There Is No Doubt That Kevin Garnett Is Going To Win An Oscar For His Role In 'Uncut Gems'

(Source) – I love a good celebrity stunt cameo — Halsey presenting a Grammy to Ally in A Star Is Born, hello! — so I was very excited to see how the Safdie brothers, in their new movie, Uncut Gems, would use Kevin Garnett. Not that I’m in the habit of scrolling through Garnett’s Instagram, but last November he posted something curious: Adam Sandler took a selfie with the former NBA player in the background. What are Adam Sandler and Kevin Garnett doing hanging out together? I wondered. Was it just a set visit or a day of work, or was he ack-ting in this movie about a diamond-district jeweler and a particularly frenetic few days of his life?

In Gems, Kevin Garnett plays … Kevin Garnett. It’s not a gag, like Mike Tyson in The Hangover; it’s not like Julia Roberts’s cameo in Ocean’s Twelve, where Julia Roberts-as-Tess is talked into pretending to be the actual Julia Roberts because they sorta look alike. An R&B star (whom I won’t name, because spoilers!) has a cameo in Hustlers that is legitimately breathtaking because it punctuates the whole slick, exclusive world inside a strip club where women can monetize desire — this isn’t that either. Gems takes place in 2012, during the Eastern Conference semifinals, and the movie establishes early on that basketball is important to the narrative and to the movie’s main character. Garnett isn’t a cameo to set the scene or show clout — he’s really acting, and he’s really great.

Usually I just wait for movies to hit HBO/Netflix because over my dead Jewish body will I fork over $500 dollars to see a movie in theaters, but you tell me there’s a movie coming out that not only includes Kevin Garnett, but that he has more of just a cameo role? That he’s going to be legit acting? Well shit

take all my money. I will say, I don’t exactly love that this takes place in 2012 during the Eastern Conference Semifinals, mostly because as we know 2012 is the year this happened in the very next round

I’m still not totally recovered from witnessing that shit in person and it’s been nearly 8 years. To then lose Game 7 because Chris fucking Bosh made some threes, the whole thing stunk. But let’s get back on topic here.

So what can we expect from Garnett in what is soon to be an Oscar level performance?

Garnett, then playing for the Celtics, walks into Howard’s store with a small entourage, brought there by Howard’s well-connected middleman, Demany (LaKeith Stanfield). Howard is extroverted and a salesman, not starstruck or a fanboy; basketball lights his brain on fire. He calls him KG, trots out some kitschy goods (importantly: Furby-shaped bling). Only because he’s KG, and because he’s here in his store, Howard brings out something special just to show it off. From some Ethiopian Jews, he explains, he’s found and purchased a purple-blue iridescent rare opal. The Oneohtrix Point Never score pulsates in the background. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s thee uncut gem!

Like Thanos in Avengers: Endgame or an old-money socialite on the Upper East Side, Garnett is transfixed. He holds the gem and looks at it so intensely it’s like he’s looking through it. In Gems, the rock’s power is basically in the eye of the beholder; Howard looks at it and basically only sees the million dollars he thinks it’s worth, but Garnett sees it as a totem. He asks Howard if he can keep it for the night, just so he can have it for the Celtics’ game against the Philadelphia 76ers. Over the course of the movie, through Garnett’s four scenes (with a little game footage from the real Celtics–76ers games that year), he’s obsessed with the gem in a way that makes you obsessed with it. He pops in and out of the movie and every time it seems like a miracle that this massively famous, powerful person keeps coming back to Howard’s shitshow of a store. Every time, he fusses with Howard and is obviously annoyed by him, but the stone keeps him coming back. “Why are you playing with my emotions,” he says at one point, after Howard declines to sell him the stone and then almost does and goes back and forth again. There’s a hilariously frustrated anguish to the way Kevin Garnett is playing a man obsessed with what, at face value, just seems like a very bougie accessory.

If that doesn’t hook you in you simply do not have a pulse. I also love how there’s going to be some Celts/Sixers highlights from their 2012 series, you know the one that ended just like any other BOS/PHI series with the Sixers losing. Couldn’t even beat a 90 year old Celtics roster, sad! I will say, limiting Garnett to only 4 scenes does seem like a gigantic oversight. Everybody knows we need more KG in our lives not less. The second he signed on to do this movie you have to give him no fewer than 65% of the screen time.

And I know what you’re thinking. I am only all in on this movie because Kevin Garnett brought me the only Celtics title of my lifetime so far. That’s only like 72% of the reason. Look at how his performance is reviewed

Garnett is a real supporting actor here, where the movie plays with his status and fame but also gives him real scenes and the same desperate ambition as everyone else. Kevin Garnett in Uncut Gems is an instant classic.

Instant classic. Their words not mine. That Oscar for Best Supporting Actor is going to look pretty sweet next to his MVP trophy, DPOY award, All Star Game MVP trophy, and Larry O’Brien trophy proving once again that Kevin Garnett is one of the greatest to ever do it.