When I walked out to the curb and saw the silver champagne Ferrari, I knew I had to test the leather bucket seats. It was a big thing for me to sit in Kevin Garnett's car and rap quickly with him about this and that. Not something I would soon forget.

Obviously it wasn't a big deal to KG, who told SportsCenter he can't remember it at all. (There were five or six other people standing around the car at the time. Including his pal DJ Set Free, who took my place in the passenger seat after rummaging around in the car's trunk. Which, incidentally, was under the hood.)

Am I more than a little puzzled? You bet.

But I'm less confused by KG's reaction to the rest of the story I wrote for ESPNMAG.com on his recent And 1 commercial shoot. In my story I included a transcript of the on-camera Q&A session between the commercial's director, Chris Robinson, and KG. The idea of the commercial was to capture the real KG in all his unbridled passion.

The story wasn't meant to cause controversy. Kevin did that when he made the decision to back away from his words.

I understand that Kevin may be a little edgy right now, following five straight first-round playoff exits and heading into contract talks. There's more than a $200 million difference in what he hopes to get, and what the Timberwolves are reportedly offering. That's pressure.

I know Kevin is frustrated by his team's lack of success. And with Chauncey Billups signing with Detroit, the T-Wolves are heading in the wrong direction.

The commercial shoot took place July 1. We didn't run the story until July 15. I called KG several times to give him an opportunity to elaborate on, shoot down or back up his words. He never called me back.

What KG doesn't know is that I received over 300 e-mails showing support for him and praising his passion and raw honesty. Now that he's backed away from those words, what are his fans to think?

Before writing the story I secured permission from And 1 (many times) to use everything I witnessed. (After all, they were the ones who offered me an exclusive.) Seth Berger, the And 1 CEO, acknowledged as much in a statement he released on Wednesday. For his part, Robinson, the director, emphasized that what me and the other 75 people on the set saw was "the real KG. All him. Not scripted at all."

The shoot was loosely based on the interrogation scene in Scarface, Kevin's favorite movie. I took special precaution to ask everyone involved (about a dozen times) if Kevin was playing a character or being himself. After the shoot, I asked Kevin the same thing. Each time I was told that's him. All him. No one tricked KG. He's too smart for that.

Kevin prides himself on being real. So it shocked me that he backed away from his own words so quickly. Tony Montana would never do that.

Chris Palmer covers The NBA Life for ESPN The Magazine. Email him at christopher.palmer@espnmag.com.