With Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan both calling this past season their last, Kevin Garnett is next up on the clock. The big man turned 40-years old in May and just finished his 20th season in the league. He now has the Minnesota Timberwolves front office wondering if he’ll return for one more year, or hang up his jersey for good.
Garnett initially left the Timberwolves in search of a championship ring which he won with the Boston Celtics. After leaving Boston for a short stint with the Brooklyn Nets in a failed championship experiment, he returned home to Minnesota.
Last season he played just 38 games and served as more of a mentor to the young squad.
Tom Thibodeau has now come in as the president and coach and the Timberwolves are looking more like a potential playoff contender. This is something Garnett wants to be apart of but doesn’t know if his body will hold up.
via NBA.com:
As he has done for most of his career, Garnett, who turned 40 in May, has gone off the official grid and even has the Timberwolves’ honchos guessing. Tom Thibodeau, Minnesota’s new coach and president of basketball operations, has spoken to the 7-foot power forward since being hired after the season but has not gotten a definitive answer. The same goes for owner Glen Taylor, who said Wednesday in Las Vegas he had dinner with Garnett about a month ago.
“I just asked him, ‘Kevin, what are you going to do?’ His answer was, ‘I’d really like to play next year ‘cuz I’d like to go out knowing we got into the playoffs,’ ” Taylor said.
“Then he said, ‘I don’t know if I can.’
“I asked him, ‘What does that mean?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know.’
“So I asked the question but I didn’t get an answer that helped me. Yes, theoretically, he’d like to play. But he has some doubts of his knees holding up. I believe he told me exactly the truth.”
Garnett is in the final year of the two-year contract he signed with Minnesota after the late Flip Saunders brought him back. He’s set to earn $8 million this year; he isn’t blocking the Timberwolves potential movements in any way. Thibodeau and the team said they’re giving him as much time as needs to decide
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