"What I'm pretty excited and uplifted by is on defense. (I am) able to move laterally and recover. When a guy makes a strong move, I can react to that, where in the past I would have had some problems. I would have reached. For the most part, I can move laterally and move around defensively better than anything. Offense is just about mixing up schemes and getting people off-balance and stuff. It will come. Like I said, man, strengthening and conditioning is sort of the delay, and that's what I'm speaking on. Not of my whole body.

"Strengthening and conditioning of my leg is going to take patience on my part, but I push it to the limit, I push a little bit past the limit until (trainer) Ed (Lacerte) gives me the 'Daddy look', like he wants to kill me or something. But for the most part it's going positive, man."

According to Garnett, the knee problem was more serious than first thought.

"They evaluate you from A to Z until you actually get in there and see what the problem really is," Garnett said. "It was pretty severe. The best thing about it is I got it out of the way. The leg is almost 100 percent and going forward. Better than anything, I'm playing without any pain, which is something that I haven't had for some time now. So I'm looking forward to this."

Asked to expand on the difference from what was expected, Garnett used props.

"You think it's a bone spur the size of this (small digital) tape recorder and it ends up being the size of this microphone," he said. "That's what I mean."