When the snow falls, the cold wind blows, the lone wolf dies, and the wolf gathers to live. - George Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire

Minneapolis, the city of the Timberwolves.

Minneapolis is the largest city in Minnesota, and is separated from the state's capital, St. Paul, to the east, forming the famous twin cities on the Mississippi River.

Minnea means "water" in Native American, and polis is a transliteration of the Greek word for "city", which together means "city of water." There are 22 small lakes in the city, and there are not only lakes but also rivers, and the world-famous Mississippi River originates in Itas Lake to the north of the city. If Nesota, the "State of Ten Thousand Lakes" in the United States, then Minneapolis is the "City of a Thousand Lakes". Minnesota has more than 10,000 lakes over 10 acres, with the two largest lakes, Harriet Lake and Calhun Lake, both within Minneapolis.

Minneapolis is located in the north, at the same latitude as China's central Heilongjiang River, and is often hit by cold Arctic air masses in winter, where temperatures can drop to minus 30-40°C and snow can sometimes reach depths of up to 2 meters.

Minnesota, a place where almost no one lists it as a tourist destination and you don't even think to stop.

Minneapolis is also the third-largest theater market in the United States, with the second-largest number of theaters per capita after New York City. The Tiyu Guthrie Theatre, known for its classical plays, is considered the best theatre outside of New York Broadway.

With extremely cold winters and hot summers, Minneapolis isn't much of a place to linger compared to the metropolises that are blessed with great locations.

Not a single star wants to play in Minnesota because the winters are too cold.

The Minneapolis Lakers, founded in 1947, were the first team here, and the name Lakers comes from Minneapolis' nickname, the Land of a Thousand Lakes. The bitter cold of Minneapolis pales in comparison to the exuberant California coast, and in 1960, the Lakers relocated to Los Angeles. It wasn't until 29 years later that they welcomed their own team, the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Minnesota has the largest number of Timberwolves in the 48 contiguous states, so almost everyone chose the former between the Timberwolves and the Polar Bears at the 1986 roster selection.

And just after the team joined the NBA in 1989, they quickly ushered in leaders who matched the team's temperament very well.

Head Wolf – Kevin Garnett.

This is the fourth stop of the Bobcats' West 6 Consecutive Away Series, cold Minneapolis.

Speaking of the hottest stars of the moment, Kevin Garnett is the best to do.

This tough big man supports the basketball market in the northern United States, with explosive data and full of mental attributes.

Hu Qingniu still thinks about why he failed to become an NBA superstar, probably because he didn't have a miserable childhood.

Kevin Garnett's parents parted ways when he was very young. Garnett's biological father was named O. Lewis Garnett, a very talented basketball player, but he never played in the NBA. It's just that he has served in the basketball team of the army, and he has also played the main team.

Garnett's impression of O's image is a little blurred, except that when he was a child, he watched his father train with his companions countless times on the sidelines, helping them pick up the ball. Garnett has followed her mother, but she doesn't have much ability to raise Garnett and Easley.

Garnett always remembers a shot of himself outside the house, leaning against the fence, looking through the fence wall into the setting sun, watching his father walk farther and farther into the sunset. Unbeknownst to the young Garnett, his father had never looked back. abandoned his wife and children, left, and pursued a better life on his own.

Later, his mother remarried, and his stepfather did not treat the Garnett siblings well.

Among the family members, Garnett also has an older sister and a younger brother. After his father left, his mother couldn't take care of her life alone, so she couldn't help it, so she remarried with her three children. There is a saying that marrying a man and marrying a man is for the sake of clothing and eating. But Garnett's stepfather's family is also living in poverty, and the money he has earned with great difficulty can barely solve the family's food problem. The stepfather's family is not poor, and he is also partial, because this stepfather is also divorced and has children, so he prefers his own biological ones, and he is not happy when he sees the three Garnett sisters and brothers.

So although the stepfather likes his mother and is willing to live with her, he hates raising her three children, especially the second Garnett. This child is more than ten years old, he is tall, his neck and limbs are strangely long, so tall that he can't find a suitable bed to sleep at home, and he eats more than ordinary children, and eats a lot of pizza and hamburgers in one meal. The family can't afford it, and the stepfather hates Garnett even more, so he doesn't let Garnett sleep more every day, and gets up early to work.

After a long time, Garnett couldn't eat well at home, couldn't sleep enough, and when he was in his teens, he didn't go home much at all, and he still stayed outside happily. By the age of 13, Garnett had done all the work in the town, such as delivering newspapers, porters, cleaning cars, delivering takeaways, etc., and did all the work that children could do. Outside, Garnett didn't want to go home after work, he really couldn't find fun going home, and he was only unhappy when he saw his stepfather.

Closed town, bitter childhood, Garnett grew up in such a difficult environment, and he couldn't imagine how beautiful the outside world was, and he had never been to New York or Chicago, the dream cities, but had only heard about them from other people's mouths. At that time, Garnett probably felt that he was like this in his life, and when he was too old to carry his bag, he would deliver takeaways, newspapers, and wash dishes. At the bottom of society, this is your miserable life.

Although some other families at the bottom of the social ladder are also poor, at least there are family joys, relatives and friends, and complete fatherly and maternal love, while Garnett's childhood was almost nothing. Confusion is synonymous with Garnett's childhood, living a life of being a monk for a day every day, unable to find a path to change his life, and unable to find the direction of struggle.

One day when he was 14 years old, Garnett was moving goods to a bar when he stumbled upon a TV playing an NBA game in the bar, showing Michael Jordan of the Bulls flying in the air and scoring the ball with great grace.

At that time, Garnett was shocked when he saw it, as if he had seen a window in life, ouch! Can I learn to play? I'm tall, if I learn to play, can I play like these stars on TV to make money and rewrite my life?

Since then, basketball has become a beacon for Garnett, guiding him on a life-changing path. Every day after that, Garnett stopped working and learned to play basketball as a companion.

If you don't fight, you don't fight, you are scared, but the 14-year-old Garnett shocked everyone, her slender figure is close to 2 meters, her arm span is amazing, and her movements are extremely flexible and coordinated. In the past, he was often scolded by his stepfather at home, disgusted that Garnett was tall, ate a lot, had long limbs, and did not have a good bed board for sleeping, but now he knew that these shortcomings in his stepfather's eyes had now become advantages, and he no longer felt inferior to this, but was very excited.

Although he didn't have formal training when he started playing, the reputation spread over time, saying that there was a child in this town who was tall, had long limbs, and was very talented in basketball, and that ordinary children were no match for him when he played.

At the age of 15, Farragut College in Chicago heard about Garnett, and because the school has always attached great importance to the game of basketball, it invited him to come to the school to attend high school, leaving his remote hometown of Maudin in South Carolina and coming to the big city of Chicago, where Garnett became successful step by step.

After four years of high school, Garnett was already well-known in the United States, and everyone knew that Farragut College Chicago had a child with long limbs, like a big spider, one defense and one cover and one row, and no one was his opponent.

Faragut's coach told Garnett that he should participate in the 1995 NBA draft and go to the Chicago Bulls' Beto Center for a tryout, because there were many owners and managers who wanted to see his talent, including Saunders, the general manager of the Minnesota Timberwolves at the time. Later, Sanders became the head coach of the Timberwolves and spent a long period of glory with Garnett.

Garnett did two moves in that tryout, one of which was a dunk, and no one in the room saw how the basket was dunked, but it was said to be very difficult. At that time, Garnett was already more than 2.10 meters, and the average big man could not do this kind of gliding action and excellent body flexibility to dunk the dunk, but Garnett did it beautifully.

It's a pity that this dunk did not leave video data, although many people who witnessed it said that Garnett did dunk a very difficult basket at that time, fully demonstrating the flexibility and explosiveness of his body, but later generations sound very much like a legend, and the more it is spread, the more it is spread. How it was deducted at that time, you can figure it out for yourself. It's called "hard to think", and you can think about how difficult it is.

What's the other action? Garnett didn't run under the basket, got up from the ground, and put a coin on the top edge of the rebound. It is said that after this action was done, everyone present exclaimed in unison, because in the history of basketball, it is rumored that a player nicknamed "The Goat" did this, and no one has done it since. And Garnett did it that day, and what a miracle!

In the end, the Timberwolves selected Garnett with the fifth pick, which changed his life. Basketball was Garnett's life, because basketball changed his destiny.

Without basketball, Garnett would probably spend his life in that small town called Maoding, carrying bags, delivering newspapers, shabu plates, gray life, dark childhood, nothing worth remembering, no opportunity to go to college, go to the big city, and don't know where to go next in life.

And after having basketball, Garnett started playing, which changed his fate. It can be seen from Garnett's attitude towards the game and basketball that he is in awe of basketball from the bottom of his heart and knows that it is not easy for him to eat this bowl of rice. He was reluctant to look back on his childhood, and he always had a shadow in his heart. So, Garnett is in awe and respect for basketball and gives it his all in every game.

After entering the NBA, although he only weighed 99 kilograms, Garnett had to fight some superstars on the court on the inside because of his height of 2.08 meters. Malone, Kemp, Webb, Ewing and Olajuwon have all made him suffer, but he was afraid to face O'Neill at the time.

At that time, there were two lines drawn on the wall of the Timberwolves' general manager's office, one at a distance of 2.10 meters from the ground and the other at a distance of 2.14 meters from the ground. The purpose of these two lines is to measure Garnett's height, and the idea of the Timberwolves is to move Garnett's position on the court from small forward to power forward when he grows to 2.10 meters, and use Garnett as a center if he grows to 2.14 meters.

So since Garnett is over 2.10 meters tall, Garnett has never straightened up during his weekly height measurement, and his explanation is: "Hey, you know I'm going to have to defend O'Neal if I get taller!" God, stop letting my body grow up. ”

Garnett is known to have been selected in the 1995 draft after Darryl Dawkins and Bill Willoughby in 1975. And when Garnett stepped onto the court, a new era began. In 1996, Kobe Bryant, Jermaine O'Neal and Ty Mike Dawei were also all players who were drafted directly from high school. In 2001, three of the top four picks came from high school, including top pick Kwame Brown. Later examples of more famous high school students who went straight into the league were: 2003 champion LeBron James and 2004 champion Dwight Howard.

While Garnett, Bryant and McGrady all went on to become superstars, more of the other high school players slowly faded into the crowd, so much so that the league made a prescriptive change in that regard. In 2005, the league introduced a rule that all draft players must be at least 19 years old, which almost completely rejected the possibility of high school students graduating directly into the professional league. Throughout history, in the 10 years since Garnett joined the NBA, a total of 38 high school students have been drafted to the NBA.

At that time, the power forward was a big man like Charles Barkley, and the seven-foot center was a player similar to Olajuwon's who was in the three-second zone. And most of the outside scorers and point guards are small men. The NBA in 1995 was a world of muscle sticks — Olajuwon, Shaquille O'Neal, David Robinson, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley.

However, a young man at just 19 years old, with O'Neal's height and Scott Pippen's graceful moves, entered the league.

Recalling how he felt when he first met Garnett, Popovich said: "I think at that time, you can think about how many players were as tall and as good as him. Will many of us be able to do what he did? That's the first thing I felt when I saw him, it was incredible. ”

Old friend Paul Pierce said: "He started a new era and was a very good player of that period. Because no one else can combine speed, athleticism and other talents like him, and he is the first. ”