Kevin Garnett: Passion Play
The young Timberwolves star has been obsessed with basketball since he was a boy. He sparked controversy when he turned down a $103 million offer and made headlines nationwide when he garnered $125 million. Then and now, he hated being the center of attention. But the Timberwolves and the National Basketball Association are banking on the kid from Mauldin, S.C.
In his hometown of Mauldin, just outside of Greenville, S.C., Kevin Maurice Garnett is remembered as the gangly kid with the ball, who pushed the curfew at Springfield Park, shooting baskets until midnight -- or later -- alone in the dark.
He had to play, friends say. And basketball was in his blood. Kevin's father, too, loved the game and was an outstanding player.
But Kevin grew up with a stepfather who did not encourage him to play basketball; he didn't allow a hoop in the driveway. And his mom wanted him to study more and go to college. When Kevin tried out for the Mauldin Mavericks, he didn't tell his mother. She learned he was on the high school team only after basketball season had started.
By his junior year in high school, tickets to Mauldin Mavericks' games sold out, and people stood in hallways outside the gym just to listen to Kevin play.
He was 19 when the Minnesota Timberwolves awarded him a three-year, $5.6 million contract and became one of a handful ever to jump straight from high school to the NBA.
He made history again last month, when the Timberwolves awarded him a $125 million contract over six years, the largest multiyear deal in professional sports.
Now 21, and a more than 7-foot-tall forward, he has arms like tentacles and baggy shorts that droop to his knees. Wiry, exuberant, fun-loving, sometimes howling with glee, he carries the future hopes of his team in his every leap.
He is paid all those millions of dollars not so much because of what he has done but because of what the Timberwolves believe he could do: emerge as one of the NBA's superstars, attaining the stature of Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan, and carry the team to a championship.
He lives in Minnetonka, in a new, $700,000 Frank Lloyd Wright-style house that has a basketball hoop with a clear backboard in the front semicircular driveway. He has bought himself big-boy toys, including at least six cars. The first, his ``baby,'' was a white Lexus, and the latest is a canary-yellow Range Rover that some of his friends call ``the bus.''
But he is not someone Minnesotans know much about.
``I like to keep my life sheltered,'' he says, declining recent requests for an interview.
Those who have known him and tell his story say his life, public and private, past and present, is basketball.
Basketball is his obsession -- and his escape.

                                     Garnett signs autographs in 1995                              Clowning around at Media Day