If you think of what the NBA was before Kevin Garnett arrived, it's easy to certify the Big Ticket as the most influential player of his generation.
It starts, of course, with him leading the new wave of preps-to-pros players in 1995 when he became the first high school player in 20 years to enter the draft. Kobe Bryant and Jermaine O'Neal followed the next year and the trend was quickly established. Every subsequent draft had at least one high school player taken in the first round until the NBA put a stop to the practice in 2005.