The Big Ticket Brings Big Toughness To Brooklyn
There is one thing that every Brooklyn Nets fan knew last year about their team and that was that it lacked the toughness to become champions.
There were at least 15 games last year where the Nets blew a big lead or wilted under the crunch time pressure because they didn’t have that “in your face and win at all costs” leader to drag them through the tough stretches.
The main focus this offseason was to find some toughness for this team that is full of mild mannered professionals that aren’t vocal enough to inspire teammates to follow their lead. When times got tough the Nets seemed to wilt under the pressure as no one took the lead and dragged the team to a tough win.
That has all changed now as the toughest, biggest trash talking player in the NBA will now suit up for the black and white and he goes by the nickname – The Big Ticket.
Kevin Garnett is and has always been one of the toughest, meanest competitors that the NBA has ever seen and all Nets fans hope that tenacity and passion floods the lockerrom and brings them to new heights.
[quote_simple] NY Daily News
The Nets are no longer pushovers to King James’ Heat or Carmelo Anthony’s Knicks across the East River.
“Not only does Garnett have a loud voice — and it can be really loud — but his example speaks even louder,” Celtics GM Danny Ainge told the Boston Herald last year. “His approach to his teammates isn’t always the best, because he sets such high expectations, and it can be loud. But he only wants to win. Just by the example of his own commitment, he brings more out of these guys.”
Garnett draws his line in the sand, and then crosses it with his words. He was voted by peers in 2010 the NBA’s top trash talker, according to Sports Illustrated, receiving an astounding 62% of the vote in a field that included every player. He has taken the act too far at times, accused of calling Charlie Villanueva a cancer patient (Villanueva has an autoimmune disease that causes him to lose hair), mocking the death of Tim Duncan’s mother and making sexual references about Anthony’s wife.
“I’m a big fan of veterans,” Garnett told a Boston radio station last year. “More importantly the league being full of young guys, they probably needed somebody just to teach some of the young guys on work ethic, being consistent with your work ethic, and loving this game and giving 100 percent.
“And not just bull—- going through, not just half-assing, entitlement, respecting, earning what you get and really, really setting yourself for the future. Not just riding off potential, but actually becoming something.”[/quote_simple]