Of vital import: Garnett was an "S" man, and woe unto he who did not deliver him two S's before every game. But he soon found himself slapping together 20 PB&J's about three hours before every tip-off, the finished products placed in bags and labeled with Sharpie in a secret code: "S" for strawberry, "G" for grape, "C" for crunchy. Afterward, from his perch as the Celtics' fiery leader, Garnett issued the following commandment: "We're going to need PB&J in here every game now."Īt the time, Doo notes, the Celtics not only didn't provide lavish pregame spreads, they didn't offer much food at all. But on that night in Boston, as Doo recalls, Garnett partook, then played. Garnett had not, to that point, made the PB&J a part of his pregame routine. "Man, I could go for a PB&J," the player said.Īnd then Garnett, in an act with historical reverberations, uttered the now-fabled words: "Yeah, let's get on that." Bryan Doo, Celtics strength and conditioning coach, recalls it as if it were yesterday, how before a game in December of that season, an unnamed Celtic - his identity lost to history, like the other horsemen on Paul Revere's midnight ride - complained to Doo of incipient hunger pangs. The tale they tell is of Kevin Garnett and the 2007-08 Celtics, and the seminal moment of a revolution.
The legend has been passed down by NBA generations, chronicled like a Homeric odyssey.
Editor's note: This story was originally published on March 21, 2017.