Leigh Klein
2 min readMay 9, 2016

Basketball was good to Garf in many ways and cruel in others.

There was a twenty plus year stretch where Garf was a King in the sport. His word was all it took to make a player or coach.

But basketball moved on and Garf’s influence waned. It hurt him that he no longer had the pull to help people the way he had done for so many years.

It was as if everyone else got the memo except him, that he was no longer “that“ guy.

He fell in love with a game, played and respected by the purists and watched it become the side act to entertainment.

It was a sport -that his eyes couldn’t pull away from to watch; whilst to those around him it became the fodder of content and memes.

He saw a Basketball that brought everyone together, where everyone bonded to help it’s and each other’s growth, expand into a multi-billion dollar industry that tore people down and pulled them apart from each other.

He remembered them as people and they turned into brands.

In his waning moments and at his passing — Basketball remembered Garf.

The sport he loved came back to him one last time to pay homage.

If you knew Garf, you knew that he’d smile at all this attention for about a moment and then he’d shout back “What are you doing to fix MY game?”

Leigh Klein
Leigh Klein

Written by Leigh Klein

Host: That Bracket Show on SB Nation Radio, Klein Sports Consulting: Representing Blue Star Basketball, Co-Peace, K-Motion, NSID and Kinexon Sports