Charles Oakley says Kevin Garnett’s weak, not tough

Celtics power forward Kevin Garnett has a reputation as a tough player. But former NBA power forward Charles Oakley begs to differ with that popular opinion.

Appearing on Jim Rome’s radio show, Oakley said of Garnett, “He’s not a tough guy. He’s one of the weakest players to ever play the game at the position.

”He is a good player He’s a complementary player. He went to a Paul Pierce team and won a championship (with the Celtics in 2008).”

Rome responded, “You’re right. He does a lot of hooting and a lot of hollering, but at the end of the day, is he a fake tough guy?”

“He’s not real tough,” Oakley said. “I wouldn’t put him in the top 10 tough guys, so you do the math. If you’re a real tough guy, you should be in the top five, top 10, but if you ain’t tough, it don’t count after 11.”

Let’s not try to glean too much from this, but we used Basketball Reference to look up how Oakley fared head-to-head versus Garnett. Keep in mind that Oakley was 33 when he played against Garnett the first time, plus Garnett, tough or not, was always more of a scorer than Oakley. Nevertheless, here’s what we found:

From 1996-2001, Garnett’s team went 7-4 against Oakley, and in those 11 games, Garnett averaged 18.3 points, 9.1 rebounds and 48.4 percent shooting, to Oakley’s 8.9 points, 7.2 rebounds and 45.3 percent shooting.