No sooner does Carmelo Anthony come back from a 15-day suspension than Kobe Bryant goes to work on his own suspension, once again pounding defenders in the face with his elbows. In a recently published photograph on Foxsports Kobe is shown in an extremely agitated state toward Phil Jackson while coming off the court. Son, if you're not going to listen to the man with 9 rings you have a long way to go as a basketball player. I don't care if he has Zero rings. And who could forget Darius Miles getting in the face of Portland coach Maurice Cheeks. Maurice Cheeks? The defense shredding / defense playing point man who led teams to NBA Championships? And Darius Who? is going to tell Cheeks what the game's about?
It's serious enough when you have a slew of NBA High School players & College dropouts who don't even have the words defense & fundamentals in their vocabulary, but with the fans, media & almighty dollar(s) sending the message to kids in the NBA that it's all about them these all-about-me players will rarely ever grasp that basketball is a team sport - on both ends of the floor. For every Josh Howard, Tim Duncan, Robert Horry, Mike Bibby & Eric Snow who know how to play the game you have 10 or 20 guys in today's NBA who don't know how to play basketball - & that much more so with the kids.
Yeah, I was too stupid to listen to my coach too while playing the game in High School. If you won't listen to your coach so you can learn how to play basketball right you don't have any business being in the NBA. I don't care if you have more skills than Micheal Ray Richardson. People are getting tired of wannabe primadonnas mucking up the NBA. And tired of the disgrace that high school kids / college dropouts in particular have brought on the NBA. Bring on the NBA age limit, & the older the better.
[And speaking of Zen, is it me, or does a very possibly mythological figure named Buddha get most of the credit for Phil Jackson's success - while his mentor from his playing days, old school master/ N.Y. Knicks Championship coach Red Holzman gets virtually no credit].