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My first thought is his family growing up, but even with that people will be who they are in the long run. There's still those choices we all make and in character building it seems he made a lot of right ones. From the age of 14 on I think the Mariners can possibly take a bit of credit but many people are fairly developed by then. I would say that learning to deal with media is a bit of work for most people, but he seems so natural doing it. He's just being himself. Maybe it was with working on things that he got to that point. He has always seemed comfortable and respectful talking to everyone though. The first interview I saw he was 17 and at ease, so I can't speak for earlier than that. So he had good upbringing and family support, kept his head on straight and had good guidance as a professional. Other that that he it's who he chose to be and in my opinion ultimately gets the bulk of the credit. Being who he is, he'd certainly deflect that credit though.
People from other countries tend to be harder working, more humble and respectful. How many thousands before him were not from this continent though?
On the superstar staying with a losing team, baseball with 7 year contracts really limits it to pathetically long losing. To lose for 7 years it takes a bit of mismanagement, but then if they chose to stay and the team started winning we wouldn't even notice them in this. So really we're talking about 5+ years of poor management followed by 5+ of rebuilding coinciding with a star coming up and staying. Technically the Mariners with Felix have had 2 winning seasons but no postseason. Still a lot of losing. I think it's hard because hardly anybody had been staying with hardly any team since the onset of free agency in baseball. There were certainly many before free agency. Recently there have been more getting locked up with their first team. Mike Sweeney with the Royals maybe? Not quite a superstar. There are few teams that even fit that length of ineptitude though.
I think Garnett is alone in basketball. How can you lose, get a star like him, lose some more and never put anything together with all the picks? Like Duncan and Robinson back to back #1s because the team was horrible. Heck, the Storm did the exact same thing with Bird and Jackson back to back years. you have to screw up a lot of drafting to consistently lose in basketball because the rosters are so small. 14 players, to be over.500 you only have to be about 8 deep, maybe 9 that are decent or better. 2 stars can keep a roster that's weak after the first 6 over.500 at times. Man, the Timberwolves were bad.
The best answers may be in football which I'm not familiar enough with. Maybe hockey which I know less about. I could name a bunch of winners in those sports. Or futbol which I know practically nothing about.