CrushAlot wrote:

Vmart wrote:I don't know about you guys but I really don't care to much for JR Smith. He is being model player in Cleveland if he were here he would be hanging in clubs drinking getting high and what not. That is not a professional player.

This. And somehow it is Melo's fault?

Maybe a player should have gotten in JR's face. I expect some guys on the team must of known what Smith was doing, and I always thought that Smith and Anthony had a good relationship.

You can never underestimate the importance and impact of a good leader on your team. Don't think for a second that having Kidd and some of the other older guys on the team a few years ago didn't have an impact on Smith.

Bird, Magic, Jordan, James, and even a quiet guy like Duncan, were/are leaders, and it takes more than statistics of make you a leader.

Don't expect that JR is tying shoelaces these days.

TripleThreat wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:I said as much it early on, Melo clearly isn't the leader that LeBron has become...

Personally I think both are gigantic idiots. Both are insulated in the press for a couple of general reasons.

1) They do have sponsors, major corporations behind them looking out for their interests, those sponsors buy ad time on the major networks and major magazines and such, and thus, the media involved with those networks aren't looking to piss off the hand that feeds them. Someone writes something negative about LBJ a little too much or some analyst rips him on TV a little too much, LBJ cries to his agent, who cries to Nike, who cries to the NBA, who goes back to said network and tells everyone to shut up. Corporate monkeys don't want to rock the boat on those big advertising dollars that pays everyone's salaries and crap trickles downhill until everyone gets muzzled.

2) The majority of the current sports media in the western world is white. The majority of NBA players are American borned and raised black guys. If there's one thing young black men are taught by experience is that whenever you do something that should get you punched in the face for merit, you can always safely hide behind the race card and minimize the actual damage. Just say people hate you because you are black, instead of the fact that you might just be a worthless POS ( Stephen Jackson for one) or a rapist ( Kobe Bryant) or a murderer ( Ray Lewis) or number of total jackoffs out there who happen to be good at jamming a ball through a little hoop or running fast across a field.

LeBron James isn't some magical leader and genius. He's still the same dumb POS who decided The Decision was a good idea. I mean how ignorant do you have to be, even with the No Father Raised Me Card and I'm Just 25 And So Famous Card, to piss on your home city so badly that you had to essentially go back with all the pomp and show ponies and mirrors just to not look like a gigantic ******* the rest of your career?

The only thing smarter about LBJ is now he lets Nike and Rich Paul do the talking for him. LBJ isn't a better leader, he's a better player and thus a more powerful de facto GM. If you want a new contract and you want to stay on the team and you want to get paid, then you better make LBJ happy. That's it. Nothing happens now in Cleveland unless LBJ wants it to happen. JR Smith isn't in shock and awe of some great leader, he just knows he wants to get paid again, and being on LBJ's good side is the way to do it so he's going to play the way LBJ wants him to play.

Melo is also an idiot, just an idiot who is not as talented and thus is less powerful as a defacto GM, since his team loses more because Melo does less to help said team win. Melo has the power to drive off a Lin or Chandler or get a Pringles fired, but he probably didn't have the power to get JR Smith paid even if JR Smith was doing his typical low IQ doofus on and off the court act. When you lose a game, and you show in a stupid hat and talking about how you want to some kind of black business mogul and end up looking like a black Willy Wonka wannabe, IMHO, you are a gigantic idiot and a piss poor team leader.

LeBron James can do more to help you win, but he puts himself into bad positions to have to do too much because he's really a lousy de facto GM most of the time. ( Hey dummy, when you want to go Super Friends on the Heat, how about being friends first with a rim protecting pivot so you and Bosh don't get crushed each night in the paint?) If the Cavs didn't have the asset base to cover up for LBJ's bad GM work early on, if they couldn't afford to get Mozgov, they'd be totally horse ****ed now.

To me, trying to compare Melo and LBJ over their "leadership" is like trying to compare the upside over a choice of getting

1) A free blowjob from a chick with chipped teeth who is HIV positive

or

2) A free blowjob from a chick with chipped teeth who has herpes

Some people will just be excited by the idea of a blowjob, no thought to long term consequences.
Some people will say hey at least I don't see any cold sores.
Some people, very few, will just implicitly understand that no blowjob is ever free

I guess we should be grateful that you didn't start using the N word. We're talking about leadership and you're trying to make it about race. LeBron has made some dumb moves in his career, I pointed out one of them yesterday, but to call a 4 time MVP, 2 time finals MVP, the best PG in the league (when he wants to be), dumb, thats ridiculous. Irving, Mosgov, are having career seasons, JR and Shump are playing their best ball in some time, who should the credit go to, David Blatt?

Lebron is a distributer in the mold of Magic Johnson.

What he does moving from Clevelend to Miami and back is not a basketball discussion.

WaltLongmire wrote:

CrushAlot wrote:

Vmart wrote:I don't know about you guys but I really don't care to much for JR Smith. He is being model player in Cleveland if he were here he would be hanging in clubs drinking getting high and what not. That is not a professional player.

This. And somehow it is Melo's fault?

Maybe a player should have gotten in JR's face. I expect some guys on the team must of known what Smith was doing, and I always thought that Smith and Anthony had a good relationship.

You can never underestimate the importance and impact of a good leader on your team. Don't think for a second that having Kidd and some of the other older guys on the team a few years ago didn't have an impact on Smith.

Bird, Magic, Jordan, James, and even a quiet guy like Duncan, were/are leaders, and it takes more than statistics of make you a leader.

Don't expect that JR is tying shoelaces these days.

Walt I agree with you. This is JR being JR new place lay low and just when you least expect it. You know how it goes with JR. He can't be trusted. Remember the old guys on the Knicks kept it together and when the playoffs started after the elbow to Terry it was all down hill with JR.

Lebron is the best player in the league. Melo when healthy is in the discussion for top 10. Two years ago he wasnt in the discussion then either, but he was closer than he is now, which is injured so this is kind of silly

fishmike wrote:Is JR playing better than he did 2 years ago when he was the #2 scorer on a 54 win team and won 6th man? that was inspite of Melo I assume...

Lebron is the best player in the league. Melo when healthy is in the discussion for top 10. Two years ago he wasnt in the discussion then either, but he was closer than he is now, which is injured so this is kind of silly

It was reported in more than one place that the biggest influence on JR that season was KT and Sheed, they were credited with keeping JR's head in the game. When they both were lost for the season, JR started falling back on bad habits, nevermind the off the court stuff. Its not about JR playing well in spite of Melo, its more about who he was listening to. We know who has his ear in Cleveland.

TripleThreat wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:Would they have played this way if they had been traded to another team? I seriously doubt it. Leaders inspire others and thats what LeBron has been doing in Cleveland.

The discussion of Bill Belichick is to discuss how someone in pro sports can wear many hats, and be deficient at one aspect of the game but overwhelming in another to compensate for their clear weaknesses.

You want to push a "leader inspiring others" narrative. That's fine. It's your opinion, you have a right to it.

I'll push an overwhelming talent who can change the trajectory of any NBA franchise because he's simply that much better than just about every other player, and leadership isn't even a factor. And that Shumpert and JR Smith are simply the type of players who are "frontrunners" They'll put out effort when it suits their agendas and that has very little to do with James. Those dudes no longer have the excuse of the Knicks as dysfunctional franchise to protect their lack of effort, they want to get paid and playing hard is the way to do it now. That's my opinion and I have my right to it as well.

Let's just agree to disagree on it.

I agree those players are frontrunners. But I think your point about Lebron being genetically gifted pond scum was way overstated. His talent would be useless if he didn't have the mindset to be a solid player fundamentally. Leadership by example counts for a hell of a lot when you're the best player on the floor. If Lebron was just a ball hog, then he wouldn't have won any rings. I think is more of a leader than you credit him for. He's also probably a spoiled brat prima donna too. The decision was crap. He may be pond scum, but he still gets some credit from me for wanted to play decent basketball. Comparing him to Melo is unfair really. Melo is truly a full-scale douche. At least Lebron plays winning basketball.

TripleThreat wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:I said as much it early on, Melo clearly isn't the leader that LeBron has become...

Personally I think both are gigantic idiots. Both are insulated in the press for a couple of general reasons.

1) They do have sponsors, major corporations behind them looking out for their interests, those sponsors buy ad time on the major networks and major magazines and such, and thus, the media involved with those networks aren't looking to piss off the hand that feeds them. Someone writes something negative about LBJ a little too much or some analyst rips him on TV a little too much, LBJ cries to his agent, who cries to Nike, who cries to the NBA, who goes back to said network and tells everyone to shut up. Corporate monkeys don't want to rock the boat on those big advertising dollars that pays everyone's salaries and crap trickles downhill until everyone gets muzzled.

2) The majority of the current sports media in the western world is white. The majority of NBA players are American borned and raised black guys. If there's one thing young black men are taught by experience is that whenever you do something that should get you punched in the face for merit, you can always safely hide behind the race card and minimize the actual damage. Just say people hate you because you are black, instead of the fact that you might just be a worthless POS ( Stephen Jackson for one) or a rapist ( Kobe Bryant) or a murderer ( Ray Lewis) or number of total jackoffs out there who happen to be good at jamming a ball through a little hoop or running fast across a field.

LeBron James isn't some magical leader and genius. He's still the same dumb POS who decided The Decision was a good idea. I mean how ignorant do you have to be, even with the No Father Raised Me Card and I'm Just 25 And So Famous Card, to piss on your home city so badly that you had to essentially go back with all the pomp and show ponies and mirrors just to not look like a gigantic ******* the rest of your career?

The only thing smarter about LBJ is now he lets Nike and Rich Paul do the talking for him. LBJ isn't a better leader, he's a better player and thus a more powerful de facto GM. If you want a new contract and you want to stay on the team and you want to get paid, then you better make LBJ happy. That's it. Nothing happens now in Cleveland unless LBJ wants it to happen. JR Smith isn't in shock and awe of some great leader, he just knows he wants to get paid again, and being on LBJ's good side is the way to do it so he's going to play the way LBJ wants him to play.

Melo is also an idiot, just an idiot who is not as talented and thus is less powerful as a defacto GM, since his team loses more because Melo does less to help said team win. Melo has the power to drive off a Lin or Chandler or get a Pringles fired, but he probably didn't have the power to get JR Smith paid even if JR Smith was doing his typical low IQ doofus on and off the court act. When you lose a game, and you show in a stupid hat and talking about how you want to some kind of black business mogul and end up looking like a black Willy Wonka wannabe, IMHO, you are a gigantic idiot and a piss poor team leader.

LeBron James can do more to help you win, but he puts himself into bad positions to have to do too much because he's really a lousy de facto GM most of the time. ( Hey dummy, when you want to go Super Friends on the Heat, how about being friends first with a rim protecting pivot so you and Bosh don't get crushed each night in the paint?) If the Cavs didn't have the asset base to cover up for LBJ's bad GM work early on, if they couldn't afford to get Mozgov, they'd be totally horse ****ed now.

To me, trying to compare Melo and LBJ over their "leadership" is like trying to compare the upside over a choice of getting

1) A free blowjob from a chick with chipped teeth who is HIV positive

or

2) A free blowjob from a chick with chipped teeth who has herpes

Some people will just be excited by the idea of a blowjob, no thought to long term consequences.
Some people will say hey at least I don't see any cold sores.
Some people, very few, will just implicitly understand that no blowjob is ever free

What a horrible post.

GetThePipe wrote:JR told you he stopped clubbing and getting high in Cleveland because there's no scene for that out there. Ball is life now. Lebron didn't make him stop smoking weed, he can't even get Love to do what he wants.

As soon as JR downloads the app called The Akron Weed Delivery Man he is going to relapse faster than a Naomi Campbell left hook.

TripleThreat wrote:

TeamBall wrote:

If there's one thing young black men are taught by experience is that whenever you do something that should get you punched in the face for merit, you can always safely hide behind the race card and minimize the actual damage. Just say people hate you because you are black, instead of the fact that you might just be a worthless POS ( Stephen Jackson for one) or a rapist ( Kobe Bryant) or a murderer ( Ray Lewis) or number of total jackoffs out there who happen to be good at jamming a ball through a little hoop or running fast across a field.

Well this is nice. Can I ask you: when did any of those 3 even use the race card during their ordeals? Or did you just choose 3 black guys you didn't like off the top of your head? I would be happy to admit I'm wrong (about them, not the race card thing) if it turns out they did.

****

http://originalpeople.org/kobe-bryant-racism-2004-rape-trial/

Kobe’s Lawyers Suggest Racism
Published January 24, 2004

Associated Press

EAGLE, COLO. – Kobe Bryant‘s (search) defense team raised the issue of race in court Friday, saying black men have long been falsely accused of rape by white women.

Attorney Pamela Mackey (search), who has angered victims’ advocates with her attempts to undermine the credibility of Bryant’s 19-year-old accuser, raised the race issue during a hearing that will help determine whether the woman’s medical history can be used against her at trial.

Even as the defense pressed for access to the woman’s medical history, it also asked the judge to seal a tape of Bryant’s police interrogation because the basketball star made “intensely personal” statements to detectives.

They did not detail what Bryant said, but argued that his privacy rights should be protected just as much as those of his alleged victim.

It was the third appearance before the trial judge for the Los Angeles Lakers (search) star, who faces four years to life in prison or 20 years to life on probation if convicted of felony sexual assault. Bryant, 25, has said he had consensual sex with the employee of a mountain resort last June.

The comment from Mackey came during a squabble over the notes of a rape crisis center worker who sat in on a police interview with Bryant’s accuser. The defense wants access to the notes.

Inga Causey, attorney for the Resource Center of Eagle County, said releasing more details about the woman would discourage rape victims from coming forward. She said such assault reports dropped in Florida after William Kennedy Smith (search) was acquitted of sexual assault — a case in which his accuser’s medical history was targeted by defense attorneys.

Mackey, however, urged the judge to focus on the Bryant case and avoid the “political agenda of the rape crisis center.”

“My client stands accused of a very serious crime. There is lots of history about black men being falsely accused of this crime by white women,” Mackey said as several family members of the accuser watched. She did not address the issue further.

It was the first time defense attorneys have made such a statement in open court, though they raised the idea in a court filing last week. They have also said the woman, who is white, had a “scheme” to falsely accuse Bryant in hopes of winning attention from an ex-boyfriend.

Legal experts said it was inevitable that race would become a factor in the high-profile case.ffff

“They will give the jury a smorgasbord of reasons why the rape allegation was false,” said Craig Silverman, a Denver defense attorney. “They’re giving jurors a hook to hang their reasonable-doubt hat on.”

Former prosecutor Norm Early called it part of a “scorched-earth policy” by the defense.

“It’s incendiary and it will probably stick,” added former prosecutor Wendy Murphy, a professor at the New England School of Law. “This is just the beginning, the subtle steps, of what will eventually be a very blatant race-card strategy.”

***

http://www.tmz.com/2014/08/21/stephen-jackson-rap-song-america-da-beautiful-scarface-video/

NBA Star Stephen Jackson
Drops EXPLOSIVE Rap Video
...With Hip Hop Legend
8/21/2014 12:19 PM PDT BY TMZ STAFF
EXCLUSIVE

**WARNING -- VIDEO CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE ... LOTS OF EXPLICIT LANGUAGE***

NBA veteran Stephen Jackson says he's fed up with American racism and he's using Hip Hop to vent -- teaming up with a rap legend on an EXPLOSIVE new track... and TMZ Sports has the exclusive video.

The song, called 'America Da Beautiful' is an all out assault on racism featuring a guest verse from mulit-platinum rapper Scarface.

Jackson, who goes by the rap name 'Stak5' tells TMZ Sports the clip which targets Donald Sterling, The KKK, and racial unrest in Ferguson also deals with racism in the sports world.

"F*K racism and all racists. No need for it in 2014 or in professional sports," Jackson tell us.

Warning -- the clip is definitely NSFW with Jackson and Scarface using some very strong language, but Jackson says that's just how his hip hop is.

"My album is called 'My Life Not Yours,' I say what I want."

As far as anyone who might be offended with the video, the NBA Champion has only one opinion of you -- "You must be racist."

http://www.tmz.com/2014/08/16/stephen-jackson-ferguson-police-michael-brown-riots/

NBA Player Stephen Jackson
Ferguson Cop Dreamed of Killing a Black Man
8/16/2014 12:45 AM PDT BY TMZ STAFF
EXCLUSIVE

0815-steven-jackson-roit-getty-01Stephen Jackson has no doubt the deadly shooting of Michael Brown was the heinous action of a cop who harbored racist feelings and waited for the opportunity to kill a Black man.

Jackson, a 14-year NBA vet known for his community activism ... tells TMZ Sports the eyewitness accounts he's heard lead him to believe 18-year-old Brown's death at the hands of Ferguson PD officer Darren Wilson was fueled by race.

"You gotta be walking around holding on to that inside you. It had to be a dream of his to kill a Black man. Especially considering the head shots they say he fired."

Jackson says he's not surprised by the rioting because ... "When you lose someone like that it just reminds you of all the other people that you lost to this type of stuff."

He added ... the one positive he's observed is that it's not only Black people protesting. As Jackson sees it ... injustice is injustice, "It doesn't matter what race people are, they are going to react.”

*******

I can't find a source now, but I remember off memory seeing super attorney Ed Garland in an interview during the trial to imply racism was a factor in how Ray Lewis was being handled and treated,. And not to discount Lewis' open disdain and attacks on Peyton Hillis, Tom Brady and Tim Tebow ( notice they are all white?)

***

Shrug,

Some of you should just admit you don't like me. Just plain don't like me. And will nitpick anything you can to bring it to bear.

I would find it amusing though if personal disdain for me would cause some of you to openly try to defend the actions of murderers and rapists and a guy who helped incite the Malice In The Palace and turned a nightclub into his own personal shooting gallery.

Key to note, I do not dislike Kobe Bryant because hes black, I dislike him because he's a shotjacking narcissist rapist who throws his teammates under the bus. I do not dislike Ray Lewis because he's black, I dislike him because he's a hypocrite and a murderer. I do not dislike Stephen Jackson because he's black. I dislike him because he tarnished the game with one of the most pathetic and tragic displays in NBA history, in sports history period, and critically damaged in image of the game where shockwaves and changes still factor in today because of that incident.

****

https://screen.yahoo.com/cold-opening-linsanity-postgame-000000403.html

If there's one thing young black men are taught by experience is that whenever you do something that should get you punched in the face for merit, you can always safely hide behind the race card and minimize the actual damage.

How about you look at these guys as individuals instead of trying to use their actions to disparage an entire race of people?

And please don't pull that sh** where if I disagree with you it must mean I support people who commit heinous crimes. You're better than that (I hope).

And are you not going to respond to my other point?