Kevin Garnett: The News of His Demise is Greatly Exaggerated

There has been some chatter around the Internet of late that Kevin Garnett was largely responsible for the Celtics pre-All Star break slide.  After incidents against Phoenix and Dallas, combined with losing five out of ten games, the sharks worked themselves into a mini-frenzy by recently stating that Garnett was coming up empty in the fourth quarter of games.  The period of games mentioned was from the 17th January Orlando game through the 10 February Laker game.



Here is what he did in the 4th QTRs of those games mentioned.*

*Note Garnett did not play in the 4th QTRs of the games against Utah or against Cleveland due the Celtics being so far ahead.

P/36	R/36	A/36	B/36	S/36
16.93	13.27	2.75	0.46	2.29

Or maybe you need to see what he did in his total minutes during that span:

P/36	R/36	A/36	B/36	S/36
16.90	9.46	3.67	0.92	1.56

Or his per36 numbers on the season up until that point:

P/36	R/36	A/36	B/36	S/36
17.12	10.33	2.72	0.86	1.80

Perhaps I am mistaken but I am just not seeing a drastic fall-off in performance over these games.  Furthermore, while Garnett isn't "closing" games offensively (it has never been his game, really), his all-around game is and has been very good.  He continues to be perhaps the best pick defender at his position in the league.  He has been rock solid in his rotations, blitzes and is rebounding consistently.

Kevin Garnett is still performing at a high-All Star/borderline Superstar level for the Celtics.  Any attempts to state otherwise is clearly from those with an agenda, imo.