Kevin Garnett is considered one of the fiercest trash talkers in NBA history. While Garnett’s play on the court was spectacular, it was his trash talk that made him a standout in the NBA.
Garnett didn’t care about offending people or hurting his opponent’s feelings. He would see whatever he wanted to his opponents and try to get under their skin. But Carmelo Anthony did not stand for it and confronted Garnett about what he said.
Iman Shumpert, who was Carmelo Anthony’s teammate on the Knicks at the time, spoke recently about the confrontation between the two. While Shumpert explained that he wasn’t on the court due to injury, he did gather what happened later.
Shumpert revealed that the incident escalated when Garnett had told Carmelo to ‘s*ck his d*ck’, and Melo was livid about what was said. He then explained why that remark got under so many people’s skin, including Carmelo that night:
“I don’t know the specific thing, I just know there was a ‘s*ck my d*ck’ attached. I was actually hurt that game, so I was floating in and out of going to the locker room, getting whatever treatment, rehab. Then I’d come to sit out there for a little bit in my suit, go in the back as the trainers were available. I remember Melo being cotton mouthed. He just wasn’t letting it go. It’s just a grown man saying something like that, they don’t like it… Real talk. It’s just something about it. It’s triggering, very triggering for some people. If you ever had family in jail, they take that seriously. It could be anything. I just remember it was something with that along the lines. That was a regular KG type. The reason why I called KG a bitch when I dunked it when we played in Boston, I get a dunk, I go crazy, everybody is like ‘why you trying to go ticket like that?’. I’m like ‘Dawg, he just said he smelled p*ssy, what the f*ck? What’s up with dude?’…”
Melo is far from the only player that Garnett insulted with his trash talk. Garnett has a history of talking trash and displaying intensity on and off the court.
Clearly, Melo took offense to what KG had to say, and wasn’t going to let him get away with it. Anthony is far from the only player to react like that to Garnett, and that is exactly what Garnett wanted when he would talk trash.
