Long before Kevin Garnett cemented himself as a future Hall-of-Famer, he was one of the riskiest draft prospects in NBA history. Now that Garnett is climbing the list of all-time greats to 15th on the all-time scoring list and 10th on the all-time rebounding list, it's easy to forget he once needed his agent to stage a pre-draft workout to drum up interest just so that he wouldn't fall out of the NBA lottery.

In June of 1995, Garnett's original agent, Eric Fleisher, sensed that NBA executives were terrified of his 18-year-old client. Garnett was the type of player that got general managers fired.

The lean, wiry big man refused to be listed as a 7-footer for fear that he'd be pigeonholed as a center. To make matter worse, Garnett was not considered to be a cerebral player. He had yet to achieve an SAT or ACT score that would allow him to play college basketball as a freshman. Furthermore, Garnett was considered a character risk due to an incident that occurred in his hometown of Mauldin, S.C., during his junior year, when, after a fight between black and white students, the 6-foot-11 basketball star and two other students were charged with second-degree lynching. That charge was later expunged when Garnett submitted to pre-trial intervention for first-time offenders. 

Soft, immature, lacking necessary intelligence. Those were the labels being tossed Garnett's way as NBA executives crossed his name off their draft boards.

Fleisher knew his client needed to make a splash during the league's pre-draft tryout camp at Chicago's Moody Bible Institute in Chicago three weeks before the draft. Fearing that Garnett would drop from the lottery -- and even potentially out of the first round -- Fleisher called Pistons assistant coach John Hammond, who is now the general manager of the Bucks. Fleisher asked Hammond if he would host an individual workout for Garnett between sessions at the pre-draft tryout camp. Fleisher proposed that Garnett's workout would be in a separate Chicago location -- at the University of Illinois-Chicago -- in front of invited executives from each of the 13 lottery teams.

Hammond had led hundreds of individual workouts, by his estimation, when Fleisher called. He certainly didn't anticipate the weight of the moment when he accepted Fleisher's invitation.

"The most important thing for me was to put Kevin in a position to give NBA observers a view to see the things they wanted to see," Hammond says. "The main thing was his skill set. They wanted to see his athleticism. Can a guy like that put the ball on the floor? How does he shoot the ball? Can he play above the rim? It's a pretty simple, basic thing."

Hammond soon learned that no basketball experience with Garnett is simple or basic. Fleisher scheduled two one-hour workouts for lottery executives, and Hammond met Garnett for the first time just before the start of the first workout. NBA executives poured in one after another and filed to the bleachers under one of the baskets. Kevin McHale, Bill Fitch, Doug Collins, many faces Garnett had grown up watching on TV.

"Half of the league executives were sitting under one basket, and we obviously had Kevin working on that end," Hammond says. "The one thing I specifically remember was how nervous he was. He was so nervous, he was hyperventilating a little bit early in the workout."

In the hundreds of workouts Hammond had led, he'd never seen this. He decided to walk Garnett  to the far end of the court to work on free throws so he could collect himself.

"He shot free throws for a moment just to gather himself and relax a little bit," Hammond says. "Then we walked down to the other end of the floor to continue the workout. I'll never forget that. I can only imagine how nervous it would be auditioning for an opportunity like this at that age."

Garnett settled himself enough to complete the mundane tasks of a typical NBA workout. He dribbled a ball from one end of the floor with his right hand, then returned using only his left hand. He demonstrated his shot from the right elbow, then the left elbow, then a baseline jumper, then he shot free throws. Eventually, Garnett worked up enough of a sweat that an NBA executive asked the big man if he needed a break. Garnett bristled at the question, and refused. Soon after, NBA executives began calling out orders. "Touch the top of the box on the backboard. Do it again. Touch it with your left hand. Now your right."

At the end of the hour, Hammond brought Garnett out to half court and offered his final instructions.

"I said, 'OK, Kevin, here's what I want you to do,'" Hammond says. "Put the ball on the floor, and in the most creative way possible, finish at the basket. Here's this young 18- or 19-year-old, and he starts by putting the ball behind his back, then through his legs. He finishes at the rim in such an athletic manner, I'll never forget the look on everybody's faces, the jaw-dropping stares that he was getting at the time."

By the end of the workout, Hammond believed Garnett had solidified his standing as a lottery pick. Only Moses Malone, Darryl Dawkins and Bill Willoughby had been selected to the NBA directly out of high school, and only Malone's career had fulfilled the promise that be brought to the league. No high school player made the jump directly to the NBA in the 20 years before Garnett declared for the draft.

"Everyone considered the same factors," Hammond says. “Do you take a high school player that high? I think the workout -- at least for the teams that had the chance to observe the workout -- solidified it. Is he really a top 10 pick? Yes, he is."

After the workout, Hammond returned to the gym at Chicago's Moody Bible Institute to watch other NBA prospects go through the league-sanctioned tryout. The buzz that evening centered around Garnett's audition.

"All evening, guys came up to me and said, 'Was that as good as I think it was?'," Hammond says. "I just smiled and said, 'It looked like it to me.' It was that impressive."

On June 28, 1995, Garnett was selected with the fifth overall pick of the draft by the Timberwolves. In order, Joe Smith, Antonio McDyess, Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace were drafted ahead of Garnett.

History will show that Garnett was, in fact, the type of player that got general managers fired. In the 1995 draft, four teams made selections prior to the Timberwolves: the Warriors, Nuggets, 76ers and Bullets. The Sixers and Bullets fired their general managers after the 1995-96 season. The Warriors and Nuggets fired their general managers after the 1996-97 season.