Kevin Garnett To LeBron James: ‘Loyalty Is Something That Hurts You At Times’

Normally, when reporters ask a player about someone else’s free agent plans, they give vanilla answers that don’t really reveal much of anything. Mostly, that’s because they don’t know and/or don’t really care. But Kevin Garnett is no ordinary athlete. As we’ve seen, he’s not afraid to speak his mind, even if what comes out is completely incoherent.

Garnett was asked about LeBron’s impending free agency last night, and his answer was very interesting, as noted by CBS Sportsline’s Ken Berger.

“Loyalty is something that hurts you at times, because you can’t get youth back. I can honestly say that if I could go back and do my situation over, knowing what I know now with this organization, I’d have done it a little sooner.”

Obviously, Garnett is speaking from experience. He spent years toiling on mediocre Minnesota teams with terrible supporting casts, and didn’t ask out for many, many years. So maybe he’s deflecting a question about LeBron by talking about himself.

Or maybe he’s trying to tell LeBron that it might be time to leave Cleveland. There’s a legitimate argument to be made that, like Garnett, LeBron hasn’t received the kind of help he needs to get to the top. Even though individuals make a huge difference in the NBA, it still is a team game. Garnett wasted many of his prime years trying to carry a Minnesota team that just didn’t have the pieces needed to win. You could argue LeBron has done the same for the last three years. So maybe Garnett is telling him that re-signing with Cleveland just for loyalty’s sake is the wrong way to go.

At the end of the game, the cameras caught Garnett whispering in LeBron’s ear as they were shaking hands. You have to wonder what Garnett was telling him. If it was anything like what Garnett told reporters, it certainly makes for interesting discussion.