Once upon a time, a certain anonymous NCAA recruiter had quite the encounter with the grandmother of former Boston Celtics Hall of Fame center Kevin Garnett.
In an interview with Dan Patrick on his eponymous show, the iconic Celtic champion regaled listeners with a tale from his final days in prep school as the prep-to-pro phenom was swarmed with college recruiters hoping to change the mind of the young talent before he made the leap to the NBA. Evidently, one of the collegiate pitchmen decided to inject some under-the-table cash into the equation, which elicited a very strong response from Garnett’s grandmother.
Buy Celtics TicketsGarnet was guarded with the identity of said recruiter, perhaps out of mercy for his reputation, given they still reportedly were in that line of work.
“I won’t embarrass anybody,” began KG. “I won’t put (expletive) out there like that.”
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“But, I got offered a lot of cash, (for) mother, my family to have better opportunities. To meet some most powerful people in the world, whatever that meant,” he continued.
“It was a situation where I was staying with my grandmother at the time because recruiting was getting to the point where it was just (obscene), and I and my mother thought it’d be perfect or better idea for me to change addresses.”
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“Life was running so fast at this time, but I had a certain recruiter come see me and he offered me some cash in front of my grandma,” explained Garnett.
“She went got a shotgun and told me to always set the tone with people that you can never be bought. If you can be bought once, you can be bought always. And that stuck with me forever … I had to tell him he had to get his bag and get the (expletive) out of here, or him and his bag aren’t going to make it out of here, and I thank him for coming through. I told him I love this school. But this wasn’t going to work like this. He wanted to talk, and I think the quicker she put the shotgun together, the quicker we ended the conversation.”
“That guy’s still around,” laughed KG. “Whenever I see him, I like to wink and be like ‘How you doing, man?’ That’s just between him, myself and God, and my grandmother.”
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We imagine that experience left quite the impression on the recruiter, whoever they were.
The Big Ticket’s grandmother had some sage advice — if a very intense way of getting it across.
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