Lang Whitaker of SLAM joins me to talk about the Hawks, Allen Iverson, Chicago, Sacramento, New York and life at the SLAM Dome. As far as a breakdown goes, it’s probably 1/3 ATL, 1/3 SLAM and 1/3 everything else.
Plan your listening accordingly. Then check out some of his work over at SLAM Online and Hawks.com and be sure to tune into NBA TV every Tuesday night at 6:00 pm to see Lang on the network’s new show The Beat.
Additionally, drop me an email or leave a note in the comments of any other teams or subjects you would like to hear more about. I have some guests and topics in mind for the next month or so, but will try to accommodate any requests as much as possible. We talk about practice for the people, after all.
Kevin Arnovitz of ESPN’s TrueHoop and ClipperBlog talks Western Conference NBA with us today for the long-awaited Talking About Practice: Episode 4.
Kevin just saw his Clippers get smacked around by the Rockets on Wednesday night, so we start with Houston and that inevitably leads into some talk about efficiency and advanced stats. But we get back to talking about more general Western Conference stuff before long, focusing on the Lakers, Nuggets, Mavs and, of course, the Clippers. The stylistic reconstruction that has revived Al Thornton’s career is discussed and we analyze this as something that may fit into the ad-hoc termed “Josh Smith Corollary” that centers around a player forgoing the things on the court that he doesn’t do well and, instead, increasing his utility and efficiency to the team by concentrating on the things he does do well. Josh Smith has famously sworn off of three-point shots this season, and Kevin has seen a similar change in Thornton. We speculate as to whether other guys like Carlos Boozer are or can benefit from such self-realization.
We also chat about ESPN’s TrueHoop Network. Given my involvement in that whole thing via Eight Points, Nine Seconds, I’m admittedly not the best person to be asking Kevin about this stuff. But it is a big topic and an intriguing development in not just NBA circles but in the evolution of the sports blogosphere at large, as anyone who attended either of the Blogs With Balls sports blogging conferences this year can attest to.
And for all you 80s sitcom fans, we also talk for a solid 10 minutes about Benson. Not sure how that happened, but we were able to come to at least one thrilling revelation. I’m not going to spoil the amazing payoff that will surely be sweeping the collective mind of America come this afternoon, but let’s just say that one of the world’s great mysteries has been solved.
I would also be remiss if I failed to give a shout out to our boy AI. (That’s what it’s called in “radio,” right? A “shout out”?) There would be no Talking About Practice without you, Mr. Answer, and, frankly, I wasn’t ready for an NBA without you either.
MEMPHIS, TN—Though Allen Iverson has taken an indefinite leave of absence and even threatened to retire because of his current bench role, the Grizzlies organization maintained its stance Wednesday that the 1-7 team has five better players than the four-time NBA scoring champion and 2001 league MVP. “We’re really confident about the decision to put Mike Conley, Zach Randolph, Rudy Gay, O.J. Mayo, and Marc Gasol on floor instead of Iverson,” general manager Chris Wallace said of his starters, who combined have appeared in 10 fewer NBA All-Star games than the former No. 1 draft pick.
I know Halloween is over, and the title of this post conjures a brand of horrifying terror that not even Michael Myers can match, but, fortunately, the below video is only about his tattoos. (Although if you do really want a good Eddy Curry body-related scare in your life, just click right here and look at this photo.)
In this soliloquy he did for Mouth Piece Sports, Curry says that he got his first tattoo when he was 16 around the time when a lot of people were getting inked up because they wanted to be like Allen Iverson. Eddy was 16 in 1998 (which, by my math, means good news, Knicks fans: he should be entering his prime any day now), which was indeed the height of the era when AI was scaring white people by bringing the hood to the game where they love him for the braids and tats.
But Big Ed reveals his inattention to detail and fundamental logic when he tries to articulate the fact that, sure, he was inspired by AI, but, unlike other people, he didn’t want to emulate The Answer. Says Curry: “A lot of people were copying his tattoos and a lot of my friends were copying his tattoos. I’m glad I didn’t do that.”
Apparently, Curry either (a) is not actually familiar with the tattoos Allen that has, or (b) does not recall getting a Chinese character put on his neck and has not looked in a mirror since that happened. Because Allen has Chinese characters on his neck and so does Eddy.
I’m not an anatomy professor, but that seems somewhat similar.
Unfortunately, I’m not a professional NBA blogger yet. No, no. This nonsense is pure amateur hour. In my actual career, I’m a mailman. A letter carrier. A master of the postal arts. Il postino.
It’s not the best job, but I make it much better. I steal. A lot. I’d say that out of any given ten letters I pick up, I thieve seven or eight. And ya know who writes a ton of letters? NBA players. I was shocked too. But I’m talking, like, a ton. In fact, the only thing they mail more than letters are postcards. Yup. Postcards. They send em to everyone. They send them to each other. They send them to their coaches. People send postcards to them. And sometimes they even send postcards to themselves.
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