The NBA has been blessed with several talented superstars throughout the course of its 75 years of existence. Many, in their own way, have revolutionized the game.
If you’ve been watching the NBA playoffs, you probably haven’t loved what you’ve seen so far as much of the games have been hard to watch as we continue to experience so many blowouts and just overall bad shooting performances.
During an interview Wednesday on the Stoney & Jansen Show, Lakers legend and Hall of Famer James Worthy was asked about his thoughts of today’s game and its heavy reliance on the three. Worthy said the NBA has been diminished by “the rush of guys not going to college” — or at least not going for more than a year.
“I mean, Kareem had four years with John Wooden, Michael Jordan and I had three years with Dean Smith, Isiah (Thomas) had some years with Bobby Knight. So you learned the fundamentals,” Worthy said. “Not only that, you learned how to live. You learned how to balance your freaking checkbook in college, there’s a lot of things. When you don’t get that, guys are coming to the NBA who are not fundamentally sound. All they do is practice threes, lift weights, get tattoos, tweet and go on social media. That’s it.
“So you don’t have that sound player; you have an athletic player. And that’s what’s happening to the game. It’s a lot of ISO and looking for mismatches. Bill Russell told me one time, they had five options off of one play. You don’t see that anymore.”
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Worthy was also asked about his former team in the Lakers after they missed the postseason.
“The Lakers, I think they have refused to build over the years,” Worthy said. “We’ve had some good players: (Brandon) Ingram, (Julius) Randle, (Lonzo) Ball. We have tried to win quickly. In Kobe’s last few years, we brought in (Steve) Nash who was a little bit older, Dwight Howard came in with a back injury. We traded away draft picks to try to win immediately and I think they’re going to have really think about how they need to build.
“You look at Memphis, you look at the way Boston is playing right now, you look at the way Milwaukee has built a team over time. We need to create players that have cohesiveness. We had it a couple years ago and we traded it all away to try to win, to try to match what Brooklyn was doing and what other teams were doing with their Big Three players. I think that’s going to go away. That’s an illusion, having the Big Three. You see what happened in Brooklyn, you see what happened with the Lakers. Even though everyone experienced injuries, you still should be playing better and you should definitely be in the playoffs. So the Lakers — it’s embarrassing and it’s unacceptable.”
Worthy played in 926 NBA regular-season games, averaging 17.6 points, 5.1 rebounds and three assists per game. He played in 143 playoff games and averaged 21.1 points, 5.2 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game and had a 54.4 field goal percentage.
