Kevin Garnett Gives His Stamp of Approval to Tim Hardaway’s Claim on Michael Jordan’s Greatness and His Era

While the old heads continue to diminish the accomplishments of modern superstars, fans of today are also susceptible to similar biases when looking back at NBA history. For example, a common misnomer that has spread in recent years is that Michael Jordan played in an era of plumbers and mechanics.

Athletes like Nick Young have claimed that Jordan never even faced a real superstar during his playing days. Following this train of thought, many fans end up believing that stars from that era would struggle to hold their own in the modern NBA. Kevin Garnett took to his social media to shoot down that notion.

The Big Ticket joined the NBA straight out of high school in 1995 and was part of one of the most competitive and star-studded eras of the sport. However, he doesn’t believe that the talent gap between the modern game and the eras past is as wide as some may claim.

KG recently re-shared a video of Tim Hardaway on his Instagram story. In it, the pioneer of the crossover named a plethora of players from Jordan’s era who deserve their flowers. He shot down the idea of the NBA not being as talented back then by listing some of the more underrated hoopers of the ’90s.

“Mike didn’t let people beat him. You all think that we couldn’t play, you know, ‘He playing against some scrubs.’ A lot of you guys couldn’t play in our f**king era,” Hardaway said on ‘Gil’s Arena’.

Swaggy P was on the dais for this conversation, and he couldn’t stop himself from undermining some of the stars from Jordan’s era. “I couldn’t play against Ehlo?” Young quipped in response. Of course, Hardaway Sr. was not going to stand for any Craig Ehlo slander.

“Ehlo from the Cleveland Cavaliers? That motherf**ker was nice. Mark Price was a bad motherf**ker, he don’t get his just due… Mark Price was a fast white guy. He can stop on the dime, shoot it in you face, split the double team, knew how to pass the ball, knew how to play the game… We got some bad motherf**kers in our era,” Hardaway added.

A clip of the conversation made its way to Instagram and gained a lot of traction. KG re-shared the video to his Instagram story with the caption, “NO LIESSSSS [emoji] Tell ’em Rock.. Tim spittin game.”

As is often the case, it fell to the old guard to defend their era from hindsight. Thankfully, with champions like Garnett and Hardaway fighting the good fight, perhaps the NBA community can eventually move away from comparisons and learn to enjoy each era of basketball for its unique contributions to the game.