Joakim lost all love for Garnett
Joakim Noah grew up with Kevin Garnett jerseys and posters, settling on the power forward with transcendent skills and a fiery attitude as his favorite player. Then Noah got to the NBA and found out liking Garnett was no longer an option. “I remember my first year in the league. I told him he was my favorite player,” Noah recalled Friday. “I think his response was, ‘F--k you.’ I tell you what I’ll never tell anybody they’re my favorite player again.”
Garnett, who retired last week after 21 seasons, had no equal in terms of tenacity, but Noah might’ve been his closest match at the peak of their rivalry. The two met 24 times in the regular season, with Garnett owning 14-10 record.
“It’s tough because it’s mixed feelings (about Garnett’s retirement),” Noah said. “For my whole career, he’s kind of been motivation to get into the gym in the summer, and playing against those Celtics teams was always the games you circle on the calendar. I think a lot of people just respected the fact that he brought it every day. You can say what you want about him sometimes, he was a little bit extra. Very disrespectful.”
Garnett and Noah had some memorable exchanges through the years. Just two years ago, Garnett made a biting gesture at Noah’s hand in an effort to achieve more space. And apparently Garnett was especially nasty to Noah when the latter was a rookie in 2007. “One time, he asked Noah if he could rub through his hair, like a female or something,” Paul Pierce told Bleacher Report. “And I know that kind of made (Noah) hot.”