In an interview on the Stoney & Jansen Show, Lakers legend and Hall of Famer James Worthy, three-time NBA champion, talked about the modern NBA and its heavy reliance on three-point shooting.
Worthy identifies the trend of not going to college for more than a year as one of the reasons for the current game.
“Kareem had four years with John Wooden, Michael Jordan and I had three years with Dean Smith, Isiah Thomas had a few years with Bobby Knight. So we have all learned the fundamentals, and not only that, we have learned to live. To make ends meet, there are a lot of aspects. The guys coming to the NBA today are simply not solid from a fundamentals standpoint. All they do is practice threesomes, lift weights, get tattooed, tweet and go to social media.
So we cannot speak of a solid player, but of an athletic player. And that’s what’s happening to the game. A lot of isolation and mismatch research… Bill Russell once told me they had five options for a single action, something that is nowhere to be seen. ”
Worthy also has some for his favorite team, the Los Angeles Lakers.
“The Lakers I think have refused to build over the years… We’ve had some good players: (Brandon) Ingram, (Julius) Randle, (Lonzo) Ball. But we tried to win fast. In the last few years of Kobe, we brought (Steve) Nash who was a little bit older, Dwight Howard came with a back injury. We sold some draft picks to try and win right away and I think now they will have to think long and hard about how to build the team. “
“Look at Memphis, look at how Boston is playing right now, look at how Milwaukee has built a team over time. We need to create a system with players who have cohesion. We had it a couple of years ago and we lost it to try to win, to try to match what Brooklyn and other teams were doing with their Big Three. I believe all of this will disappear. The Big Three are an illusion. See what happened in Brooklyn, see what happened to the Lakers. Even if everyone has had injuries, they should still play better, or at least participate in the playoffs. These Lakers are embarrassing ”.
