Modern Basketball Quotes

You look at today, it's a different situation. You have a game that has been transformed into a game where almost every shot is either an outside shot - a three-point shot - or a dunk.

The 3-point line has changed the game so much. The day of the big man, unless you're extraordinary good, is not numbered, but certainly you gotta be a lot more versatile to play the game today. You gotta be able to really run up and down the court.

Marc Gasol, he's more of a true center. There are guys who play that traditional center role, but the game is also played differently now.

To be honest, I'm looking at today's game, and I put myself in that position and how I would benefit from the faster basketball, more threes, catch-and-go opportunities, attacking the paint with more space, that's what kind of gets me juiced up and riled up when I watch today's game.

The league has changed in so many ways. There are no point guards anymore, there are no centers anymore; it's all positionless basketball.

Basketball has turned into an offensive-minded situation. They don't play on both ends. They don't play defense.

Just seeing the progression, the evolution of the NBA game, I feel like you have a lot of big men shooting 3s.

I think basketball has changed tremendously and for the better. I think that obviously the game is better. I think the skill of the players are better, the strength, the overall athleticism, the teamwork involved. I think coaching is better. We have more exposure for our game than ever. You know, our sport has grown significantly in really the last five years. It's pretty amazing.

We talk about players of yesteryear, guys who could play or couldn't play, and I think it's ridiculous to try to even compare people... The things that you can do in basketball today that you couldn't even do then... you can carry the ball; you walk all over the place.

A lot of guys do the pretty things. Dunking, tattoos, earrings, sagging jeans. That's the league now. They have athletic ability, but they don't know the game.

Shooting is a lost art, but nobody wants to see nobody shoot all day. You want to see somebody break somebody off the dribble. That's today game, and that's what I try to do.

The NBA is changing so much. It's not like when I came up, with that old-school mentality that practice really mattered.

The value in having bigs that have the ability to shoot from the perimeter has increased and having bigs that have the defensive versatility to not only protect the rim, but to switch out and defend smaller guards, the value of that has also increased.