When Kevin Garnett Tried Pronouncing The Word ‘Equivalent’
Qkrowliv
Nice try. It’s much more complicated than that. Mere mortals can’t even pronounce it the same way. Only higher beings can read the word “equivalent” like that.
I’m dying, at least get the “t” at the end Kev
There’s a pause right before too, hah. And it almost sounds like they added the audio in after or overlayed it. I think they call it ADR in the movie biz.
I read this before I watched the clip and thought there’s no way that’s accurate. Turns out you absolutely nailed it.
Using the word equivalent in a conversation with KG would be the equivalent of him dunking on me
Knew immediately he couldn’t say it right so just buzzed right past it.
On one hand, that’s pretty genius of him. On the other, well, one of my favorite players can’t read at a middle school level.
KG be having a -2 Intelligence, +2 Wisdom on his statblock
That’s perfectly said. Probably more like -4 intelligence and +3 wisdom though lol
And +5 charisma
And +67 Sigma
I don’t know what that means, but sure
+1 ligma as well
sigh what’s ligma
Ligma balls
Ha, fuckin got em dude.
highfive
Who the hell is Steve Jobs?
You should prepare yourself to normalize this, a former teacher in America.
Well I can see why that would happen if you, the teacher, can’t write a proper sentence.
Did a student write this sentence?
That South Carolina education though (I can’t talk because I’m from NC).
one of my favorite players can’t read at a middle school level.
More than half of all American adults – 54% – cannot read at a 6th grade level.
That’s 3+ year old data. Would wager it’s materially worse since then.
I don’t want to make excuses or downplay this but how necessary is reading at a sixth grade level in day to day life? I remember reading The Outsiders in grade 7 and The Giver in grade 8, but how much of every day life requires that level?
I don’t want to make excuses or downplay this
You’re definitely downplaying it. Are we really rationalizing adults not being able to read like a 12 year old? Anti-intellectualism continues to take over society.
“Reading like a 12 year old” and “reading at grade level” are two different things, and we understand this when related to other school subjects.
For example, in Grade 9 math, which is required to graduate, I learned about y = Mx + b. In Grade 10 math, also required to graduate, I learned about quadratic equations. However, the average adult does not need to know anything about linear or quadratic equations in order to succeed and survive in day-to-day life.
So by that same logic I was simply wondering, perhaps out of ignorance and naivete, how necessary reading at grade level is when it comes to functioning in society. What’s the appropriate “cut off”? Grade 7? Grade 10? Grade 12?
I’d say it’s pretty important in any sort of written communication. You can definitely tell when someone writes an email and doesn’t have a basic grasp of the English language. It’s embarrassing.
You need someone to explain how important being able to read and understand words like equivalent is in day to day life?
It’s going to be pretty difficult to interview for most white collar jobs if you can’t read or write beyond that level. Your ability to communicate and comprehend things in a professional setting is one of the most important soft skills you can have.
So you can consume a wider variety of media and culture in order to enrich your life?
I feel really sorry for you if you think that was a stroke of genius.
I’m really sorry that you’re feel really sorry.
What a stroke of genius!
pretty sure dude has dyslexia lol, but yeah, hahahahaha, what a dummy
(this place is so damn gross lol)
Thats always the move. Well played by him. I wish those dumb bastards in my middle school had learned that move instead of spending 20 seconds stumbling over the word they dont know and slowing reading session to a crawl.
No they shouldn’t have wth. They’re in school to learn. If you just breeze past the words you dont know and dont try you won’t learn how to say it correctly. That should be when your teacher steps in and helps them learn it.
Perhaps they should have separated out the class skill level, so that the kids who can read don’t have to sit here and be bored to tears
They have been doing that for years. I was in a redneck school in rural area, in English they had teaching manuals given out at various levels based on an assement you took. They were all color-coded (some kids were embarrassed because of the color they got) and you read those everyday.
Yeah, how else are you going to be a grown ass man with the reading level of an 8 year old. /s
I was the kids that was in honors classes for everything except for English because I hated English class and wanted to do as little work as possible, but I could read really fast. So when we would group read I would always take the longest part and read it fast af to make up for the slowpokes
Did you announce “I am the protagonist!” every time?
Brother it’s a school
Straight out of highschool!
And you can tell he wasn’t doing shit in high school
[deleted]
As someone who works in an elementary school this is unfortunately not true at all.
I’m sure kids in Oklahoma can’t either.
how many 9 year olds you know bro
Speedran that shit lol
hell no the full version is so much funnier
Post it
Send da video
hell no
trash ass n
Did you get downvoted for not saying the n word lmao
probably downvoted because people don’t get the reference and assume I’m just gratuitously using a (abbreviated) slur
edit: gratuitously in the sense of insulting either KG or the commenter I was responding to.
Dw buddy I got your reference and upvoted it
redditors and getting cunty and downvoting because they don’t understand the situation - name a more iconic duo
This sub just soft af, you prob upset a few white dudes who are really into analytics around here lol
austin reaves just plays the game the right way
Brings his lunch pail.
“The bar isn’t that high” - Jaylen Brown, 2026
Lol wtf. Reminds me of the lead actor in the movie Birdemic. He can’t pronounce solar panel so he keeps saying slrpnl, says it like five times in one minute
“just hanging out, hanging out with my faaamiilly”
KG has a 50% discount on his vocabulary.
The end credits hit you like a car going 100. This movie was so all over
my mustang is a plug in hybrid it gets 100 miles to the gallon
NFL Quilif
Jaylen Brown: “The bar is pretty fucking low”
Wasn’t there another video where him and Paul pierce were talking and one of them couldn’t get a word right too?
It was probably Paul Pierce stoned shitting himself while passing gas
Well it’s a good thing that he is extremely tall and knows how to play basketball.
AND he is a +5 curser
He sounds like me in french class. (I averaged a C-)
Am I the only one that thinks he’s saying it correctly, but just sort of fast/mumbles? I can make it out though when I listen for it…not like he couldn’t read the word.
You are correct. KG’s from South Carolina. He said it fast and the “E” was kind-of quiet and blended in with the “L” before it, but it sounded like he hit all the right syllables and pronounced it how people with that accent do.
Right he just said it so fast that the opening e was barely audible.
Yeah he is just saying it really fast, and he took a breath right before saying it, which sort of ate the “e” sound. So he ended up with “quivalent.”
Where in the world are you guys hearing the “ent” sound? Multiple people say he just doesn’t pronounce the first “e” and says “Quivalent,” but I don’t hear that at all.
I hear two syllables, and the “L” sound clearly comes before the “V” sound. At best it is something like “cro-liv.”
I am so, so confused how people are hearing “Quivalent” in this.
I hear it. It isn’t a hard “t” sound at the end, but i feel like people with more southern accents tend to drop that sound alot anyway. I’m from the south, so maybe thats why it sounds mostly fine to me? He was talking fast, but it didnt seem like he didn’t know the word or know how to say it.
No clue where you are hearing the “v” before the “l” though..
I hear something like “qui-ah-leh” really fast lol. I can hear like the faintest hint of the V and the N, maybe?
IDK, its really entertaining tho
No, I said I heard the L before the V sound
Yeah, thats what I meant.
I heard the very same thing as the top comment on the post…idk how anyone is hearing anything else lol.
The top comment on the thread, with 909 up votes, “Qkrowliv.” That it also exactly what I heard. The L sound comes before V in that
How are you hearing the V before the L?
Completely agree. The internet decided he was stupid long ago though unfortunately.
Feels like the yanny or laurel thing where I mainly hear it just fast/mumble
Ya I heard “quivalent” - basically skipped the E which I think it pretty common
Yeah was like exhaling during the e but everything else was fine
That’s gotta be the case because he also apparently fumbles on the word “for”. Even if he didn’t know the word “equivalent,” he’d know the word “for” and I’m sure someone can find a clip of KG using “for” correctly.
So yeah, I agree that this is far more likely to be a him mumbling or perhaps some sort of Howard Dean style microphone misfortune.
In front of Larry of all athletes
Larry?
There’s a reason he went straight from highschool to the pros
I mean…even if he was a genius he would have gone straight to the nba
The ravens lost an all-pro lineman bc he was so good at math he couldn’t justify playing football
He wasn’t an All-Pro, but yea he was concerned about CTE. Especially since he was an on and off starter
Why turn your brain into mush?
Yeah didn’t he play like two to three seasons and dipped
Got his money to pay off his loans and was like bet
Football is the one sport where you are probably more than likely to get a lil brain damage, so that checks out
Just looked him up. John Urschel. Dude is fucking smart. He was a part time starter not all pro. But damn, he was getting his PHD in math from MIT while he was still playing for the ravens. From his Wikipedia page:
MIT does not allow Ph.D. students to study part-time; while the Ravens knew that he was taking classes, Urschel admitted after retiring from the team that he did not disclose that he was a full-time graduate student, having taken correspondence classes in between games and practices.
That’s amazing
Yea misremembered how good he was but still a cool story thanks for the detail
and he was the opposite of a genius. so he def was gonna go straight to the nba
Seen this video dozens of times and I really don’t think it’s that bad.
Yeah, sounds to me like he’s just skipping the first ‘e.’ Really not that bad
Did you guys watch a different video? He didn’t just skip the first “e.” I don’t hear the last syllable either at all, he does not say “Quivalent.” It’s not even closeeee to that, what are you guys hearing? Where you hear hearing the “ent” sound?
Idk man, I don’t think KG is stupid but it’s a massive stretch to me to say all he did was not pronounce the first “e.” If you played that sound clip without the video or any context, I don’t think anyone in the world would hear “equivalent but without the “e”’
I listened to it repeatedly. It’s what I heard.
I guess we watched different videos then. Because in the video I watched he quite literally doesn’t make that “ent” sound whatsoever. He makes a two syllable “co-liv” or “co-liff” type of sound, there is absolutely not three syllables, the L sound comes before the V sound, and he objectively does not sound out “Quivalent.”
Ok. I disagree
Maybe you just need better ears
Not joking, you might have hearing issues.
To me, it sounds like something happened to the words “equivalent for” because I can’t hear the “or” in “for”.
If I’m gonna capitalize what I heard and lowercase what I missed, I think I heard eQUIVALent For.
Yeah if he’s never seen the word before he genuinely did a pretty good job. He got pretty close
Even if he’d seen it before sometimes when anyone reads you can trip over words or swallow certain syllables. It happens
Yeah but saying that doesn’t allow you to feel superior to a millionaire while being a bit racist now does it?
You’re getting downvoted but you have it dead on lol
He got the word mixed up with his friend’s name quantavious jackson
Steph curry and patrick mahomes
“Kolek”
I hear equivalent. He just said it fast.
Reminds me of Zion trying to pronounce the word Lackadaisacal
Big ticket never went to college.
“If you have to speak, mumble”
He might be on to something 😂
and this is when tnt knew he wasn’t barkley’s replacement
i don’t think i could say it like that if i tried
This is what getting drafted right out of high school does to a person
Mispronounced so hard it sounds like a glitch
KG said e-quiv-a-lent like it personally offended him
Reminds me of when my daughter was 2 and pretending she knew how to read
Reminds me of this for some reason
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHxO0UdpoxM
Almost. Nice try.
Who on Club 520 said he almost tore his ACL trying to say it?
He can probably read Harry Potter and Cat in the Hat, better than Floyd Mayweather at least.
520 in the morning brought this classic back to life, in a really funny segment
Imagine his shit talking with a wider vocabulary
“Prestigious”
this was the best show in television history RIP
Jaylen Brown: Ok lets replace qulifacache with this word and I will spot the C_T go KG
The ritter
go to college kids
Bro went straight to the league ill cut him some slack😂
He went street pronunciation
Straight out of 6th grade!
Fuck Streamable
Most NBA players from that era are the dumbest people you know
Leave him alone. There’s a reason he didn’t go to college. At least he’s honest and doesn’t have a fake degree like the rest of them. Or to do a fun year not learning at one of our finest institutions. Let’s not forget jocks are dumb and have been babied their whole lives.
How’d he get past third grade?
He could prob dunk by then so it didn’t matter if he could read
Is that Klingon?
😂😂😂😂
“America is a nation that can be defined in a single word…”
it’s ok. english isn’t his first language
Bro needs to get Hooked on Phonics
Lmao holy shyt , dude just made up a word
shit sounded like “coolant”
KG to the producers after the segment
This clip has always been overhyped to me. He said it overly fast but he said the word fine.
Never paid attention to how dumb kg is/was lol
Maybe my hottest take of all time: he didn’t mispronounce equivalent lol he just said it quickly
I think people are assuming that he said it quickly because he wasn’t confident in the pronunciation.
sounds like he said equivalent and it just took him a moment to recognize the word. Which for being live on TV is understandable
Ya after seeing it again years later, he does actually say it, just sounds like he hesitated for a second and it came out weird. Sounds more like he left out the e so its just ‘quivalent’
Yeah, I can barely hear the e but I definitely hear “quivalent”, he just said it really fast.
He said “ ‘quivlent “. What is weird?
Where do you hear that many consonants lol, shit sounds like a computer program that malfunctions trying to read gibberish typed into TTS like the word was “my roflcopter goes soisoisoisoi”
Thats what I heard too, without the e lol
Well for one thing, “‘quivlent” is not a valid contraction in the English language.
says who?
The dictionary.
And who wrote the dictionary?
Samuel Johnson
Do you do anything else bc of what Samuel Johnson’s opinion says so?
I also didn’t really get it when Club 520 lost their shit over this clip, and I usually lap 520 the fuck up when it comes on my TL.
Yeah to me it just seems like he didn’t have enough breath so he speedran through the word. Happens when you read out loud sometimes
Sounds normalish to me. Just says the E real sudden and t soft so it sounds more like ‘quivalen
are you brain dead😂
Yes
Honesty is the best policy
Well he is a lakers fan
Idk man. It just sounded like he said equivalent real quick and just sounded awkward. It’s kinda weird how people wanna just make fun of him for that. I just find it a bit hypocritical ya know. Making fun of people for accidental slip ups is the kind of thing that I find r/NBA criticizing certain NBA players/analysts doing. An example would be Shaq making fun of a player for something trivial and this sub criticizing that behavior.
If something as menial as this makes me a brain dead Lakers fan, I’d rather be that than an asshole.
They don’t have jokes in La?
It’s middle school level behavior. Not even a joke. People are laughing at someone, not making a joke.
Spanish is my first language and I heard the same ‘quivalent.
Albert Einstein over here
oh man too bad thanks for the advice
Thank you sir jgab145
You must have a lot of friends.
I think you meant envy.
But in KG’s case it was very clearly not an inability to pronounce the word, but rather an inability to read the word.
Please no racism here.
well, since you asked…