward Jae Crowder would later say the love shown for Garnett was “amazing,” and coach Brad Stevens described it as “awesome.” […]
With 1:02 left in the game, Garnett acknowledged the crowd during a timeout and the fans responded with the loudest roar of the night. Later, Garnett was mobbed by reporters as he conducted a brief interview session wearing a gray knit cap.
“It’s hard to even come in this building and not want to play,” he said. “But the appreciation of not only the city, but the Mass. area, the Northeast . . . the love is unconditional. And I’m very appreciative of it.”
He was asked what Boston meant to him.
“Everything,” he said. “It meant everything.”
And getting another crack at Gino Time — and the “really deep” Gino this time — meant an awful lot, too. From Jessica Camerato of Basketball Insiders:
“That was classic,” Garnett said. “That was like a cherry on top for me. My teammates were looking at me like, ‘What is this?’ and I said, ‘I’ll explain later.’ Thank you, I appreciate that.”
I’m a little bit skeptical that KG will ever be able to fully explain to Andrew Wiggins, Karl-Anthony Towns, Zach LaVine and the rest of the young Wolves the totality of the Gino phenomenon and his relationship to it. That’s kind of perfect, though. Sometimes, these things don’t translate. Sometimes, you just had to be there.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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