With the NBA Players Association and representatives of the league's owners engaged for months in talks to end the lockout, Garnett's arrival earlier this month set the process back.
"This fight has grown nastier, more personal, in the past weeks," writes Adrian Wojanrowski. "Privately, management insists that everything changed when the Boston Celtics' Kevin Garnett walked into the negotiating room on Oct. 4.
"The owners knew it wouldn't go well when Garnett started glowering across the table, sources said, like the league lawyers, owners and officials were opponents at the center jump. He was defiant, determined and downright ornery. He was KG."
"As one league official said," Wojnarowski writes, "'We were making progress until Garnett [expletive] everything up.'"
The unnamed source is entitled to his opinion, but the two sides were hardly singing "Kumbaya" prior to Garnett's arrival. On Sept. 30, four days before Garnett's first appearance, David Stern addressed the players with what Dwyane Wade felt was a condescending tone, leading to a verbal confrontation.
Given a choice, though, just about anybody would rather stare down a 69-year-old lawyer from Teaneck, N.J., than a 7-footer built like a member of the Na'vi.
