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Among Burks’ teammates at the outset with the Jazz were Raja Bell, Al Jefferson, Jamal Tinsley and Earl Watson, all seasoned veterans by that stage. “I learned how to be a pro,” Burks said, as he leaned against a wall at the Heat’s practice court. “That’s where I got drafted and my first two years I had a lot of vets, so they taught me how to be a pro on and off the court.” Now, Burks said there is the opportunity to pay it forward to the Heat’s younger players. “I try to show people how to be a pro, how I learned it,” he said. “So hopefully it translates.”
Raja Bell on Trae Young: Is there any sense of where the team falls on this? Because I saw something similar with the boy… Who’s the quarterback from the Jets, a couple of weeks ago… and then he came out with the media and got really combative, and you started to see when they put Mike White in that the team didn’t really have his back. There are situations, I guess this is a long way to get to this, that I’ve been in where a player is stepping up and acting a way towards a coach that is kind of a reflection on the way the team feels about the coach, and there are other situations where a player will act like that and the rest of teammates are like, “Nah, we don’t f*ck with somebody like that.” Sam Amick: I love the question and I think the answer’s pretty clear that the players, if they were picking sides on this, to be honest with you, they’d be on Nate McMillan’s side.
"It's a HUGE deal," former NBA player Raja Bell said of the international ball in a text with CBS Sports on Tuesday. "I've always said that FIBA balls affected my shot and other NBA players' shots tremendously. I HATE that ball! "It's lighter, feels smaller, different texture," Bell continued. "I mean, when the art of shooting is based on muscle memory, and you change all the factors except the rim size and height, it's going to be difficult."
StatMuse: Seth Curry showed up this playoffs. Highest career playoff 3P%: 46.8 — Seth Curry 46.6 — Raja Bell 44.8 — Kenny Smith 44.4 — Channing Frye pic.twitter.com/aKh557q9mJ
Raja Bell, who played in the NBA from 1999-2013 and squared off against Kobe Bryant countless times, spoke about the Lillard-Bryant comparison on the latest episode of ‘The Ringer NBA Show’ They both have that ‘killer’ mentality.“I feel like Dame is the closest thing to Kobe that there is in the game. I don’t mean that from the standpoint of the way they look doing it, I'm talking about mentality, where it is always in assassin mode type of thing with them. Their always kind of creating a chip. There is just always something to prove and you feel that when you watch them play, there is the respect that they feel like they have earned and they are not given and the greats have to do that, right? That's what keeps you on point and keeps you questing for the next thing. He is, for me, a problem. If I had to guard him, I don’t even know really where I would start. The range is what it is and he is shifty and he is sneaky athletic.
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On the topic of Bryant not passing, Raja Bell shared an incredible story on CBS Sports' "Kanell and Bell" podcast. Bell played with O'Neal on the Phoenix Suns, after O'Neal's time with Bryant had ended. While there, O'Neal explained to Bell that the Lakers had a signal they would use when they planned to stop passing the ball to Bryant because he was shooting too much.
"Shaq told me a story. We had a kid named Gordon Giricek on our Suns team, he had gotten there, and Gordon would go in the game, and Gordon was about his buckets. So Gordon would get in, and no matter what we were doing, no matter what the flow or the chemistry was, Gordon would be just, you know, shooting the ball. Gordon was my guy, I played with him in Utah. "But Shaq started saying 'hey guys, this is the symbol' (twitches thumbs downward) 'when I give you this, Gordon doesn't get the ball anymore.' And I'm like 'dude what is the background on that, where'd you come up with that?' And he was like 'when Kobe was young, he would be going in and just trying to get 'em, so the rest of us had a universal kind of code that if we looked at each other and went (gives signal) then that meant Kobe didn't get the ball anymore.'"
With Kobe Day last week, I have to ask: Is there a favorite Kobe memory you have? Raja Bell: There were a lot on the court. We traded a lot of elbows and a lot of smack-talking and whatnot, but some of my favorite memories are when I go back and we were skewing through the media at that time. I don’t know how Kobe felt, but I genuinely hated the cat at that time. I really didn’t like him. Then the coolest part about it for me was once the time had passed and I saw him the next time, we started to develop a little bit of respect. There was a relationship that started to develop. We never became besties or anything like that, but there was a time when I’d reach out and see if he needed anything or somewhere to be for Thanksgiving if they were in town or I’d ask about his family and just check in. I felt that was pretty cool. That was my favorite part about that whole thing. There seemed to be a respect level that we got to and when you can say you did that with one of the best players of all time that’s pretty cool for me.
The angst extended to the defensive side, too. Porter didn’t just arrive with new principles. He ran the veterans through exhausting fundamental drills — fire feet, blow the whistle, dive after the fake loose ball. “Hoosiers”-type stuff, things that’ll infuriate established, aging veterans like Nash, Grant Hill and Shaq during the middle of a tiring season. Raja Bell and Boris Diaw, two of the more unhappy and vocal voices, were shipped out in December for Jason Richardson. But that didn’t slow the brewing player revolt as the perennial West contender puttered through a disappointing season.
According to CBS Sports NBA analyst Raja Bell, a former Cavaliers executive, during Love's first year he was "as much of an outcast as you can be" and they even had a huge trade for him on the table. Bell recalled all of this in a discussion about Love on the Off The Bench with Kanell and Bell podcast.
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Raja Bell: "When I was in Cleveland. Kevin Love was as much of an outcast as you can be on a team. It's the dynamic of being in a locker room that's just culturally a lot different than you. I say that and I think everybody understands black and white kind of deal.”
Raja Bell: “There was an element of that when I was in Cleveland. They figured that out, they put it to bed. LeBron went to L.A. had these conversations with Kevin Love, but it was so bad that first year that I was on a phone call with Dan Gilbert and our whole brass and we had a big deal on the table to move Kevin Love in the first year and I was like 'Move him' not because I didn't think he was a good player. I just couldn't see them figuring out how to work as people together."”
On this week's Crossover on CBS Sports, former player Raja Bell lit into the Thunder players, saying it was "inexcusable" that they would fail to come to Westbrook's defense: "You are supposed to come flying across the court," Bell said. "You don't have to punch him, because that's a lot of money. But he should catch a forearm across his shoulder, a shove in the back, you ain't gonna knock down Russell Westbrook, the everything to the team I'm playing on, who feeds me, who makes me better, you ain't gonna do that and just stand over him and ice grill him."
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