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Michael Jordan, especially early on his tenure as owner, was hands-on. He would make himself accessible to players. Occasionally, he even reminded them of why he’s, arguably, the greatest player of all time. Gerald Henderson: We were getting our ass kicked for about a week. I show up to the training room the next morning. I was a rookie so I had to get my stuff out of the way first and he’s already in there stretching and he’s got practice gear on. I said “What are you about to do, man?” He said “I’m gonna come up there and kick y’all ass.” He’s in there talking s–t for however long. He comes up there and he gets into our scrimmages. He jumped on our second team. Our first team had like Stephen Jackson, Gerald Wallace, Raymond Felton, and — who else started that year? — Boris Diaw. On our second team it was me, Derrick Brown, DJ Augustin, maybe Tyrus Thomasand somebody else. He looked like prime Michael Jordan, without the quickness and the jumping ability. But it was just all MJ work. Talking smack the whole time.
The Charlotte Hornets today announced the schedule of the eight Anniversary Night games for the 2023-24 season as the franchise marks the 35th Anniversary of the inaugural 1988-89 Hornets season. Highlights of the schedule include nights honoring all-time greats Baron Davis and Gerald Wallace on Saturday, November 18, and Saturday, February 10, respectively.
The Charlotte Hornets will honor a pair of fan favorites during their 35th season. Baron Davis and Gerald Wallace will each be recognized as part of the franchise’s eight anniversary nights, the team announced Thursday. Davis’ moment in the spotlight comes first when the Hornets welcome the New York Knicks on Nov. 18, and Wallace is scheduled to get his recognition on Feb. 10 when the Hornets host Memphis. Each will have a halftime ceremony to celebrate and acknowledge their tenure in Charlotte and the first 5,000 fans entering Spectrum Center on each of those nights will receive commemorative posters of Davis and Wallace.
Students at Elvin Hill Elementary are learning all about making goals from basketball greats—not goals on the court, but in school and life. Childersburg native and former Alabama and NBA star Gerald Wallace visited the school on Wednesday, March 16 and spoke to Kara King’s fifth grade class about keeping promises. His main point was that hard work and effort will take a person further than talent alone ever will.
The event was part of this year’s theme at Elvin Hill, which is based on the book “I Promise” by LeBron James—a book that encourages kids to keep several key promises, such as to stay in school, do one’s best and never give up. The book is central to the concept of the I Promise School, a public elementary school in Akron, Ohio supported by the LeBron James Family Foundation.
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The full list of current and former NBA players invested in this round, including Deandre Ayton, Lonzo Ball, Will Barton, Devin Booker, Anthony Edwards, De’Aaron Fox, Pau Gasol, Aaron Gordon, Danny Green, Zach LaVine, Kyle Lowry, Kenyon Martin, JaVale McGee, Khris Middleton, Kelly Olynyk, Taurean Prince, Cam Reddish, Domas Sabonis, Garrett Temple, Isaiah Thomas, Klay Thompson, Thaddeus Young, Trae Young, Gerald Wallace, Hassan Whiteside, Andrew Wiggins, and Nick “Swaggy P” Young.
Adam Morrison: So we used to have an unwritten rule in the league and most teams did it. If your team played each other in basketball or football it's an automatic $100 bet. Gonzaga played Carolina in the Garden when I was, after my rookie year and we won. So I saw him at the Christmas party and I was 'hey you owe me a 100 bucks.' I was just kind of like joking and he's like 'oh yea, no problem', but he pulled out a f---, I mean, this thing had to be like eight to 10 grand out of his, you know his pocket and he's like 'here you go.' And then we are playing. We used to play cards on the plane... before all that crazy stuff in Washington went down. And we'd play booray and then we would play Texas Hold 'em and Mike, he barely flew with us 'cause like I sad, he wasn't the GM - wasn't the owner, he was a minority owner then but he flew with us on one of the road trips.
Adam Morrison: And somebody asked him like 'hey do you want to play cards with us?' He was like sure but then we were like, alright, you can't bring like $50,000 and just bet everybody off every hand. We're gonna cap it like $1,000 bet max. So him and Gerald Wallace were in a hand... There was like a straight draw flush draw on the flop and you can tell Mike was drawn to something. Gerald bet $300 into him and Mike literally goes '$300? I'd watch two monkeys f--- for $300.' Everybody was laughing... He was always cool.
Adam Morrison told @TomerAzarly and @RyanWardLA
— Blue Wire (@bluewirepods) April 13, 2020
about the time he played poker with Michael Jordan 🤣
(NSFW) pic.twitter.com/jNHLemUGA5
Dinwiddie's not the first player to use a cup as a cloak for food. According to Miami Heat center Kelly Olynyk, Gerald Wallace used to keep Skittles in one. Gerald Green, Olynyk adds, sips coffee "with like 12 creams and sugars" while watching games. Cleveland Cavaliers forward Channing Frye says he's seen teammates—he won't name names—eat full meals behind the bench. And even the sport's biggest stars, who also find themselves watching from the sidelines for nearly 30 minutes in real time every night, grow hungry. During a preseason game this October, cameras discovered LeBron James picking popcorn out of a paper cup.
King’s worst deal was for Wallace in 2012, a panic move meant to help convince Williams to re-sign in free agency that summer. The pick given in exchange to the Blazers turned into Dame Lillard, a point guard who is immensely better than Williams today.
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Do you miss playing? Gerald Wallace: Nah. I enjoy being at ball games, watching my kids play. That is more peaceful for me than playing basketball right now. Your reflections on the Bobcats? Gerald Wallace: We were an expansion team filled with players who you could say no one else in the league wanted. To go from there to where we were (a playoff team), that’s what makes it special.
Do you watch much NBA basketball? Gerald Wallace: Not really. I don’t watch much basketball until after the All-Star break. My biggest thing is baseball and football. If I have to sit on the couch, I’d rather watch those. But the intensity picks up after the All-Star break. That’s when I dive into the NBA season.
But Jared Dudley was also asked to name the worst dresser or most disgusting teammate from his career, and he immediately had an answer. “Adam Morrison,” Dudley called out, naming a teammate from the 2008-09 Charlotte Bobcats. “Remember Adam Morrison? He never took showers, he did the chewing tobacco that he spit all the time, and he wore the same three polos the whole year. This is a guy who made a lot of money, too, at that time. He was the face of diabetes, he was doing everything, he was on the cover of college games, he was [everywhere], and he was by far the worst and [most] disgusting.” Grant Paulsen then pointed out that if Morrison wasn’t receiving many minutes, this might not have been a big deal. “He was playing when I was there, that’s the thing, he was playing,” Dudley said. “He then tore his ACL, that’s when he didn’t play, but he was playing when I was there. He was playing like 30 minutes a game. Gerald Wallace had to force him to take a shower one time. Had to force him. Imagine that. Imagine forcing a grown man to take a shower. He should be ashamed of himself.”
Tim Bontemps: But when I think of him, I’ll always think first of how genuinely honest he was all the time. When you have a job covering sports, you quickly learn everyone tries to keep things in perspective during the course of long regular seasons – something that’s particularly true in sports like baseball and basketball, where there’s always another game on the horizon, another chance to forget about what went wrong.\ Wallace, though, never tried to do that. Instead, he treated every game like the craziest of fans on Twitter – giving effusive praise to his teammates whenever they won, and obliterating everyone, beginning with himself, after every loss.
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