LeBron James says he doesn’t know when the most important person in the summertime was the trainer and not the player:
“Like the basketball trainer is the most important guy in the summer. I don’t know when that dynamic shifted because you know we used to play and a lot of my friends can attest to this like even when I got in the NBA you know, I built a little basketball court in my backyard in Akron at my house. I would get nine other guys and we would play in the summertime on a black court like we would play, like two or three times a week. You know, just get up and run and feel like the demands of being outside and also demands of another body like bumping and grinding and things of that nature. And this was like in July. I think it’s very important though. I think guys if you’re listening, you got to play more. If it’s not five on five, at least, twos on twos, three on threes, you got to get physical contact.”
(Via @mindthegamepod)
J.R. Smith says he got benched 9 seconds into guarding Kobe Bryant as an NBA rookie
“Crazy because in shootaround, we going through walkthroughs, doing plays and shit. Bryon Scott is trying to explain the triangle and where Kobe going to be at and his moves and shit”
“He was like, ‘He's going to go two dribbles right baseline. He gonna pump fake, stay down. He's going to pump fake again. Stay down.’ I'm like, ‘All right’”
“We go through another play. He tell me, ‘He going to go two dribbles right, pump fake, stay down, pump fake, stay down, and then make him pass it out. Worst case, he'll take a tough shot over top of you. We can live with that.’ I’m like, ‘All right’”
“We go over another play. I was like, ‘Yo, bro, if you tell me he about to go two dribbles right and pump fake and then pump fake... I got it. All right.’ ‘He do it and your ass go for it, I'm taking you out’”
“I get in the game. I swear to God bro. I wasn't in the game nine seconds. When I tell you this man went two dribbles right. But the way he took his two dribbles, I'm thinking he going to the cup for sure”
“This motherfucker pump fake. Jump. Boop. Swish. Beep. Sub. He took me right out”
Draymond Green says basketball is no longer a poor kid's game: “It's a rich kid's game”
“I didn't learn how to do a proper individual workout till I got to college. Growing up I'm going to hoop. Where's the nearest run. Drop me off, I'll play all day. That's what we did. We hooped all day. I think there's a huge benefit to that because you just learn to see the game”
“It's different when somebody just putting you in a position to tell you to do this move. How do you use your creativity? How do you learn if somebody just say do this? How do you know what your game is if you never tap into it and just figure it out”
“I think there's a time and place for a trainer and I think with where the game has gone, you need those resources in order to be successful”
“I feel like basketball used to be a poor man's game. Poor kids played it. We were poor. We had nothing and it was our way out. Basketball is not a poor kid's game no more. Basketball is a rich kid game”
“The days of seeing LeBron James from Akron, Ohio, from a single mom, those days are numbered. Because if you don't have the resources these days, you can't make it. But that’s also why you don't see as great basketball as you did before, because there's no imagination”
“Everybody's doing the same thing, playing the same way. I think a lot of that is due sometimes to having trainers. You just become a carbon copy of somebody else the trainer created”