KEVIN GARNETT IS fighting midafternoon traffic along the main arteries pumping cars into lower Manhattan, the roads bracketed by mounds of snow that have suffocated the region. Returning home from Nets practice, he has no problem recalling the scene almost four years earlier -- a locker room film session at the practice facility of the Celtics, his former team.

What he's struggling with is how to describe it, to properly explain what happened in that room that afternoon. Garnett is silent for a few seconds, then laughs, then clears his throat. He takes a deep breath and begins.

It's May 2011, and Boston is trailing Miami two games to none during its second-round playoff series. On the best of days, Celtics coach Doc Rivers rides Rajon Rondo hard, pushing his stubborn point guard as only a former stubborn point guard can. But this day is different. Doc is more relentless, Rondo more seething. "He was just pushing and he was just pushing and he was just pushing," Garnett recalls. Rondo glances across the room at Shaquille O'Neal and Jermaine O'Neal. "They saw me bubbling," Rondo remembers. "They were trying to calm me down. It was too late."

Without warning, Rondo snatches his water bottle and hurls it, full force, at the television monitor, the one airing the game footage that's being used to critique him. The 50-inch flat-screen, mounted on a cart in the center of the room, shatters.

Read the entire ESPN The Magazine story here (Warning: contains explicit language).