Minnesota Timberwolves legend and NBA Champion Kevin Garnett reunited with AND1 brand earlier this year, now serving as the company’s Creative Director and Global Ambassador. ‘The Big Ticket’ first partnered with AND1 back in 2001 when he shockingly left Nike for the up-and-coming brand.
In a recent interview with SLAM Magazine’s Franklyn Calle, Garnett discussed his new role with the brand and goals moving forward, including his reasoning of why the future Hall-of-Famer made the move back to AND1:
Bill Sweedler [founder and chairman of Sequential Brands Group, which owns AND1], is a dear friend. I was talking to him about some general stories and the AND1 conversation came up. And I didn’t even know at the time that Bill owned AND1. We just started going into some hypotheticals on some ideas. I think he was looking for some different ideas to revamp the brand. I think the brand had a lower tier business that they were very successful with. He let it be known that he was into it. And then he was like, That’d be a dope idea to put [you] with AND1! And I was like, I don’t know, whatever. He came back a couple of weeks or a couple months later and we joined up. It sounds inspirational. It sounds groundbreaking and things that stimulate me. That’s when I started to look at the opportunity of coming in here and [being] the creative director. Just being able to bring a different place to the brand that I didn’t see with the brand before I came here.
Other brands such as Puma and New Balance have been working their way back to relevance in the NBA, signing a number of young talents to shoe deals over the past few months. Kevin Garnett – just two years into retirement – will be looking to accomplish the same with AND1 in the future.
