There are lots of things that Kevin Garnett doesn’t like talking about, but the one thing he really doesn’t like talking about is numbers. Bring up a stat, particularly if it involves him personally, and he’ll scoff. Or scowl. Or curse.
Or he’ll simply say, “Next question,” as he did Monday when it was presented for his inspection that he has recorded double-digit rebounds in the first three games.
Numbers define everyone in the NBA, from points to minutes to zeroes at the end of contracts, but Garnett has made it a personal pet project to not let them stand for who he is as a player. He would much prefer to be noticed for doing the small things on the court that in his view help teams win games.
“My personality is a very giving personality,” Garnett said after the Knicks game Friday. “I care about the next person. It’s who I am. It’s my ID. In basketball it’s very similar. I never try to do one thing. I try to multi-task.”
For Garnett, a great game isn’t 20 points and 10 rebounds. It’s more like: a decent amount of points, a bunch of rebounds, a couple of blocks, a few steals and a handful of assists for good measure.  
Still, the significance of those nice round numbers is hard to miss. Garnett recorded 15 rebounds against Cleveland last week. The last time he had that many in a regular season game was Dec. 7, 2008. As for his double-digit rebounding streak? He did that exactly one time all of last season.
But, as Garnett often points out, numbers don’t tell you everything. It’s not just that he’s grabbing his share of boards, it’s how he’s getting them that truly stands out.
“I’m encouraged by everybody rebounding, but Kevin is rebounding out in space now,” Doc Rivers said after practice Monday. “Last year I thought he did a good job rebounding. But with the injury, if the ball was out in space he couldn’t go get it. I think what he’s doing now, he’s getting a lot of rebounds out of his space and he hasn’t done that since the first year he was here.”
Ah, there it is. “The injury.” That’s another topic Garnett isn’t too fond of discussing at length.
It’s been almost a year and half since Garnett had surgery to remove bone spurs from his knee. The Celtics have been trumpeting big things and a return to form from Garnett since camp opened. They not so subtly believe that his sub-par (by his standards) play last season was as much mental as it was physical, and Garnett himself acknowledged that back on media day.
“I think mentally more than anything was hard for me because I was playing through some difficult times,” he said. “I’m not one to make excuses. I’m not the one to be out here [whining] and complaining about things.”
He didn’t [whine] last year and he didn’t complain either. He didn’t reveal much of anything, in fact. But it wasn’t too hard to sense that last season was a struggle. He seemed almost distant at times and there was a reason for that. He was hurting. 
“When you’re injured as a player, you’re never happy,” Rivers said. “The last two years people have no idea the amount of pain that he’s had to play through. We don’t obviously make a big deal out of it because we can’t. We didn’t want people to know. Now he has no pain so I’m sure he’s happier. And everybody is happier.”
Happy? Garnett?
It sure feels that way. Sure, he’s still the same curmudgeonly KG when talking to the press about himself, and he’s still capable of staring a hole through a slab of granite when he walks through the locker room before games. But there are signs that Garnett is enjoying himself more this season.
He dropped a wacky reference to a children’s author and dressed up as a character from Yo Gabba Gabba for Halloween. He played left field at Fenway and made fun of himself for dropping a few flyballs. He even acknowledged the existence of Twitter, even though he talks about social media the way your mom talks about social media.
In an interview on the Dale & Holley show last week, Paul Pierce credited Shaquille O’Neal with helping bring out that side of Garnett.
“The one guy [O’Neal] is making better on and off the court is Kevin,” Pierce said. “You can just tell with Kevin’s attitude, he’s a lot more loose than he’s ever been. Kevin really listens to a lot of things Shaq has to say because they’ve been through their wars together and I know Kevin has a lot of respect for Shaq and what he’s done in this league.”
Of course there’s a time for play and there’s a time for work and Pierce was quick to point out the difference Monday.
“We have an interesting group of different personalities but at the end of the day we all understand what we’re here for,” Pierce said. “Between the guys knowing each other and respecting each other, it’s not like it’s a young group. I think Doc has done a good job on the court with it. But a lot of it has to do with a respect thing -- when to go too far, when to back off. People just know which buttons to push.”
It’s a group of players who genuinely seem to like each other and enjoy being around one another, the notable exception being the confrontations between Delonte West and Von Wafer, but as West pointed out the other day, Garnett and Shaq broke the tension with a pre-practice joke about the situation. That, in turn, brings us back to Garnett’s game on the court. It’s not just that he’s rebounding. He’s playing like Garnett again, whether he wants to talk about it or not.