"This is it. It's for all the marbles. I'm sitting in the house loading up the pump, I'm loading up the Uzis, I've got a couple of M-16s, couple of nines, couple of joints with some silencers on them, couple of grenades, got a missile launcher. I'm ready for war."
The above is what Minnesota Timberwolves player Kevin Garnett said on Monday about tonight's Game Seven with the Sacromento Kings to get folks in a ridiculous "you can't say that stuff when there's a war on" tiff. I chuckled when I first heard Garnett's war quote. For years athletes and media types have used war, hero, and courage comparisions when talking about games; things like: "He's a warrior.", "He's a guy you want to go to war with.", "It'll be a war.", "It was a battle in the trenches out there.", "He showed such courage playing with a bruised thigh.", etc. etc. Garnett simply took the analogies to their logical conclusion and then
In Patrick Reusse's column today (most of which is dedicated to mocking the Kings' Anthony Peeler - I had forgotten how joyful it is to read a Reusse hatchet job), he asks his son, a Marine about to be deployed to the Persian Gulf for the third time, how he feels about Garnett's words. His son said:
"That's it . . . some people are upset about that?"
Later, the junior Reusse adds a shot worthy of his dad:
"If the Vikings had that same attitude for a big game as Garnett, we wouldn't still be waiting for them to win a Super Bowl."