To the surprise of nobody, Garnett worked really hard on getting back in shape. SLAM has an account of how he worked with trainers to recover from surgery.
For Abunassar and co-trainer Andrew Moore, [KG getting injured again] was not a possibility. They knew how to rebuild Garnett’s legs. They spent considerable time on his legs, guiding him through a series of repetitive exercises with dumbells mini-bands and physio balls. He did calf raises, deadlifts with dumbbells, an assortment of crunches with a medicine ball. They attacked his core from all angles, knowing the stronger Garnett’s core was, the less weight there would be on his legs. "We were probably way more detailed in our approach to preparing him this year than we have ever been," says Abunassar. Nearly every day Rudy Gay and Memphis Grizzlies teammate Kyle Lowry sluggishly entered the Impact gym at 11 a.m., they saw Garnett sitting in the weight room, catching his breath and staring around the gym. "You don’t even see him work out," says Gay during a practice session at Impact earlier in September. "But then you talk to Joe and he says, ‘yeah, I’ve been here since 7 a.m., working out KG’… that gives you something to learn from." By September, Garnett’s shots were falling. His step was returning, although it wasn’t completely there, something Garnett would concede to reporters during the second day of the Celtics training camp in Newport, RI. Abunassar knows it’s going to take time for the step to completely return. "The Celtics don’t need him to play in September. They need him to play in May," says Abunassar.