- Iman Shumpert says he initially thought Kevin Garnett’s trash talk was meant to only be disrespectful
- He said he later understood that Kevin Garnett was using it to help his team play defense
- Iman Shumpert said Kevin Garnett would give out instructions while talking trash to his opponent
Kevin Garnett‘s trash talk is the stuff of legends, he was so intense about it that there were NBA players who wanted to fight him after. But that’s not all there was to it, with Iman Shumpert explaining in an interview how Garnett would use his constant chatter to help organize his team defensively.
“Everybody see KG tweak out on TV,” Shumpert said. “To be in a game and hear him really tweaking and really saying something to like disturb you, I’m like, ‘Bro you really sick.’ It’s like, I can see that your focus is going up as you talking this to me.
“And he steady doing that, locking in. Not everybody finna let this slide. And then I realized like the second time we had played against him, I realized he not all the way just talking trash.
“He allowing his team to realize they in single coverage, one on one, ‘Y’all alone, it’s all y’all.’ At first, it was just, ‘He ain’t on sh*t.’ I feel like you disrespecting me while I’m handling the ball. But then I realized he’s saying it how he talks. You’ll get out here and think this man gangbanging, this man is real-life quarterbacking this whole defense.”
Kevin Garnett was an NBA champion, an NBA MVP, and a 15-time All-Star. The part of the game he really excelled at, though, was on the defensive end.
Garnett was named to 12 All-Defensive Teams in his career, making the All-Defensive First Team on nine different occasions. His trash talk may have been meant to unsettle opponents, but as Shumpert pointed out, it was a lot more practical than that too.
Kevin Garnett Used His Trash Talk To Fire Himself Up
While a lot of the things Kevin Garnett said to his opponents were very much about getting in their heads and causing problems for them, there was a lot more to it than that. The Big Ticket also used the trash talk to fire himself up for the game, as Kevin Garnett revealed when he explained why it never worked on Tim Duncan.
Kevin Garnett was a unique NBA superstar in that almost no other player in NBA history brought the same energy to the court that he did. It’s easy to dismiss his talk as provocative and nonsensical, but Shumpert’s explanation encapsulates exactly why it was so effective too.
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