no doubt, but there have probably been guys who posted up big numbers in assists, rebounds, blocks or steals who you didn’t expect to in SL.

i wouldn’t discount how tired OKC was. they played 5 straight games (Mon-Fri), flew from Orlando to Vegas on Saturday, and had to play a rested Grizzlies team on Sunday.

glad for Marcus though – hopefully he gets some time backing up Conley in Memphis this season, but i doubt we “missed out” on a player. would suck if they pick up Iverson and he gets buried on the bench again.

besides, if he helped us by playing more last season, we might have had the 8th pick instead of the 7th and got stuck with Jordan “Amar’e (yeah right)” Hill.

im surprised to see a.c green in that trade.
did he play for dallas?

According to the book “More Than A Game” by Phil Jackson and Charley Rosen, Rosen wrote, "Midway through [Jimmy] Cleamon’s first season, Don Nelson was named the Maverick’s general manager. “Nellie told the media that he didn’t want to coach the team,” said Cleamons, “and that he was only concerned with helping to make me a better coach. Nevertheless, Nellie was to criticize the way the team reacted to trapping defense. Nellie did quiz me about the Triangle, but his lack of enthusiasm was clear. He said that Michael was the only reason we’d won the in Chicago.” (this is an insight of how loveable/kind/terrific/___fill in the blank with words that you desire Nellie is/was)

“Nelson had barely settle into the command chair when he engineered a pair of trades: the first one sent guard Jason Kidd, forward Tony Dumas, and center Loren Meyer to Phoenix for guard/forward Michael Finley, forward A.C. Green, and guard Sam Cassell. Six weeks later Nelson dealt center Eric Montross, guard Jimmy Jackson, forward/center Chris Gatling, forward/center George McCloud, and guard Sam Cassell to the New Jersey Nets in exchange for a quarter of only moderately talented players -center Shawn Bradley, forward Ed O’Bannon, guard Khalid Reeves, and guard Robert Pack.”

What is true?

**Quotes were stolen on pages 157 and 158

Wow, I have to completely and utterly agree with everything you just said. ;-)

Michael Jordan busted his ass in practice and expected his teammates to follow suit.

hehe, don’t get me wrong. I never meant to say that practice wasn’t important.

I take back what I meant about the whole practice thing. I didn’t get my point across and ended up having my post be misunderstood. But this is what I meant about the whole Randolph/Nellie situation…

My point was that I don’t think Nellie ever thought Anthony Randolph was all that great in the first place. I don’t think he had a special plan in mind where he was thinking “Oh, i’ll bench him and inspire him to become great”. I don’t think Nellie’s the type to do that type of coaching, he fricken traded away a young Chris Webber over arguments with what position he’s gonna play.

We thought he was crazy for wanting to trade Randolph (Well it wasn’t proven whether or not he really wanted him traded), and some of us were complaining at the fact that he wasn’t playing Randolph a lot.

My main point is that I think that the whole emergence of Anthony Randolph only happened because Brandan Wright got injured, not because Nellie “liked what he saw from Randolph in practice and knew it was finally time to unleash the beast”. If Brandan Wright never got injured with the dislocated shoulder, then I bet Nellie would have kept Randolph on the bench for the rest of the season and probably would have included him in trade packages to offer for guys like Stoudemire/Bosh/Boozer etc. In that case, it wouldn’t matter how much Randolph practiced because Nellie would have still played Wright instead, but ended up playing Randolph since Wright was injured. When Randolph finally got the opportunity to play, he proved Nellie wrong and showed him how good he really is.

So i’m not typing this as an argument towards you, i’m not revolving this topic on team practices. I’m just saying that I think Anthony Randolph becoming better was due to getting more playing time because of Brandan Wright going down, and it ended up making Nellie look like a genius because it looks like he benched Randolph knowing that he would work hard and eventually become a future all-star.

If Nellie did bench him with a plan in mind, then i’m not gonna say that’s bad. If Nellie really thought of the idea to sit Randolph until he’s ready, then that’s a good coach right there. I’m just saying that I think Nellie never believed in him in the first place, wanted to get rid of him, but was shocked when he saw how good Randolph really was and is taking credit for planning it out like that when the only reason why he played Anthony is because Wright got injured. Other than that, I completely agree with you about the whole practice thing, I too think that practice is very important. I never meant to make my post about practice, my main point was about Nellie not believing in Randolph.

So it’s either…

- Nellie benched Anthony Randolph with a genius plan in mind to piss him off and inspire him to become humble and learn how to work for his minutes. Anthony Randolph has never really been coached in High School and College, he was always the man doing what he wants; Nellie thought it was finally time to teach Randolph what it’s like to be coached, and that he’s gonna have to put in work to be on the court. This motivated Anthony Randolph to work extremely hard in the gym and showcase how good he really is, there was no time to slack since Anthony had to prove himself worthy of being in the rotation. In the end, Anthony’s hard work finally payed off, as he showed his skills in practice and enlightened Nellie to the point where he felt comfortable with giving him more playing time. On the NBA court, Randolph played like the player that Nellie knew he would be, it’s just that Nellie knew that it would take time to get that kind of effort out of Randolph. Now Anthony is more humble, and was taught a lesson about how important it is to strive hard in the NBA. He could end up being an NBA All-Star, maybe even a Hall of Famer; whatever success he becomes, he’ll know that he can thank Don Nelson for teaching him how to work hard. It’s a lesson that every NBA rookie should face.

or

- Nellie was disappointed in Randolph from what he saw in him during team practices. Randolph would get owned by Rob Kurz during scrimmages, and everytime Nellie put Randolph in an NBA game he would be too wild and couldn’t keep up. Nellie realized that Randolph isn’t the player he thought he was, and was tired of Randolph’s attitude. He was ready to trade Randolph to help bring in an impact player, and decided to play Brandan Wright ahead of him. He liked Brandan Wright, but when he went down with a shoulder injury he had to play Randolph due to the need to replace Wright’s size and length. To his surprise, Nellie witnessed how good Randolph really was, and ended up being happy that Brandan Wright went down with an injury.

So yeah, I never meant to say anything about practice being meaningless or whatever. That was never my point. You just didn’t comprehend my post, which is my fault because I didn’t thoroughly explain my opinion which threw a lot of people off.

And age has nothing to do about it.