Posts Tagged ‘Shaquille O’Neal’

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Shaq: No Interest In Magic GM Job

May 24, 2012  ·  3:11PM





HANG TIME PLAYOFF HEADQUARTERS – Well, that didn’t take long.

As soon as he was included in the discussion for the vacant general manager job in Orlando, Shaquille O’Neal has taken himself out of the mix.

The future Hall of Famer and TNT analyst released a statement this afternoon denying any interest in pursuing the position that came open with Monday’s mutual parting of the ways between the Magic and Otis Smith.

And this isn’t coming from any back channel sources or anyone else. It’s from the big fella himself, who said he has no plans of leaving the Inside set where has starred this season alongside Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley and Ernie Johnson.

“When I first heard about the vacancy for the Orlando Magic general manager position, I was clearly intrigued.” he said in a statement. “I was drafted by the Magic, I have a great love for the franchise, and I have made the city of Orlando my home.  Additionally, I have great admiration and respect for the DeVos family.  However, this is not a job I have an interest in pursuing.  I feel very fortunate to be with TNT and to have the best job in sports.  I look forward to many more years with Charles, Kenny and E.J.  I wish the best for the Magic and I am confident that they will select a great GM and coach.”

ESPN’s The Magazine’s Chris Broussard reported Wednesday that there was mutual interest between O’Neal and the Magic and that he could interview with them as early as next week. Barkley was on The Dan Patrick Show this morning and confirmed that O’Neal indicated to him that he had interest in the job and would be interviewing with the franchise that drafted him.

But all of that comes crashing down with O’Neal’s statement that he has no plans of giving up his seat on the set at TNT.

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Posted in 2012 NBA Playoffs, HT News / Comments (80) /

Hang Time Podcast (Episode 80) With Evan Dunlap Of Orlando Pinstriped Post

May 23, 2012  ·  10:03PM

HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – With the eyes of the basketball-loving public focused squarely on the playoffs and who will emerge from the Eastern Conference semifinals, we decided to take a mini-detour this week on the Hang Time Podcast.

With all the news coming out of Orlando, we simply could not let an opportunity to dig a little deeper into the goings on down there slip away.

So we turned to our good friend of the program Evan Dunlap, the founder and managing editor of the Orlando Pinstriped Post blog, which covers all things Magic. We had to know if Dwight Howard was really behind the departures of both Stan Van Gundy and Otis Smith, as so many people believe, or if someone else is really calling those shots?

We also had to talk about the potential replacements for both Van Gundy, the coach, and Smith, the general manager. Names like Brian Shaw, Jerry Sloan and Phil Jackson, yes the Zen Master himself, have popped up on the short list of replacements for Van Gundy. Meanwhile, names like Donnie Walsh, Jeff Bower and TNT’s very own Shaquille O’Neal have popped up on the surprising short list of candidates to replace Smith.

(We first heard these rumblings about O’Neal being a candidate Monday night … talk about things getting interesting if the Big Fella were to return to the Magic after all these years.)

You get conversation about all that and more, we talk plenty of playoffs, flagrant fouls, suspensions and everything else with our main man Evan Dunlap of the OPP.

Check it out on Episode 80 of the Hang Time Podcast:

LISTEN HERE:


As always, we welcome your feedback. You can follow the entire crew, including the Hang Time Podcast, co-hosts Lang Whitaker of SLAM Magazine and Sekou Smith of NBA.com, as well as our superproducer Micah Hart of NBA.com’s All Ball Blog and the best engineer in the business, Jarrell “I Heart Peyton Manning” Wall.

– To download the podcast, click here. To subscribe via iTunes, click here, or get the xml feed if you want to subscribe some other, less iTunes-y way.

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Posted in Podcast / Comments (5) /

Lakers Have No One Else To Blame But Themselves For Latest Playoff Ouster

May 22, 2012  ·  10:14AM





HANG TIME PLAYOFF HEADQUARTERS – Before anyone else in Los Angeles points another finger at Pau Gasol, Mike Brown, Ramon Sessions or any of the other convenient scapegoats in the wake of a second straight second-round playoff exit, look in the mirror.

Stare long and hard and ask yourself if you didn’t see this coming. Didn’t you realize last season, when Andrew Bynum was heading to visitor’s locker room in Dallas without his jersey, that this team was fatally flawed and had no chance of overcoming its own internal obstacles?

Like an aging heavyweight champ who gets K.O.’d in his last bout and then comes back into the ring the next time without truly understanding what went wrong, the Lakers got popped against the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference semifinals. This time, it came by believing in their ability to overcome any obstacle with sheer talent alone.

Avoiding the sweep this time around shouldn’t ease the sting for Lakers fans, either. They knew (better than most) what they saw from this group during last season’s semifinal flame-out against the Mavericks exposed the team’s flaws.

Why would anyone, Kobe Bryant included, be surprised at Gasol’s struggles against the Thunder when you saw him crumble against the Mavericks?

You replaced a living legend in Phil Jackson with a good coach in Brown, but if Jackson couldn’t get this team over the proverbial hump in his final season, why would anyone assume Brown would be capable of pulling it off now? And Sessions was supposed to be the anti-Derek Fisher — a younger, more athletically gifted point guard capable of matching up better against the league’s younger and more athletic guards. He proved to be just as ill-equipped to handle Russell Westbrook as Fisher would have been.

This is a mess of the Lakers’ own making, whether they admit it or not. They are the ones that tossed Jackson’s hand-picked successor, Brian Shaw, aside in favor of Brown. They saw the cracks in their foundation and opted for some instant sealant instead of legit fixes.

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Posted in 2012 NBA Playoffs / Comments (217) /

Griffin Grumbling Is Too Soon, Off Base

May 21, 2012  ·  9:02AM





HANG TIME PLAYOFF HEADQUARTERS – Before we let the Clippers slip away into the shadows of teams vanquished on the road to the Larry O’Brien trophy, we have to slather a little praise on the “other” team in Los Angeles for a season full of entertaining basketball, complete with enough Chris Paul and Blake Griffin highlights to last a couple of seasons.

We’d also like to back the critics off of Griffin and his game, which is a whopping 159 games old with this playoff run included. That’s right, Griffin is just two seasons of actual on-court time into his career that has been scrutinized incessantly since he burst onto the scene as dunking machine/pitchman last season.

I saw the Inside crew discussing Griffin’s game (Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Shaq and Ernie Johnson go at it above) and felt the instant analysis of his long-term prospects was a bit premature. Shaq and Ernie have it right that it’s far too soon to assume we’ve seen the very best Griffin will have to offer during his career.

(Andrew Bynum‘s been in the league for seven years and people are still talking about him being a young player … and this is supposed to be it for Griffin?)

This was Griffin’s first playoff rodeo folks. Why would anyone assume he’s reached his zenith, that he won’t continue to improve in the coming seasons?

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Posted in 2012 NBA Playoffs / Comments (59) /

@NBA Twitter Feed Tops 5 Million

May 15, 2012  ·  7:14AM





HANG TIME PLAYOFF HEADQUARTERS – We’re still more than a few weeks away from some team claiming the Larry O’Brien trophy, but we can go ahead and crown the undisputed champ of professional sports leagues on Twitter.

The NBA wins in a runaway.

The NBA’s Twitter feed has a robust 5 million-plus, and counting, followers (5,011, 814 as of this morning). That dwarfs the National Football League’s 3,332,082, Major League Baseball’s 2,044,861 and the National Hockey League’s 1,166,503.

World Wrestling Entertainment also has about 1.1 million followers and the world’s soccer governing body, FIFA, has almost 800,000 followers.

It certainly can’t hurt that many of the league’s biggest stars — LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Dwight Howard, Steve Nash and many others — are all active on this particular social networking platform.

James, the 2011-12 KIA Most Valuable Player award winner, tops the league on Twitter as well with 4,495,705 followers. TNT’s own and recently retired future Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal has the largest Twitter flock with more than 5,598,557. They both rank among the top four pro athletes (active or retired) in followers.

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Posted in 2012 NBA Playoffs, HT News / Comments (7) /

Say Goodbye To The House Shaq Built

March 26, 2012  ·  11:27AM

HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – We thought it only right that we all take a moment to say goodbye to the house Shaquille O’Neal, Penny Hardaway, Lil’ Penny, our main man Dennis Scott, Nick Anderson and the rest of the old school Orlando Magic built.

The Amway Center, the house Dwight Howard built, is fully operational and one of the finest basketball buildings on the planet. But we’ll always have a soft spot in our hearts for the old place:


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Posted in HT News / Comments (12) /

Time For Dwight To Go, Orlando!

March 14, 2012  ·  7:59AM





HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – It’s time Orlando. It’s just time.

Dwight Howard has made his bones, saying he wants to stick around in a Magic uniform through the end of this season (so he can enter free agency this summer and head to the Nets and play alongside Deron Williams?) and finish this season — and perhaps his tenure with the Magic — the right way, so to speak.

“We’ve been talking, like I said, for a while,” told reporters after the Magic’s 104-98 overtime win over the Heat. “I told them I want to finish this season out and give our team, give our fans some hope for the future. But I feel they have to roll the dice. It might be tough, but I feel we’ve got a great opportunity. But they’ve got to roll it.”

Really? Roll the dice?

That leaves the Magic with one and only one move to make between now and Thursday’s trade deadline.

TRADE HIM!

It’s time for Dwight to go, Orlando. As painful as it might sound to read it (or hear it if you say it out loud), you have to move him. There’s no way you put your franchise or your city through the trauma of Howard walking out of town in free agency, the way Shaquille O’Neal did years ago, leaving a gaping hole in the heart of a franchise and city until Howard came along.

Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel watched this scenario play out 16 years ago, somewhat unexpectedly then. So he knows the devastation that is the aftermath of the world’s best big man leaving the city that adores him (while heading into the prime of his career).

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Posted in 2012 Trade Deadline / Comments (185) /

Orlando’s Original Big 3 (Shaq, Penny And 3D) Reunited At The Barbershop

February 24, 2012  ·  8:44PM

ORLANDO – It’s probably a painful thought for longtime fans in this city, but what if Shaquille O’Neal never left?

What if the Orlando Magic’s Big 3 of Shaquille O’Neal, Penny Hardaway and Dennis Scott had stuck together throughout the primes of their respective careers? What might they have been able to accomplish? How many more NBA Finals might they have reached?

Sure, it’s a dangerous game to play, even now after all of these years have passed. But you have to wonder …


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Posted in 2012 All-Star / Comments (23) /

What Did John Wall Do To You?

February 17, 2012  ·  11:23AM





HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – It doesn’t matter if it’s choosing sides for kickball during recess or the NBA Draft, someone always feels slighted.

But the No. 1 pick of the 2010 Draft was done a grave disservice last night during the BBVA Rising Stars Challenge draft on NBA TV.  When John Wall has to watch 11 other players, rookies and sophomores, come off the draft board ahead of him … “Houston we have a problem!”

If anyone thinks there are 11 first-and second-year players in the NBA better than Wall, playing better than Wall or that would get picked before Wall in a pick-up game anywhere on the planet, they are crazy.

I understand that the Wizards have been a frustrating group this season and that Wall’s reputation has suffered because of it. But this notion that he’s anything other than one of the best young talents in the league is simply foolishness.

Wall’s reaction to the draft snub from both Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley, who ended up taking him, was classic. His response, via Twitter, “Motivation!!”

As my main man Michael Lee of The Washington Post pointed out to me last night and again today, Wall has been ballin’ as of late, doing it all in the shadow of Jeremy Lin‘s worldwide takeover of the game (and on The Post’s website, there’s a Lin feature above anything Wall or Wizards, which should tell you about the chip Wall will have on his shoulder by the time he arrives in Orlando next week):

Although his numbers are down this season, Wall still leads all second-year players in assists at 7.6 and ranks second only to the all-star Griffin in scoring average at 16.7 points (Yes, amidst the league-wide Linfatuation with the New York Knicks, Wall has actually produced better stats for the entire season).

Wall had a slow start to the season, but over his past 19 games, he is averaging 18.8 points, 8.0 assists and 5.3 rebounds. In his past six games, Wall is quietly averaging 21.8 points on 50.5 percent shooting and 9.8 assists

Wall has every reason to show out in the BBVA Rising Stars Challenge. And this draft snub is all the motivation he needs to get loose. And I’m saying this after publicly endorsing Team Shaq last night.

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Posted in 2012 All-Star / Comments (26) /

#TeamShaq Rules Rising Stars Draft

February 16, 2012  ·  8:41PM





HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – With the 11th hour additions of both Jeremy Lin and Norris Cole, the BBVA Rising Stars Challenge draft got an extra dose of last-minute drama from the game’s honorary commissioner, TNT’s Kenny Smith.

By snagging both of the late additions to go along with No. 1 overall pick Blake Griffin and rookie point guard sensation Ricky Rubio, Shaquille O’Neal nailed his first ever draft (he showed up wearing the “Black Pat Riley” t-shirt) and Team Shaq goes into All-Star Weekend with the clear advantage over Team Chuck (Barkley).

Team Chuck has the sort of balance you strive for when putting together a team for the grind of an 82-game (or 66-game) regular season. But Team Shaq has the star power at guard, point guard especially, that you need to win games like the one we’ll see on All-Star Friday night in Orlando.

That didn’t stop Barkley from talking smack after he passed over Lin for a rookie point guard sensation of his own in Kyrie Irving with his first pick.

“It wasn’t very difficult [to pass on Jeremy Lin] to be honest because [Lin's] only been playing for a week and it’s been a fantastic week,” Barkley said. “But Kyrie Irving is terrific and he’s going to hand it to [Lin] and if Ricky Rubio wants some…he can come get some too.”

You’ve got to ride the hot hand Chuck. And no one in basketball is hotter right now than Lin.

Team Shaq didn’t even get the endorsement of NBA TV’s Dennis Scott, Shaq’s best friend and former Orlando Magic teammate. “As I go through the [rosters], at first I thought Shaq had the upper hand but he has too many point guards,” Scott said. “Shaq has more playmakers but Charles has more finishers…I think Charles may have the upper hand.”

Et tu 3D?

Being the long-range bomber that he was (and remains, to this day) 3D should know better than to bet against the guys who will have control of the ball throughout the game. Team Chuck’s bigs will need someone to get them the ball. All of the best playmakers other than Irving and John Wall will be working for Team Shaq that night.

Mark it down, we’re predicting a big win for Team Shaq that night!

Full rosters & a poll after the jump: (more…)

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Posted in 2012 All-Star / Comments (195) /

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