Kevin Garnett’s ceaseless trash-talking annoyed his opponents to no end. But Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki was unfazed by his chirpy ways and usually gave KG a truckload of buckets. In October 2023, Paul Pierce told Stoner Sports Network how Garnett once used a Michael Jordan-esque approach to counter Nowitzki.
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During a game between the Mavs and the Celtics, Nowitzki was pulverizing KG through his offensive maneuvers when the latter resorted to MJ’s technique of inventing slights. Jordan used to fabricate stories of his opponents talking trash to him and used them to motivate himself and his teammates. Garnett also used a similar approach against Nowitzki.
KG fouled the Mavs Forward and then started to make a racket. He screamed to his teammate Paul Pierce that the German forward used a racial slur against him.
Pierce refused to believe that Nowitzki would resort to such behavior, but KG insisted that he did so. In fact, he went as far as saying that Nowitzki uttered the racial slur in German. Paul Pierce recalled,
“I am at the corner and KG is at the elbow, something happened, KG fouled him[Nowitzki]. He got in Dirk’s face, he was like, ‘You heard that?’. I said ‘I heard what? He said ‘He called me a n****’. I said, ‘He didn’t call you a n****’. He said ‘Yes, he did, he said it in German’. I said ‘Come on man!’”
Garnett was using the made-up comment as fuel to stop the dominating scorer. He was ready to use any trick in the book to stall the Mavs legend. They had some of the most exciting duels in the 2000s.
Garnett and Nowitzki went toe-to-toe against each other
Most of the battles between KG and Nowitzki came when Garnett was a part of the Western Conference squad Minnesota Timberwolves. The German forward had a slight 20-17 edge in the 37 games between them. Nowitzki expectedly put up better scoring numbers, tallying 23.1 points per game on 46.7% shooting compared to Garnett’s 21.8 points on 51.9% shooting.
But KG was ahead in other facets. He stacked 11.5 rebounds per game compared to the Mavs forward’s 8.2. Meanwhile, Garnett dished 4.3 assists compared to Nowitzki’s 2.1. The former Timberwolves forward had a considerable edge in terms of both blocks and steals.
They clashed in just a single playoffs series despite being in the same conference for many years. Nowitzki’s Dallas Mavericks swept KG’s Timberwolves in the first round of the 2002 playoffs.
The Mavs legend tallied 33.3 points in the series, which was almost 10 points per game more than KG during the series. Thus, in the end The Big Ticket had unfinished business with Nowitzki who can boast about dusting him off in the postseason.
