Kevin Garnett Has Finally Earned Wally Szczerbiak’s Approval


KG’s former teammate in Minnesota, Wally Szczerbiak, was widely panned for criticizing Garnett on Twitter last week. Wally felt that Kevin often shrinks from the moment at crunchtime, but given the way the Celtics’ big man has played this postseason, Szczerbiak has had a change of heart and opinion. From the Boston Globe: “Szczerbiak did a bit of backtracking on his old friend-and-foe on WEEI’s Dennis & Callahan show on Wednesday. ‘Like he said in his interview last night, it’s incredible what he’s doing right now at his age,’ Szczerbiak said in the radio interview. ‘It is a credit to his craft, how professional he is. …He’s playing the best basketball quite possibly I’ve ever seen him play, at the biggest moments. It’s just incredible. The reason why I put the tweet out there about the clutch gene is to be objective. In our profession, our job is to be objective. We put LeBron on blast for not having the clutch gene. Watching KG throughout his career, now with Boston, I just threw it out there that, hey, let’s keep an eye on KG at crunch time and see what he does at crunch time. Because in years past, when we were with Minnesota, we had guys like Sam Cassell that took the big shot. Now with Boston he has Paul Pierce and Ray Allen. And to KG’s credit, why wouldn’t you defer to those guys at the end of games? They’re big-shot-makers. Paul Pierce showed it again last night.’ Then Szczerbiak threw out the major mea-culpa. ‘Having said that, KG proved me completely wrong last night,’ Szczerbiak said. ‘[He] made two huge free throws down the stretch and made a big 15-footer. If I’m one of the naysayers that’s helping motivate KG play at this level, then maybe the Boston fans owe me a little thank you. Because he’s just playing off the charts.'”