duncan228
03-21-2009, 11:00 PM
Baseline Cut: Magic makes point long before Twitter (http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/spurs/Baseline_Cut_Magic_makes_point_long_before_Twitter .html)
Express-News
Bucks coach Scott Skiles fined Charlie Villanueva last week when he discovered his forward had tweeted a Twitter message during halftime of a game.
This brought to mind one of my favorite inside stories of life in the NBA.
It involved Magic Johnson in his brief tenure as head coach of the Lakers at the end of the 1993-94 season.
The Lakers were dreadful in the post-Showtime years, and Johnson was frustrated with what he discovered was a less-than-serious attitude after he took over.
Danny Schayes was a backup center on that Lakers team, and he told me about a halftime tirade by Johnson that included a rant about players more concerned about making pregame calls on their cell phones — they were a big deal in 1994 — than about that night's game.
When Elden Campbell's cell phone rang in the middle of Johnson's rant, he grabbed it and fired it against a wall, shattering it into dozens of pieces.
Doc Rivers hadn't heard the Johnson story when I asked him Friday if he had a rule against in-game tweeting. Upon hearing it, he declared Johnson an even greater personal hero.
Rivers doesn't know Twitter from a bird's chirp.
“I thought Twitter was a grocery chain down south,” he said. “When I heard about (Villanueva), I thought he'd been ordering groceries, and if I haven't heard of it, I promise you (Gregg Popovich) hasn't. He's probably still working on Facebook.”
In fact, Popovich admitted he's stuck in the fax-machine era.
Then there's Jerry Sloan.
Informed that someone is masquerading as Jerry Sloan on a Twitter string purporting to honor the Jazz's venerable head coach, Sloan asked the Salt Lake Tribune's Ross Siler if it had something to do with farming.
Express-News
Bucks coach Scott Skiles fined Charlie Villanueva last week when he discovered his forward had tweeted a Twitter message during halftime of a game.
This brought to mind one of my favorite inside stories of life in the NBA.
It involved Magic Johnson in his brief tenure as head coach of the Lakers at the end of the 1993-94 season.
The Lakers were dreadful in the post-Showtime years, and Johnson was frustrated with what he discovered was a less-than-serious attitude after he took over.
Danny Schayes was a backup center on that Lakers team, and he told me about a halftime tirade by Johnson that included a rant about players more concerned about making pregame calls on their cell phones — they were a big deal in 1994 — than about that night's game.
When Elden Campbell's cell phone rang in the middle of Johnson's rant, he grabbed it and fired it against a wall, shattering it into dozens of pieces.
Doc Rivers hadn't heard the Johnson story when I asked him Friday if he had a rule against in-game tweeting. Upon hearing it, he declared Johnson an even greater personal hero.
Rivers doesn't know Twitter from a bird's chirp.
“I thought Twitter was a grocery chain down south,” he said. “When I heard about (Villanueva), I thought he'd been ordering groceries, and if I haven't heard of it, I promise you (Gregg Popovich) hasn't. He's probably still working on Facebook.”
In fact, Popovich admitted he's stuck in the fax-machine era.
Then there's Jerry Sloan.
Informed that someone is masquerading as Jerry Sloan on a Twitter string purporting to honor the Jazz's venerable head coach, Sloan asked the Salt Lake Tribune's Ross Siler if it had something to do with farming.