“What the hell Bill Simmons talking about the jazz need a point guard. What the hell position have I been playing all yr?”
- Utah’s Mo Williams on Twitter.

He means a good one, Mo.

“Get him the (bleep) out.”
- Coach of the Western All-Stars Gregg Popovich to his assistant coaches during the third quarter, when he called out a play, only to have Dwight Howard jack up a corner three instead.

Man I love Pop.

“S/O to all the strippers in the world. I know society y’all a bad reputation. It’s good tho I don’t judge. I definitely respect y’all hustle”
- Portland’s J.J. Hickson on Twitter.

Quote of the Year entry.

“Pimp Daddy wants to say Happy Valentine’s day to all my sweeties. I just LOVE you all”
- Utah’s Enes Kanter on Twitter, on Valentine’s Day.

These guys.

“It’s true, I’m in North Korea. Looking forward to sitting down with Kim Jung Un. I love the people of North Korea.”
- Dennis Rodman on Twitter, who travelled to North Korea as part of a new documentary series.

That age old feud with North Korea? Problem solved, Dennis is on the case.

“You have a friend for life.”
- Rodman to the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, before a crowd of thousands at a gymnasium where they sat side by side, chatting as they watched players from North Korea and the U.S. play on mixed teams.

Gee, the things he’ll do for a buck.

“Maybe I’ll run into the Gangnam Style dude while I’m here.”
- Dennis again on Twitter, apparently unaware that the pop star Psy is actually South Korean.

Oh boy.

“Second best league in the world.”
- NBA Deputy Commissioner (and Stern’s successor) Adam Silver on the D-League.

There’s loyalty and then there’s just plain stupidity. This is stupidity.

“I was obsessed with Jordan (growing up). I just watched the NBA and just watched black players. I wanted to play (in the States) and I told my mother I wanted to be black.”
- Minnesota’s Ricky Rubio.

I would have loved to have seen his mum’s reaction when he said that.

“They say I’m not coachable, but I think I’m pretty coachable. I do what coaches ask of me. Things like that, that I don’t like to practice. But who really practices during the season?”
- New Knick Kenyon Martin.

I wonder why he went unsigned for so long……

“We make up some trade that never was proposed in 100 years and suddenly it’s on ESPN.”
- Denver coach George Karl admitted that he once had a contest with his coaching pals to see who could get an outlandish trade rumor into the newspaper first.

My favourite one this year? Klay Thompson for Eric Gordon – that made no sense whatsoever on the Warriors side (you know, cause Gordon has a bum knee and is getting grossly overpaid on a max contract, and Thompson is in the second year of a cheap rookie deal and showing tremendous promise).

“I’m not being arrogant or anything by that means, but I wasn’t here.”
- The Clippers’ Chris Paul saying that the Clippers’ awful history never intimidated him.

Love the confidence, and he’s right.

What could you get on Michael [Jordan] about?
“That’s easy. He is so damn black. And he’s not the best-looking guy in the world. Why do all these women think he’s good-looking? If Michael Jordan was a damn plumber, he couldn’t get a date. Any guy got $500 million looks good.”

You and Larry Bird could go at it, too. What did you get on him about?
“That’s easy, too. He ain’t the best-looking guy in the world either. We used to call the Celtics the ugliest team in NBA history. [Kevin] McHale, [Robert] Parish and Bird? Damn.”

Tell me one thing you learned from being on the Dream Team.
“Don’t ever drink beer with Larry Bird. You’ll be carried home. I was.”
- Charles Barkley.

That’s classic Chuck.

“When I first played with Kobe — they call him the Black Mamba — but then he was doing like a little snake sound when he wanted the ball. It was crazy. It was crazy. It’s like tsssss, tsssss. Like fishing. Tsssss, tssss. He do that. Everybody tells you he’s gonna do it before you play him — like, ‘Wait till you hear him do this.’ And then he [does] it, and it’s like, what? He’s really a mamba. It sounds like some kind of snake.”
- Boston’s Jordan Crawford explaining the sounds Kobe Bryant makes when he plays.

I haven’t heard that one before.

“I’ve proven that, despite all the things that have been happening with the rebuilding of this team simultaneous to the uncertainty with my contract, I always made the right long-term strategic decision with respect to the transactions that were being made or draft picks that were being made.”
- Toronto’s GM Bryan Colangelo.

Amazing; what planet is he living on? Does he not recall drafting and overpaying Bargnani, acquiring and overpaying a declining Turkoglu, giving Calderon a $10 million per year contract, and acquiring and overpaying Kleiza and Fields when they had no use for them?

“I’ve been here three days, and I’ve already felt more at home than I did in Milwaukee for a year and a half.”
- Orlando’s Beno Udrih.

Yeah, it seems Scott Skiles has that impact.

“What have you pieced together? Have you made any moves? Have you made any trades to get better? You know all roads to the championship lead through Miami. What pieces have you put together for the physical playoffs? Joakim Noah is a great player. Luol Deng is a great player. But you need more than that. You have to put together pieces to your main piece. The players can only do so much. It’s up to the organization to make them better. It’s frustrating to see my brother play his heart and soul out for the team and them not put anything around him. Everyone is expecting Derrick to come back. If Derrick comes back, they’re going to sell more tickets. Is the reason for Derrick to come back to win a championship or make money? Right now, I don’t believe a championship. Everything in the NBA is financial.”
- Derrick Rose’s brother (and manager) Reggie Rose.

He’s bang on, in the sense that at some point the Bulls need to get Derrick Rose some help if they want to win a championship (specifically, they need another high quality creator to take the load of Derrick). But there’s nothing new here; the Bulls are risk averse (and cheap) and I’ve been saying that for years. And if I were the Bulls I’d be a bit worried by those comments because you absolutely know (or should know) that some of that has come from, or been discussed with Derrick.

“What you might expect. Being around the other coaches, being around the guys. It’s what I talked about in my book [Eleven Rings]. Coaching is about, “How do I get these people to play at their peak level?” Yeah, the X’s and O’s mean something, but you can get people to do that. And a lot of those guys have been hired. The Lawrence Franks and the Frank Vogels. Mike Brown was one of those guys. That’s not a knock. Those guys know how to coach the game. But coaching is much more than that. It is a spiritual quest. And if it’s not that, you don’t have a challenge, you don’t have a mission. Forming a brotherhood and trying to move it forward, that’s the part that I miss.”
- Phil Jackson on what he misses about coaching.

He’s right, just look at the Lakers; they need a psychiatrist more than they need a coach.

“The mask was the best defender I’ve seen this year.”
- The Clippers’ Jamal Crawford on briefly wearing a mask this season.

Sorry, but I refuse to drink the Jamal Crawford Kool-Aid. Feel free to come back to me if he’s playing consistently good ball in the playoffs.

“I’m such a dork, still. This is my 15th year and I still sit, when my wife’s asleep, I sit there and watch League Pass. I do it from sometimes 9 p.m. till 12:30 a.m., until the West Coast games are over. I was always a huge fan of Kobe. Obviously, he’s now on the declining end, like most of us older guys, but the stuff he does … They are never out of a game. When I get home, at like 11 p.m., I know the fourth quarter will just be starting in L.A., and I’ll sit down and watch him basically will his team to win with some incredible shots.”
- Dallas’ Dirk Nowitzki.

Cool story.

“For so many years in the NBA, they never had to do that stuff, and now they come up with all that concussion protocol crap. It’s not cool, but it is cool, I guess. It keeps people safe.”
- Dallas’ Chris Kaman on the NBA’s concussion protocol that was instituted before last season.

Make your mind up, Chris.

“It depends on what I’m shooting from the field. First quarter if I’m 4-for-4, I let it go. Third quarter if I’m like 10-for-16, or 10-for-17, I might let it go. But if I’m like 8-for-19, I’m going to go ahead and dribble one more second and let that buzzer go off and then throw it up there. So it depends on how the game’s going.”
- OKC’s Kevin Durant admitting that he sometimes deliberately botches the end of quarter heave.

Props for honesty, but Wow!

“Josh Smith thinks of himself as a max-level player, and I have no issue with that in the slightest. I do have issue with teams agreeing with him. These are the seasons that teams regret. Why they can’t see this, in the face of endless optimism about why teams think this time will be different, is beyond me.”
- Yahoo Sports’ Kelly Dwyer on Josh Smith.

I don’t usually quote writers in this segment but I think these comments are dead on.

“Batman, Transformers and Michael Jordan.”
- Miami’s LeBron James when asked who his childhood heroes were.

Interesting.

“What I do on the floor shows my value. At the end of the day, I don’t think my value on the floor can really be compensated for anyways because of the (collective bargaining agreement). I have not had a full max deal yet in my career — that’s a story untold. I don’t get [the credit] for it. That doesn’t matter to me, playing the game is what matters to me. Financially, I’ll sacrifice for the team. It shows for some of the top guys, it isn’t all about money. That’s the genuine side of this, it’s about winning. I understand that.”
- LeBron.

He’s right. A lot of people seem to have forgotten this fact – that he left money on the table to go to Miami.

“Maybe I should stop because it’s making a lot of people mad about what I do. They’re like, ‘Well, if you can do it in warm-ups, why don’t you [want to] be in the dunk contest?’ Stop it.’”
- LeBron on his pre-game dunking show.

Agree. Dude’s got enough on his plate and he doesn’t need to be saddled with saving the dunk contest as well (which has gone down the toilet in recent years). If for whatever reason he didn’t perform up to expectations then he’d get crushed by everyone. You are wise to pass, LeBron.

”Don’t take it for granted. He’s making greatness look easy.”
- Miami coach Erik Spoelstra on LeBron.

You bet he is.

“I got him League Pass, which wasn’t very smart, because now he can watch all my games and critique me.”
- Orlando’s Nik Vučević on his father.

I’m sure many people can relate to that.

“On a last note, I just want to say that I love my situation here. I don’t know what y’all sources or whoever’s making up these bull—- — articles about me getting traded to Denver and all these other places. But I bleed green, and I continue to do that. And if it’s up to me, then I’m going to retire a Celtic. So I just want everybody to know that, all right?”
- Boston’s Kevin Garnett leading up to the trade deadline.

Got it, Kev. But wouldn’t it have been nice to play alongside Chris Paul and Blake Griffin in LA and actually contend for a title this year (and let Boston get a jump on what now promises to be a lengthy rebuild)?

“If you look at their payroll, even if Dwight (Howard) comes back, you’ve got to ask the question: Should they amnesty Kobe? So I’m just saying that hypothetically. When I say amnesty Kobe, I don’t think they’d do it, but they’ve got some choices to make. Now, they’re in a big market, but they’re still limited. The Knicks, the same thing. Boston, same thing.”
- Mavs owner Mark Cuban on the Lakers.

He’s shit stirring but he has a point.

“Amnesty THAT”
- The Lakers’ Kobe Bryant responds on Twitter after dropping 38 points, 12 boards and 7 dimes in a win over the Mavs.

Gold!!

“They don’t seem to want to talk any trash. I say everything to LeBron. He says nothing back. He just laughs. There’s no banter back and forth. I guess it’s a generational thing. When I first came into the league, the trash talk was downright cutthroat.”
- Kobe Bryant.

Different times, Kobe.

“I think everyone has been drinking the Kobe pass Kool-Aid so they kind of stayed on the perimeter like the Red Sea. I felt a little like Moses.”
- Kobe on his huge dunk against Brooklyn.

That is pretty funny.

“It’s disgusting but my father taught me when your mouth gets dry, just suck the sweat out of your own jersey.”
- Kobe on why he chews on his jersey during the game.

Nice.

“I’m not a cry baby. I didn’t try to cry my way out of Orlando. That was never my intention, not what I did at all. I understand everybody thought it was that way because of what was being put out there. I’m not indecisive. I love this game. I play it because it inspires me, it inspires millions of kids around me, adults and all. I’m going to have fun while I do it.”
- The Lakers’ Dwight Howard.

Yeah, ‘cry baby’ isn’t totally accurate. Perhaps ‘lying swine’ does the trick?

“He’s definitely strong. He reminds me of a more athletic me.”
- The Lakers’ Metta World Peace on LeBron James.

Sure, Metta.

“I think the limited minutes of 30 is great for me so far. It’s really keeping me fresh, and I feel great.”
- New York’s Amar’e Stoudemire.

He’s playing some good ball and seems to be ok with coming off the bench, so props to the guy. But then again, for $100 million so he should.

“I think at the end of the day, you’ve got to stop your man. We have a great shell team defense. But I think at the end of the day, it’s you one-on-one in a battle with the guy you’re guarding, you know? You can’t just keep hoping for help and funneling to help–against All-Star players like James Harden or someone, they’re the exceptions. But I think we need to take a bit of saying ‘I’m going to stop my man,’ so we don’t have to get into help rotations and then all kinds of crap happens when you start rotating. Like I said earlier, our defense one-on-one is horrendous, 1 through 5, not just 1 or 2 guys. 1 through 5. We get beat it’s like, ‘Oh help, someone help me.’”
- Golden State’s Andrew Bogut after a loss to Houston.

He doesn’t sugarcoat it, and I love that.

« « Previous Post: Whats Doin: Sacre hones his craft
» » Next Post: Bogut’s back and showing flashes