In the fourth quarter of a playoff game against the Boston Celtics in 2008, LeBron James came off a screen and exploded down the lane. Standing underneath the basket was the league’s front-runner for Defensive Player of The Year: Kevin Garnett. James didn’t stop. He challenged Garnett at the rim. James went airborne with Garnett shoving him in the midsection. It knocked No.23 back a bit, but he was stable enough to throw down a statement dunk that effectively ended the game. “LeBron James with no regard for human life!” was the iconic line uttered by TNT announcer Kevin Harlan. James was just 23 years old. But he gave the big-3 in Boston all they could handle more times than not.
NBA Legend Makes a Shocking Statement About LeBron James
Garnett and James Have a Beefy History
Ever since their days fighting for top dog in the Eastern Conference back in the late-2000s, Kevin Garnett and LeBron James have often had awkward encounters.
When James was in Cleveland and Garnett was in Boston, the two squared off against each other eight times in the regular season. They each won four matchups. In the playoffs, Garnett was only 13-17 against James in his career. But as a member of the Celtics, Garnett was 8-5 against James while he was still in Cleveland.
Since retiring from the NBA, Garnett hasn’t had many encouraging things to say about James — most famously saying the Boston Celtics “broke” James as a youngster and ran him out of Cleveland.
“We broke LeBron, so get your [expletive] out of here with that,” Garnett said. “So they were talking [expletive] to him, the media and the league knew that they had an agenda that we weren’t a part of, and that’s how they ended up winning that series. Man, listen, we didn’t give a [expletive] about LeBron. We didn’t fear LeBron, and we didn’t think he could beat all five of us, and that’s how it felt.”
Garnett’s contention that he helped force James out of Cleveland drew an uproar from fans. But Garnett had not been the one to back off criticizing James.
However, more recently, the ‘Big Ticket’ started coming around on the NBA’s all-time leading scorer.
Finally, The Big Ticket Offers Massive Praise For His Arch Rival
Since James broke Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s scoring record in 2023, Garnett’s views on ‘The Kid From Akron’ have changed.
“People don’t understand what [ages] 35, 36, 37 feels like,” Garnett said in awe of James’ scoring record. If we talk ability, skill — [James] is in all those conversations. But now, you’re doing some [expletive] where, yeah, the greatest couldn’t do.”
When recently asked about James, Garnett went to an extreme perhaps he never thought he would go to. He revealed that James is on the top of the mountain in his view.
“He’s my G.O.A.T of all of this,” Garnett said of James. “The business, the everything — he’s the vision of what every black man should aspire for. [He] has been a billionaire, having [his] own labels, like he’s set the tone.”
