“I loved the kid the first day of practice. He laid on the floor after his first training camp — laying on the ground with nothing left — and I said, ‘We’ve got to go again tonight.’ He went, ‘Huh?’ I said we did two-a-days, and he was like, ‘Oh my.’ But that night he came and he laid it on the ground, played on the line, laying on the ground, playing on the line. At the end, he was laying on the ground, and I said to him, ‘Now we do two again tomorrow.’ He looked up at me and said, ‘Man, this is going to be a job.’ He hasn’t changed since then, he’s just got better. His ability to compete at a high level for such a long time, his love of the game, his competitive nature, it really is fun to watch.”

“It was a long embrace and a great moment. It was a pretty powerful situation. I was very happy that it happened — that they had that moment to share. When a player gets traded, he feels like he’s been betrayed. [Garnett] didn’t like the way he was outed in Minnesota. He felt that betrayal. Whether he was or not is hard to tell. Whatever you feel about the trade, that emotion and human bond was lost. I think there’s a very good chance that was the first time [Garnett spoke with McHale since he left Minnesota]. There was real feeling there in that moment. But when [Garnett’s] career is over, I wouldn’t be surprised if they embrace every time they see each other.”

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It hit me, like everybody else. I felt sad from it. I think [McHale’s] tears came from a couple of things — the pain from losing Sasha, and also because of what he had once had with Kevin, and how things had changed. I know what KG means to Kevin — it’s the same thing that KG means to me. We both had something to do with how KG turned out. We started with him as a 19-year-old. I know he went to Boston to win the championship, but his most dominant years were in Minnesota. To know how it started and ended between them, and then to see them embrace had to make you feel good.

[Garnett] and I have both gone through tough times. When you have a student-coach bond and it ends, the relationship can change. But there is no in between with KG. You are either with him or against him. The way KG told it to me, things came out in Minnesota that painted him in a different way than he felt actually happened. But if you think about it, all three of us were together for 800 games, and in another way that bond never changes. You’re talking about two of the greatest power forwards to ever play the game, and they were together for 10 years. The bottom line is that when you’re together for so long and something happens, it can bring you back around. What goes unnoticed about KG is that after you get past that intensity, he’s very compassionate about people. He did a lot of things for others in Minnesota that people don’t know about, because he didn’t want them to know.

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