"At least he got one championship" is something that will never be said about some stars. Infamously, guys like Charles Barkley, Karl Malone and John Stockton never were able to win on NBA Finals in order to give themselves the eternal label as NBA champions. It's still often used against them when finding their respective places in NBA history. While it seemed for over a decade Kevin Garnett would get stuck in that group, he was able to get over the hump in his first season with the Boston Celtics in 2008.
K.G. was a champion and nobody was going to take that away from him. However, that wasn't enough for him. According to Gorgui Dieng, it was the 2010 NBA Finals loss to the Los Angeles Lakers that appears to be the one that got away from Garnett and his crew. Adam Himmelsbach of the Boston Globe tells us that Dieng and his Minnesota Timberwolves hear about that series loss constantly nearly six years after it happened.
“He always talks about the [2010] Finals they lost,” Dieng said.
“I think he can’t swallow that pill. He always talks about it. You can see how angry he is when he talks about that Finals.”
In 2010, the Celtics took a 3-2 series lead over the Lakers before dropping the final two games in Los Angeles. Dieng said it is clear how that series still grates at Garnett.
“They were great and they were going to win it,” Dieng said, “and he still doesn’t understand why they lost.”
It's hard to blame K.G. He has been in two NBA Finals and won just one of them, but it looked like the Celtics were a lock to wind up with at least two during his time there. After going up 3-2 in the series, the Celtics lost Kendrick Perkins for the rest of the series. They were blown out in Game 6 89-67 by the Lakers, and then lost 83-79 in an ugly nail-biter in Game 7. Both games were on the road, but the Celtics have always felt like they should've closed out that season.
It led us to the infamous excuse by Doc Rivers that the Celtics never lost a playoff series when they were at full strength. Because of Perkins' absence, the Lakers were able to bully the Celtics a bit inside. That was enough to give them the edge in two final games in which the Celtics looked a bit lost. That's surprising because you don't think of Perkins as an integral part of an offensive attack, but it was enough for the Lakers to come out victorious.
The odds of K.G. making up for that series loss at the end of his career aren't high. He'll finish out his career in Minnesota and then retire. Unless we have one of the most miraculous turnarounds in NBA history in the next year or so, K.G. will leave with that bitter taste in his mouth.
