NBA Talking Points is a weekly series that runs down some of the top stories in basketball, and some that aren’t being talked about enough. Click any of the links below to jump to this week’s talking points, and click here for last week’s edition.
1. Byron Scott, Fired. New Orleans? Still Living On Mars.
As I type this, news has just broken that the New Orleans Hornets have fired head coach Byron Scott. The move comes a year too late, and it probably won’t change anything, but hey, maybe now they’ll play rookie Marcus Thornton more. The real problem with the Hornets? This is who they are. They’re not some struggling young team that just needs a new voice to set them straight. They are a bad team. Simple as that.
It all reminds me of Gretchen Mol. Remember her? Like a decade ago, she was pegged as The Next Great Actress, and had her face splashed across magazine covers like this one:
Read Article >4. Kobe Bryant Gets Better
He worked on his post game with Hakeem Olajuwon over the summer, and it’s already paying dividends. SB Nation’s Silver Screen and Roll elaborates:
As Bryant gets older, it’s clear that he’s not going out with a whimper. And that means changing his game. As opposed to someone like Allen Iverson, Kobe’s got the size and skills to play just about however he wants, and that makes him a perfect candidate to be a dominant post player. And the scary part is, he’s just scratching the surface. As the years pass, he’ll continue to master the art, and with characteristic savvy, could wind up being one of the tougher post-up guards in history.
Read Article >6. BYNUMITE.
From one jolt of energy to another… Who needs Rodney Stuckey or Ben Gordon when you’ve got a guy like Will Bynum coming off the bench?
Read Article >8. Getting To Know The Real Shaq
This sort of comes out of left field, but this week I wrote something about the Gilbert Arenas-Shaquille O’Neal love triangle, and I was reminded of something I learned last year: Shaquille O’Neal is quite possibly a terrible person. This is really difficult to appreciate when you think of Shaq. It’s not a cliche to say that he’s a larger-than-life personality; literally, he is larger in size than just about anyone you might encounter in daily life. But he can relate to the average person, and for that, we love him.
And sometime during last season, all of this crystallized for me. Just days after calling Chris Bosh the “Rupaul of Big Men,” he unleashed the following tirade on Coach Stan Van Gundy:
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