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Taylor Snow: Jaylen Brown has been named Eastern Conference Player of the Month after averaging 29.2 PPG, 7.9 RPG and 4.6 APG in January. He’s the 6th Celtic to earn the award, joining Larry Bird (7X), Jayson Tatum (5X), Paul Pierce (4X), Isaiah Thomas, and Antoine Walker.
The Heat at Tuesday night’s game against the Atlanta Hawks at Kaseya Center will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the franchise’s first championship, won in 2006. Expected in attendance for the night, which will offer a halftime presentation and other game elements of commemoration, are 2006 Heat champions Earl Barron, Michael Doleac, Udonis Haslem, Jason Kapono, Alonzo Mourning, Shaquille O’Neal, Gary Payton, Wayne Simien, Dwyane Wade, Antoine Walker, and Dorell Wright. Fellow Heat 2006 champions Jason Williams, James Posey, Derek Anderson and Shandon Anderson will not be in attendance.
Bob Voulgaris: I remember sitting at the Bellagio, and I actually got called out for this story on a Dan Le Batard show, funnily enough. But one day, Antoine Walker showed up—literally—with a garbage bag full of cash and just started playing. He denies it. He said it didn’t happen. But I can promise you it did. He walked in with the bag, and there was cash in it—no one knew exactly how much. Every time he lost a hand, he’d just reach down into the bag and throw more money onto the table. It was a $25/$50 no-limit game in the Bellagio’s upper-limit area. I remember paying someone—either five or ten grand, more than the actual buy-in—just to skip the list and take his seat at the table. Why? Because I saw the bag. I was literally standing behind him, looking over his shoulder, and I saw the cash. Everyone else thought, 'Antoine’s only sitting with like $5K or $7K—what’s the big deal?' But I knew. I saw the bag and thought, 'There’s a good chance there’s going to be more money coming out of that thing.' That was the edge.
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Jorge Sierra: Brook Lopez passed Michael Finley in scoring last night and is now No. 97 in NBA history. Also: Jimmy Butler moved ahead of Antoine Walker and Sam Cassell for No. 137.
Antoine Walker: Well, Shaq—Shaq pretty much had parties in every city. These were regular. Like, we probably missed—I’m going to say—Utah and Indiana. Maybe those were the only two cities where we didn’t have something planned. And you guys know why—nothing was planned in those cities. But in other cities? We still got it in. It was still happening—it just wasn’t planned, though. But I always say that I never partied and played so much. The thing—I’m telling you, the thing about that season was that you would go party with Shaq, but Shaq didn’t drink. So you didn’t understand—you had to know that you were going to have a great time with him, but he’s not drinking. So when you get up in the morning, you gotta deal with shootaround. Pat ain’t going at Shaq because Shaq don’t smell like alcohol, you know what I mean? Shaq is fine. You? Not so much.
Antoine Walker: We went to a friend’s restaurant, which was actually right down the street from the gym. We were hanging out, eating, kicking it, and playing cards. And we got into this heated Spades gambling game against two guys. They were not players. Next thing you know, they got me and Michael stuck—$100,000. Then it got to $200,000. Then he called home. Then MJ called home and got half a million. This was all cash too. This is a true story. All cash. Next thing you know, we got a million dollars cash—we’re playing Spades. I don’t know if you guys know how to play Spades, but Spades is not a game you like to play for that type of money."
Antoine Walker: "So, you know, the first hand—we were playing at this time, I think, like $35,000. So the first hand bids itself, so we would bet whoever got the most books—$50,000. Oh yeah, and then we would bet $50,000 on the game. So that’s how the numbers got like that. Thirty-six straight hours of it. They had us down $900,000." "They were Spades sharks, I guess. They had us down. But listen—this is the funny part about the whole story. We got all the money back—except like $30,000. Michael Jordan is such a competitor. He was like, ‘I don’t want to see them with that.
Antoine Walker: Mike ran out of gas. And we—I think they ended up winning like $180,000, something like that. $160,000–$180,000—they ended up winning, which is still good. They won, like, one. But you gotta think—we felt good about ourselves. We came back from $900,000.
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Jorge Sierra: Nikola Jokic passed All-Star point guard Kenny Anderson in assists last night for No. 65 all-time. He also moved ahead of Antoine Walker in scoring. He's No. 136 now.
Rick Strom of The Rick Strom Show allowed Antoine Walker to reflect on the harsh words from Ryan that defined his career, pulling back the curtain on what it was like to be on the receiving end of such ruthless commentary. “The simple fact of the matter is that Antoine Walker is a punk,” Ryan wrote. “Antoine Walker is such an arrogant, misguided, yes, punk, that there’s nothing either M.L. Carr, Rick Pitino, or The Pope could do with this kid.” “His juvenile mugging is classless. It irritates opponents – yes, Antoine, people on other clubs really do hate you – and it embarrasses the organization.” “He is a classic product of the modern basketball system. He is an AAU baby who has never worked at anything other than basketball in his life, and who has only met one coach – Rick Pitino – who has ever told him ‘no’ about anything. He is arrogant and clueless about his profession.” “He is merely a punk who can play a little basketball. Join me in wishing him well at his next destination.”
“I confronted him and expressed my displeasure in the article,” Walker recalls. “I asked him and basically told him to keep his comments to strictly basketball. [I told him] that I was not appreciative of some of the language that he used, and he’s taking it to a step that it’s going to get bigger than basketball. “So, we had this conversation, and I basically told him, ‘I’m gonna let you slide, but don’t come around me. You can write what you want to write. If I go 0-for-18, obviously, that’s your job; you’re gonna write it. But, keep any personal attacks of my name out of your mouth. You’re not allowed to have personal attacks of me anymore. If I go 0-for-18, you can write that. If I play bad, do what you need to do. I can’t stop you from that. But, you will never have another personal attack on me either.”
And Walker stuck to that boundary. According to Walker, Ryan never approached him for an interview again. “Obviously, when a media session was in the locker room, I’m pretty sure he’d be in the back, surrounded in there, and get comments,” Walker relayed. “We was in the playoffs a couple of years, so he covered us pretty close. I don’t know what he was writing at that point; I just kind of channeled him out. “But, as long as he didn’t say anything that I felt was taking personal attacks at me, was fine. And if I go 0-for-18, write what you’re supposed to write. I’m not telling you — you gotta do your job, but the personal attacks had to stop.”