NBA Players you want to play pickup ball with
by levi_mn on Sep 17, 2009 4:53 PM CDT
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Our compatriot, "LoveTo" wondered what a list of "NBA players who would be the most fun to play pickup with" would look like. He nominated Brian Cardinal. "TheH" opted for Kevin Love. "Boss10" picks Steve Nash. And sure, why not? So I decided to fire up a FanPost...here we go. Let's keep it to currently active players.
Dwayne Wade
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My teammates
Nash, KG, Dwight Howard, Ray Allen
by pagingstanleyroberts on Sep 17, 2009 5:00 PM CDT reply actions
Those two guys might actually be under the category of “Guys who I would intentionally miss to avoid their team while we’re shooting for teams.”
Agreed
On the court, KG might be the biggest punk in the game. He acts like a drunk 12 year old most of the time.
I think Nash would probably be the best answer. Kidd would be another. I wouldn’t say Wade, since my pickup games already involve guys who shoot the ball 30 times a game. I wouldn’t say D Howard, because playing a 7 foot tall guy in a pickup game wouldn’t be much fun. If I had to pick a lineup:
Nash; Redick; Sam Jacobson, Jonny Flynn and myself.
what?!
KG talks a lot of shit to opposing teams, but he is a great teammate. Every player in the league would love to have him on their squad.
Why is he a great teammate?
Sure, he’s a talented player and he plays with a lot of passion. But if I’m playing a pick up game, I don’t want to play with a guy who is just an ass hole to the other team, even if he is on my squad.
Where did this myth that KG is a great teammate come from? If Kobe Bryant yelled at Jordan Farmer and made him cry during a game, everyone would berate him as an a-hole and a bad teammate. If KG does it, he’s a “passionate leader”. If KG punches a teammate in practice, its just leadership. If Ron Artest did it, he’d be suspended from the league.
KG gets away with A LOT of stuff that other players could not and do not.
Kobe Bryant
doesn’t yell at his teammates? You are just proving your point wrong by saying that. The fact that you don’t think he yells at his teammates just proves that it is a fact that is glossed over by most. Shaq yelled at Lopez just this year. No one really cared about that and most people blamed Robin for it.
And Wally is a pretty boy punk who nobody was really sad to see go. And I haven’t heard about anyone being sad about seeing him go on any team since. Who really spends more time on their hair than their warmups?
Kobe does yell at his teammates
But does anyone think that makes him a ‘great leader’? Not anyone I’ve read or talked to. Does anything think Shaq is a ‘great leader’? Not really. The point was actually that when KG does things that Kobe and Shaq (among others) are criticized for, he gets praised as a “passionate leader”, which is nonsense.
Your personal opinion of Wally’s hair aside, I don’t know that he deserves to get punched.
That wasn't personal opinion
that was downright factual! ;-)
Shaq was the leader of the Lakers and the Magic when he was there and Kobe has been the leader of the Lakers since Shaq left. They were unquestioned leaders of their teams. I guess I don’t get your point. No one talks about how they make their teammates better? That’s just not true.
As far as I know, "we" don't know
what Wally said that finally pushed KG’s button too hard.
Just watching Wally over the years — on the court, on the bench, and in street clothes too — makes me sympathetic to anyone who wants to punch him out.
It probably wasn’t KG’s best day as a “leader”, though.
Yeah, I don’t have a problem with entitled punks like Wally and Rick Rickert getting the business from a guy who works 3 times as hard as either one.
by pagingstanleyroberts on Sep 17, 2009 5:21 PM CDT up reply actions
Chauncey Billups.
It would be fun to play against Earl Boykins or Nate Robinson because they are about my height/shorter.
Me, Shane Battier, Rudy Fernandez, Kevin Love, Lamar Odom.
The basic thing I would be looking for in a pickup teammate is somebody who, despite being a good player, tries to contribute to a victory without consideration to statistics. It’s no fun playing with guys who don’t care about the outcome, as long as they impress everyone with how many points they score. Also, they have to seem like relatively nice guys who won’t be too hard on me when I screw up.
Guys who play hard, pass well and aren’t chuckers are the ones I’d want to play with because I move constantly off the ball so I need someone who will be looking for cuts. This is why I mentioned Cardinal in the other post. He’s like the big doofy guy that looks totally harmless before the game starts (aside from being 6’7), but halfway through you realize he’s awesome because he’s a lights out shooter who plays 100% all the time, only shoots when he should and hits you every time you’re open.
Jennings: F*** the Knicks, them n***** is always going to be weak.
Me, Dwayne Wade, Lebron James, Kevin Garnett, Dwight Howard
One of things i do well on the court is pass, i get D-Wade, LeBron, KG, and Superman? What, murder? Is that what i hear?
If we're allowed to mix in some old school...
I’d pick Magic (showtime run and gun, lots of smiles), Larry Legend (the ultimate teammate), CP3 (little guy who plays HUGE) and Tyson Chandler (perfect for a run and gun; plus, I need the shotblocker – I left whatever “D” I had way back in my youth!).
Well, I did try to limit our choices to current players…otherwise, Magic and Bird are obvious choices.
Sorry...
if we’re going with current players, then gimme CP3, Chandler, K-Love (rebounding, passing, BB IQ) and Kevin Durant (beyond the talent, it just seems like he likes to play the game – even a pickup game).
Of course, I would have picked LMA, but I deem myself unworthy to be in the same gym with him, much less on the same court!
Sarcasm alert
I would take LMA, Oden, Roy & Rudy and I wouldn’t have to do a darn thing, ’cause they are GODS!!
(good thing I wouldn’t have to do anything, my knees are shot along with one ankle.)
Timberwolves - NBA champs 2013!
(used with permission - Wolf in MO)
by frankenhoops on Sep 21, 2009 3:38 PM CDT up reply actions
Maybe Steve Nash?
I dunno. Vast majority of players would be very scary to play against/with, me being a 6-foot-nothing PG with limited skills in everything [but I can rebound! Seriously! … I should be a foot taller].
I guess anyone that cuts a bunch, distributes, and can finish at the basket, which at the non-NBA level would be EVERYBODY. :P
I tend to dribble the ball waiting for somebody to cut, and then everyone stands and looks at me because I look like I suck, and then, well, even if I get penetration it’s kind of hard to create something 5-on-1.
Would be kind of cool to play against, like, Ben Gordon. Uh. Or … pretty much anyone really, heh.
I support the Tornado Release [See: Joakim Noah]
Yeah I just played with a friend's friend
last weekend and he was supposed to be really good (he was pretty good, 6ft that could dunk pretty easily and hit some open shots/finish a layup), but when I played with him on my team, all he would do is stand and wait for the ball. It annoyed me cuz he would have been a great player to pass the ball to while he is cutting, but I didn’t know him well enough to tell him to move his @$$.
In general with pickup games:
-The people who cut can’t finish. [That’s me! Hooray!!! … Well, at least I try.]
-The people who finish don’t cut.
I support the Tornado Release [See: Joakim Noah]
I know I'm gonna get killed for this...
… but I don’t just want to play with LeBron and company, even though they set the bar for the game at present. When I saw the prompt for this, I thought first of those guys in the game who are the absolute BEST you can possibly imagine a pick-up game player in the gym being. Hence, Kevin Love. Take away a little height, and we’ve all seen glimpses of Kevin Love in our pick-up games. The guy with too much back hair and rec specs who just does everything right, boxes out like mad, crashes the boards and makes you work more than you should, and makes great passes to improve his teammates’ play. Another guy I can imagine seeing in a gym near me (albeit in the disguise of some other old guy with two foam knee braces)? Luke Walton. And, yeah, I’d love, love, love to play with that guy, too.
`s OK. I thought of Luke too. I did ponder some on the sociology of why so many of the “fun” guys were melatonally challenged.
I know.
I thought about that, too, the second I recommended a second white guy in a league characterized by darker complexions. I think that both of my recs were based off of a single criterion— who in the gym is going to see me if I make a hard cut to the hoop? To me, that is one of the most aggravating features of pick-up ball. Energy spent in off-the-ball movement is almost inevitably wasted by the guy who dribbles the air out of the ball before jacking it up or passing it to another guy perched on the three point line, waiting to do exactly the same thing. I will say LeBron at his best is one of these guys, although — again — I think Love and Walton are probably two of the guys in the NBA playing way above their athletic potential. And that makes me happy. Ironically, if you would have asked this two months ago I might have mentioned Sessions. And that makes me happy, too.
Terrell Brandon pre-injury
could have set me up for a lot of easy buckets.
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