Kevin Garnett’s first huge contract helped cause the 1998 NBA lockout. His second huge contract brought his career earnings to more than $270 million. He could lose as much as Antoine Walker did, twice, and still be a millionaire fifty times over.

But he’s also wise with his money. According to a report from NBA.com, Garnett deferred portions of his contract so he will earn $5 million per year for seven years even after his current contract ends.

In fact, Garnett’s self-funded pension (apart from his NBPA one) will be pretty plush. Two sources told NBA.com that the Celtics forward will still have $35 million coming after he retires. He’ll be due $5 million annually for seven years, the result of deferred salary Garnett and agent Andy Miller got in each of his last two contract extensions. Whatever portion is due from this season might be affected by games lost to the lockout, but it’s not as if Garnett’s financial spigot gets turned off next spring.

Garnett has made more than $15 million in each of the last twelve seasons. And that’s just from basketball. Add his endorsement deals, like Gatorade, Adidas and now Anta shoes, and Garnett is the Michael Phelps of money — just swimming in cash.

Money-wise, he can obviously afford to sit out this year in exchange for a fair Collective Bargaining Agreement. Money-wise, he can afford just about anything. But from a competitive standpoint, Garnett doesn’t have a lot left. If the NBA cancels this season — and I hate to think like this — Game 5 against the Heat might have been Garnett’s last game. After a full year off, at age 36 by then, would Garnett even attempt a comeback?

That’s why this NBA lockout sucks. We’re not just losing basketball games. We’re losing the end of Kevin Garnett’s career. We’re losing some of Kobe Bryant’s finals days as a dominating force. We’re losing Tim Duncan’s twilight, Lebron James’s revenge, Dirk Nowitzki’s title defense, Blake Griffin’s ascension to greatness and Dwight Howard’s prime. We’re missing John Wall growing up, Ricky Rubio’s debut, Kevin Love gobbling rebounds, Kevin Durant’s run at the throne, and Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony trying to co-exist. We’re missing portions of arguably the best era in NBA history, a three-tiered layer of stars, one attempting to defy age, another attempting to come of age, and another entering its absolute prime.

The amount Garnett is deferring for retirement represents 35% of the yearly difference between the players association and the owners. At least this lockout isn’t absurdly foolish or anything like that. Then this would really be a brutal time for an NBA fan.

Oh, yay. Another new basketball tour in some place I’ve never been, highlighted by stars who should be playing in the NBA rather than messing around in exhibitions, which I can’t even watch on TV.

I’m sick of the NBA lockout, and I’m sick of exhibition games popping up left and right. But Paul Pierce and Rajon Rondo are reportedly among more than a dozen stars expected to participate in the biggest NBA lockout exhibition tour ever, and they’ll reportedly get paid between six figures and $1 million for their efforts.

Kevin Garnett is also considering whether to join the tour. Insert your “he’ll just [expletive] the tour up” joke here _____. (ESPN)

In a trip that could resemble Team USA’s takeover of the world stage at the 2008 Beijing Games, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Derrick Rose, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Amare Stoudemire, Chris Bosh, Rajon Rondo, Blake Griffin, Russell Westbrook, Carlos Boozer, Paul Pierce and Kevin Love are among the players expected to participate. Kevin Durant and Kevin Garnett, among a few others, are also contemplating joining the tour.

Atlanta business mogul Calvin Darden has been putting the tour together with the players’ agents for nearly three months. He has already obtained signed contracts from Bryant, Wade, Bosh, Griffin, Rondo and Pierce. Sources say he’s hoping to complete the rest of the agreements, along with insurance requirements, over the next few days.

Even so, sources warned that the tour has not yet been finalized and there’s still a chance it could unravel.

The tour, scheduled to begin Oct. 30 and end Nov. 9, will make stops in Puerto Rico, London, Macau, and Australia. Each game will be staged in an arena that holds at least 15,000 fans. Two games each will be played at sites in London and Australia. …

While Darden’s business record is impressive, his family has endured controversy. His son, Cal Darden Jr., recently spent nearly four years in prison after pleading guilty to five counts of grand larceny and scheme to defraud.

The 36-year-old Darden Jr., once a high-rolling stockbroker on Wall Street, was convicted of defrauding 11 victims of roughly $7 million. In addition to stealing money from securities firms, he was convicted of bilking $300,000 from former NBA star Latrell Sprewell and $950,000 from rap star Nelly.

Though Darden Jr. will have no more than a minor role in the tour, several sources said Darden Sr. has been very open with the involved parties about his son’s legal issues and that they do not foresee them causing a problem. Darden Jr.’s main role has been putting together the charitable component of the tour.

This is exactly what I want Rondo and Pierce doing. Risking their bodies to play six games in faraway countries, games organized by a media mogul whose son, also playing a role in the tour, is a convicted felon known for defrauding 11 victims of roughly $7 million. To be fair, even if he bilks $300,000 from any of the barnstorming stars, Calvin Darden, Jr. is probably not any worse to work for than Donald Sterling.  Plus, who doesn’t want a convicted felon handling the charitable component of the biggest tour in NBA lockout history?

Seriously, this isn’t how this year is supposed to go. I’m supposed to be rooting for the Celtics to somehow beat the Heat, not praying for Rondo and Pierce to stay healthy while playing in Macau. For the love of Bill Sharman, NBA owners and players association, please come to an agreement.

The NBA has been locked out for more than three months, so when reports mentioned that Kevin Garnett ruined the entire labor negotiations, I was (understandably, I think) skeptical.  It was difficult for me to believe that a lone human being who attended no more than one (or maybe two) lockout meetings could single-handedly obliterate a deal splitting $23 billion of revenue. After all, destroying something by showing up late in the process (or season, in this case) is a role usually reserved for Jeff Green.

Color me not surprised, then, at the Boston Herald’s report today that Garnett’s role in the lack of progress on the lockout front is “overblown.”

And, by the way, while Garnett’s anger didn’t help move things closer that day, word from league sources is that his effect on the talks is being overblown.

More likely, the blame tossed on Garnett was another spin in the rhetoric designed to divert attention from the real culprits here — the NBA owners and the leaders of the players association, who have not been able to reach a deal and have already canceled the first two weeks of the regular season.

Garnett’s a powerful human being, and it’s not difficult to envision Garnett giving David Stern a piece of his mind (or several pieces, including a lot of profanity and perhaps some chest-bumping or ball-tapping, if Garnett deemed it necessary or was particularly psychotic at the time). But if one man can really threaten all progress prior negotiations had made, well, maybe there wasn’t much initial progress at all.

NBA owners and players have had since July to negotiate a new labor deal to end the NBA lockout. Really, the two sides began negotiations two years ago, at least according to Billy Hunter. Yet Kevin Garnett went to five hours worth of meetings and reportedly [expletived] everything up.

This fight has grown nastier, more personal, in the past weeks. Privately, management insists that everything changed when the Boston Celtics’ Kevin Garnett walked into the negotiating room on Oct. 4. The owners knew it wouldn’t go well when Garnett started glowering across the table, sources said, like the league lawyers, owners and officials were opponents at the center jump. He was defiant, determined and downright ornery. He was K.G. Everyone knew Hunter had to cede to the wishes of the stars, and the stars demanded that the players stop making concessions to the owners.

As one league official said, “We were making progress, until Garnett [expletive] everything up.”

In other words, as one league official said, “Billy Hunter was ready to completely cave into Stern’s demands, ready to hand Stern the keys to his house and Ferrari, 50% of BRI, his first-born child and his limited edition Boy Meets World DVD set, until Garnett started glowering across the table and assured the players would not accept a bum deal.”

Seriously, though. If Kevin Garnett being Kevin Garnett at one single meeting can cause progress to come to a swift end, maybe there wasn’t so much progress after all. It sounds like a lot of owners are conveniently blaming Garnett to hide the fact that they’re trying to give the players a swirly after taking their lunch money. This lockout will continue until one of two things happens:

1) the players, missing their paychecks, decide to crumble

or

2) the owners, knowing they’re huge assholes, decide to put the subs in the game and settle for a 20-point win instead of a 40-point blowout

In case you were wondering, the two sides were scheduled to meet for a mediating session with George Cohen today at 10 a.m. But not everyone’s convinced the session will help.

But can a mediator swoop in and smooth out two years of bickering in one day?

Attorney Jay Krupin, chair of EpsteinBeckerGreen’s national labor practice in Washington, doesn’t think so — unless the players are prepared to concede on some issues.

“If the players want to get back on the court, then this is a great time for them to try to show that they’re willing to make some type of compromise, and I think that’s what it is,” he said. “This is an opportunity to really determine whether or not the players are willing to make concessions. I think the owners are willing to walk away without concessions, so if the players really want to make concessions when they meet, that has to be expressed to the mediator.

“If that happens, then the burden turns to the NBA to say, ‘All right, you’ll be willing to make some concessions; now we’re willing to talk.’ If they’re not willing to make concessions, then the mediation would just go on for the day and it’ll let the NBA know that they probably have to cancel, go through Christmas and maybe even the rest of the season.”

Here’s how I expect the mediating session to go:

The year was 2007, and I sat squished alongside five friends in my buddy’s single dorm room. The seating arrangements could have been (much) better: sitting six people into a Skidmore College single is like fitting 17 in a Toyota Corolla. But I was in New York, I didn’t get Fox Sports New England, and my buddy Harry was the only person I knew who shelled out enough money for the cable package that included NBA TV. I wanted to, needed to, watch the new-look Celtics open preseason against the Toronto Raptors in Italy.

The C’s had just suffered through “The Gerald Green Year,” a youth movement of sorts that — combined with Paul Pierce’s injury-riddled campaign — left the Celtics with the NBA’s worst record, Doc Rivers with a bulls-eye on his back that columnists regularly took aim at, and fans with a “please lose as many games as possible so we can select either Greg Oden or Kevin Durant” mentality. When the NBA Draft lottery came and the Celtics were granted the fifth pick, I pondered my options. I could …

1) change allegiances and become a fan of some other team — ANY other team that wasn’t destined for failed season after failed season. But that really wasn’t an option, because, really, what kind of fan switches teams?

2) continue my existence as a miserable Celtics fan, blame Sebastian Telfair for everything bad that happened in life (“my keys got lost — screw you Telfair, you overhyped, underachieving son of a bitch!”), ask God daily why he ever mustered the cruelty to place Green, Telfair, Tony Allen and Wally Szczerbiak on the same team, and fall asleep each night muttering, “Allan Ray. Seriously?”

Or

3) talk myself into fully embracing Yi Jianlian, who Danny Ainge was reportedly enamored with at the No. 5 pick.

I chose the third choice. A seven-foot tall Chinese dude with soft touch and decent athleticism? Forget Durant and Oden! Yi’s the future of basketball! The Celtics got lucky to fall to the No. 5 pick!

FML.

The events that took place following the Draft lottery can only be described as stunning. The Celtics traded for Ray Allen on draft night, turning from laughing stock to “hmm, that team might be fun to watch” literally overnight. Rumors about the C’s acquiring Kevin Garnett shortly followed. I checked into HoopsHype 759 times per day from the computer where I worked at the local swimming pool. On the umpteenth day of The Garnett Watch, HoopsHype afforded me some ridiculously good news, which can only be judged by my reaction: in front of 75 kids, 15 mothers, three hot mothers and my boss, I loudly screamed “F*** YEAH” at the top of my lungs. I almost got fired, but who cares about a job in a time like that? The Celtics had just paired Kevin Garnett with Ray Allen and Paul Pierce. Thank you, Kevin McHale. Would you like chopsticks with your pu-pu platter?

The Celtics quickly became the hottest ticket around town, but it’s important not to forget: there were serious question marks about whether they could contend in year one of the Big Three era. Ray Allen was 32 years old and coming off double ankle surgery. Paul Pierce had just finished his own injury-prone season. Kevin Garnett was still one of the five or six best basketball players in the world, but could the three of them really carry Rajon Rondo and Kendrick Perkins on their backs? Remember, at that stage, neither Rondo or Perk had accomplished anything in their NBA lives. We knew very little about them. Rondo was young, uber-athletic and showed flashes of unadulterated brilliance, but lest we forget, he spent his rookie year backing up Telfair. And I assure you, it’s never a good sign when your team’s starting point guard was known as “Sebastian Telfair’s backup” just months ago. Perk was hulking, he frowned a lot and he had worked hard during his early years to cut a load of baby fat. But his offensive game was less complete than my latest Rubik’s cube, and it was difficult to calculate his defensive capacity. For so long, his defensive acumen had been hidden alongside young, immature teammates with nary a clue about how to play defense.

I really just used the word nary. But I digress.

For the first time, packed into the tiny dorm room, surrounded by the hot stench of my friends’ body odor, I saw the new-look Celtics in action. A few truths were immediately evident: Kevin Garnett looked odd wearing anything besides Minnesota Timberwolves colors, but he treated even preseason games like the NBA Finals. Ray Allen shot like a goddess, even when he missed, and also has enormous calves. James Posey would help everything, so much, even when he didn’t score. Eddie House had a quicker release than a virgin on his first time. But mostly, I watched and marveled at one thing: in the Celtics offense, the ball moved from side to side like a crowd’s eyes at Wimbledon. Back and forth, forth and back, the Celtics moved the ball like a Pete Carril Princeton team. You could never tell that two of the Big Three had recently been ball-stopping superstars with the basketball constantly in their hands. On this team, surrounded by so much talent, everyone wanted to keep everyone else happy. Maybe even too much so. The C’s passed up a few open shots to make the extra pass. But that was a trivial matter that more practice time would take care of. After watching Gerald Green for the previous year, this was like updating from Soulja Boy to Tupac.

At that point, watching NBA TV in that crowded, hot room, I still had no idea where the Big Three era would lead me. I didn’t know the Celtics would forge so quickly and rattle off 66 regular season wins, more than any team (1985-86, 67 wins) but one in Celtics history. I didn’t know they would struggle to beat the Hawks, barely nudge past a locked-in Lebron, find their inner playoff warrior against the Pistons and embarrass the Lakers in Game 6 to take home the franchise’s 17th title. I didn’t know “Anytthhinngggg isssss posssssiiibblllleeeee.” I didn’t know the slew of what-ifs that would follow in the coming years. What if Garnett didn’t get hurt? What if Perk never tore his ACL? What if Danny Ainge never traded for Jeff Green, or Rajon Rondo never dislocated his elbow? I didn’t know how joyful it would be to root for this Celtics team, even in the playoff losses, always so valiant and selfless and inspired, even if certain regular season games — especially the second night of back-to-backs — have been frightful to observe. I didn’t know Paul Pierce’s transformation into a mature man would finish. I didn’t know Rajon Rondo would blossom into one of the league’s most exciting, creative players, and also one of its most confounding. I didn’t know just how nice it would be to watch Ray Allen spot up on the wing in transition. I didn’t know Eddie House would become one of my favorite Celtics ever, James Posey’s hugs would be etched into my memory forever, or that Perkins — with his jaw that always seems set for war — would prove his worth and then some. I didn’t know losing to the Lakers in Game 7 would hurt so bad. I didn’t know I would come to love Tony Allen, even if I still hated him half the time. I didn’t know Stephon Marbury would be so strange, Glen Davis would make me feel the entire spectrum of human emotions, and Sam Cassell would never, ever stop shooting ill-advised shots. I didn’t know P.J. Brown would play such a crucial role in the only Celtics championship of my lifetime.

I didn’t know four years later, the NBA lockout would threaten to bring the Big Three era to a close without us seeing it through to the end. This glorious era that began when the Celtics got screwed in the NBA lottery might have just one season left. For the love of Scott Pollard, let us — let me — enjoy it.

According to two separate ESPN reports (and I’m not sure you can label Bill Simmons’s musings a “report,” but I don’t know what else to call it), Kevin Garnett was one of the polarizing forces keeping the NBA players union from reaching a 50-50 agreement (or similar terms) with the owners, a deal that would have ended the NBA lockout. The second report, by Henry Abbott, also listed Paul Pierce and Kobe Bryant as culprits.

We’ll start with Simmons’s account of the events, regardless of how tongue in cheek it may be:

Kevin Garnett, who inexplicably turned into Norma Rae these past few weeks and led the charge to fight the fight and stand strong … without, of course, ever mentioning that his agent was savvy enough to defer a significant amount of money from his last contract extension so that he still has fresh money coming in this season (unlike 95 percent of the players), or that a 50-game regular season would be absolutely perfect for his aching knees, or that losing two months of 2011-12 money might help him with his next contract because he won’t break down during a shortened season (increasing the odds that he’ll get one last lucrative extension next summer).

Should someone who’s earned over $300 million (including endorsements) and has deferred paychecks coming really be telling guys who have made 1/100th as much as him to fight the fightand stand strong and not care about getting paid? And what are Garnett’s credentials, exactly? During one of the single biggest meetings (last week, on Tuesday), Hunter had Kobe Bryant, Paul Pierce and Garnett (combined years spent in college: three) negotiate directly with Stern in some sort of misguided “Look how resolved we are, you’re not gonna intimidate us!” ploy that backfired so badly that one of their teams’ owners was summoned into the meeting specifically to calm his player down and undo some of the damage. (I’ll let you guess the player. It’s not hard.) And this helped the situation … how? And we thought this was going to work … why?

Congratulations, players — you showed solidarity! You showed you wouldn’t back down! You made things worse, and you wasted a day, but dammit, you didn’t back down! Just make sure you tell that to every team employee who gets fired over these next few weeks, as well as to all the restaurant and bar owners near NBA arenas who are taking a massive financial hit through the holidays. I’m sure they will be proud of you.

Simmons’s “report” came out yesterday, and Abbott’s was published today. Abbott quotes Matt Bonner later in the piece, who cautions that the entire account of Abbott’s main story seems dubious. “There’s no way,” Bonner said. The players needed huge convincing just to agree to lower their share of BRI to 53%. Offering to take 50%, or agreeing to such an offer, seemed outrageous to Bonner.

“That was a huge point of contention,” he said. “Talking to all these veterans and all-stars, they were upset we went down to 53. We had to sell them on that. I’m pretty certain [union lawyer Jeffrey] Kessler didn’t have the authority to offer 50, and nobody in the room would have agreed to that.”

Still, Abbott published a report claiming that Garnett, Pierce and Bryant might have torpedoed an approaching deal and built a moat between the two sides. Pierce was wearing his packpack, which was apparently a bad sign, for reasons unstated.

As Stern has recounted a dozen times since, not long after what was supposed to have been the hallway conversation that saved the season, something odd and wholly unexpected happened. There was a knock on the door where Stern was selling his owners on the idea. The players wanted to talk.

When they convened, instead of the union’s head, Hunter, or their negotiating committee of Maurice Evans, Matt Bonner, Roger Mason, Theo Ratliff, Etan Thomas and Chris Paul, representing the players were Fisher, Kessler, and three superstars who had been to very few of the meetings at all: Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Kobe Bryant.

A bad sign: Pierce was still wearing his backpack.

The players had two pieces of news that shocked the league: 50/50 was not good enough. And there was nothing further to discuss.

“We had a large group of owners,” remembers Silver, “who had flown in and were prepared to negotiate around the clock.”

More importantly, they had made an aggressively good offer, the NBA’s leaders thought, the one that might get them in trouble with their owners but surely not with the players.

And players who hadn’t even been in the talks, and who seemed not to be on the same page with the crew that had endured more than 40 meetings, had been the ones to reject the best offer the league was likely to have, and to end the best day of negotiations prematurely.

What in the hell was going on? How had they so misread the situation? And where was Billy Hunter? Who spoke for the union? Should the league have been negotiating with Kevin Garnett all along?

Later the league would suggest that the talks had fallen apart because the union happened to have some particularly strident players show up that day.

Maybe it’s as simple as that. Or maybe it’s much more complicated.

Abbott then went on to wonder whether players were inspired by Lebron James’s decision and now believe themselves capable of acting “fully empowered.” As if Michael Jordan — No. 1 in your hearts, Roster 99 in your video games — was not fully empowered.

“It’s a business revolution with young black men, basketball players, in the corner offices. A new way of doing things, long overdue, and happening now,” wrote Abbott.

“And maybe that’s what Stern encountered in that hotel room in New York: A new generation of fully empowered players who no longer believe they have to conform to much of anything.”

Maybe. Or maybe Stern just encountered a trio of stars looking out for future generations, who didn’t want to sign off on a bum deal.