For those that don’t know, “Player X” is a regular article written in ESPN The Magazine that has an anonymous athlete or coach write some behind the scenes stuff that fans might find interesting. Sometimes these articles provide some interesting insight into what it’s like being in their situation, and sometimes they write about the difficulties of twitter. Almost all the time, you can expect the article to be just about as tame as possible, but that would not be the case in the most recent issue of ESPN The Magazine. This time Player X decided to take aim at Kevin Garnett. In the article, he bluntly calls Garnett “a punk and a coward.”
You’d never confuse me for someone who regularly sympathizes with Garnett. I mean, his idea of trash talk is saying guys that have alopecia look like “cancer patients”…err, I mean, that they “are cancerous to the their team and the league.” (Who knew that his 2nd bit of made up trash talk would be so accurate?) I’ve honestly always thought of Garnett’s on the court persona as a combination of a cliche 80’s movie antagonist and the Ultimate Warrior. But after reading this article, I really feel that ESPN The Magazine did Garnett dirty by printing this. Mark Jackson definitely thought this as well and spoke about it during a dull moment in a recent Knicks/Celtics Playoff game. He brought up the obvious hypocrisy of calling someone a coward in print under the name, “Player X.” What also makes this interesting is the fact that Jackson and to some extent Van Gundy both openly questioned ESPN, their bosses.
Check out the video below via Sportsgrid.
