Classic card of the week

Kevin Garnett, 1998 Skybox

Okay, now that we’re familiar with this series of cards, let’s skip the b.s. and head straight to the back of the card, which, coincidentally, contains a lot of b.s.:



Uh, we’ve got a mismatch here. Bringing serious thunder with speed and agility. Excuse me Mr. High School Player of the Year, got some shades? 45 double-doubles. Tastefully done. No fun police needed here.

I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoy the random assortment of fragmented statements. Lesser cards would write something predictable, like: Bringing serious thunder with speed and agility, Garnett has already proven to be one of the most versatile players in the NBA. But this card will simply leave it at Bringing serious thunder with speed and agility, thus allowing the reader to use his or her imagination to infer what the rest of this statement would read, if it were, ya’ know, an actual sentence. In fact, most of these tidbits require a fair amount of imagination on the reader’s part. To wit:

Excuse me Mr. High School Player of the Year, got some shades?

I understand this to mean that Mr. Garnett would benefit from wearing a pair of sunglasses, as the future appears to be very bright. But I am at a distinct advantage, because while I was in college, I took a writing seminar called, “How to Write Uninformative Nonsense on the Back of Tiny Cards.” The subject of my final exam was Michael Jordan. Would you like to hear it? Awwww, no -- I’m embarrassed! Okay, okay, you win! Here it is:

Excuse me Mr. Everything, got milk? Baggy shorts, posterizing punks. More testicles than most. SNL hosted, but never on Mama’s Family, what gives? Just playin’. No. 45? Pfftttt. I’ll take 23. You’ll take six. Titles. Check please.

I got a B-, mostly because my roommate added the word “boner” at the end when I wasn’t looking, and I handed it in like that. Anyhoo, back to Garnett. As you can see, he had 45 double-doubles during the 1997-98 season, all of which were accomplished tastefully. As a matter of fact, Garnett led the league in tasteful rebounds that year, which included the 17 times he grabbed a rebound, thanked the opposing shooter for missing the shot, and then handed the ball to a kid in a wheelchair, thus delaying the game for several minutes.

Unfortunately, during Garnett’s later years in Minnesota, when his teammates included Latrell Sprewell and then Ricky Davis, the fun police were called on several occasions. And by “fun police” I mean real police.

Did you know?
Although Garnett could not wear shades during games, he once experimented with eye black.