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Lights, camera, layup. The NBA Summer League is giving athletes another shot that takes place behind the camera. With assists from Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett and Hollywood power players Mark Wahlberg and Deon Taylor, the Summer League Film Festival is coming back starting July 17 in Las Vegas. The three-day festival will bring big-screen storytelling through 34 selected projects, spotlighting stories produced by NBA stars past and present including Nikola Jokic, Luguentz Dort, Tony Allen, Nate Robinson, Cole Anthony, Keyon Dooling and Udonis Haslem.
Barry Jackson: Couple ESPN notes: Haslem will be permitted to complete his upcoming studio assignments. He won't be yanked off the air. (ESPN hadn't planned on using Amazon-bound Cassidy Hubbarth in postseason but allowed her to do farewell Heat-Bulls game)... On Panthers tonight, Mike Monaco (who called UM-Syracuse football finale and is considered an upstart ESPN talent) calls Game 1 in Toronto with ESPN lead NHL analyst Ray Ferraro. (Sean McDonough is busy with Washington-Carolina).
Love also missed chunks of this season because of personal reasons, as his father dealt with an illness and recently passed away. Love is set to return to the Heat next season and has essentially helped fill Udonis Haslem’s leadership role.
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On a recent episode of “NBA Today,” Horry gifted an 8-year-old child George and his father Nick a new signed jersey after they lost one when their house burned down, via ESPN’s Malika Andrews. It was truly a touching moment for George, who also got to shoot around on the ESPN set with NBA analyst and former Miami Heat player Udonis Haslem. Losing a Lakers jersey may be something minor to most, but these things can mean so much sentimentally and to have Horry himself gift it personally just means that much more.
Udonis Haslem: Do you agree with Dennis when he said if Larry Bird was black he' just be another black guy? John Salley: No, I totally don't agree. Larry Bird could have been green, he could have been purple, and at that point with Larry Bird color had nothing to do with it, he was better than all the black guys I know.
Udonis Haslem: Do you think some the mentality changed with the eras? John Salley: No. Isaiah Thomas wanted you dead, Michael Jordan wanted you dead, Kobe Bryant wanted you dead, period. And then wanted to resurrect you and kill you again. (…) The real difference is guys take days off now.
Talking with NBA legend Mike Miller and WNBA player Natasha Cloud, Udonis Haslem explained that he hopes to be a part of an expansion team in Miami or buy out a struggling franchise to bring WNBA back to the city.
Greg Oden: 'The Heat culture is defined by Udonis Haslem'
Greg Oden: The Miami Heat culture is defined by Udonis Haslem. We all know that type of person he is, one of the best dudes, do anything for you but he gonna fight everybody in this b*tch. Having some of the best players on the planet and seeing them commit to that type of culture, weight and body fat, 10% down every Monday, coming in early me and Beasley up in that b*tch at seven, getting our workouts in, cuz we the new guys on the team and me having to prove myself and just being in Miami and I know where i was coming from in my history in Portland I became the party dude i'm in Miami now. I’m like ‘don't f*ck this up’. So I made sure that I was doing everything I needed to do, that was the last time my body was 10% body fat. I say this all the time, I saw super professionalism. I love coach Erik Spoelstra, I love that coaching staff and to see everything that he does seeing from top to bottom I remember coming in you know i got to come in early to get my workout in but Pat Riley already sitting in the practice gym at 7:30 in the morning and we just had a back-to-back, I’m like ‘oh this is a Pat Riley practice’.
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Adebayo, 27, enters Friday night’s matchup against the Minnesota Timberwolves at Kaseya Center with 4,864 rebounds since being drafted by the Heat in 2017. That puts Adebayo just 927 rebounds behind Haslem’s franchise record of 5,791 rebounds in a Heat uniform. “When I was playing, every time I got one rebound, I used to look at him and say: ‘That’s another record,’” said Haslem, who retired after 20 NBA seasons at the end of the 2022-2023 season. “So he has definitely been letting me know that he’s creeping up, that he’s going to catch me. But my response is, ‘Not this year.’” Haslem is right. Adebayo won’t break Haslem’s record this year.
So, will watching Adebayo become the Heat’s all-time leading rebounder one day be bittersweet for Haslem? “The bitter part, not really,” Haslem said. “Like I said, I’m very prideful. But it’s Bam. He’s somebody I’ve taken a liking to and I’ve created a relationship with outside of the game of basketball. I know his mom, I know his family. We spend a lot of time together just talking about life and the kind of man that he wants to be and the kind of man that I think he can be and should be, along with the basketball player that I think he’s capable of being. So for me, it would be one thing if it was somebody who I didn’t have a relationship with. But it’s almost like a nephew or a son or a younger brother. So it will still feel like it’s in the family. He’s cut from the same cloth as me.”
Udonis Haslem: I don’t have a beef with Kevin Garnett. Paul Pierce? We gonna have to figure that out
Udonis Haslem on beef with Celtics: ‘My beef is not with the current Celtics, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, I got a number of love for them boys. And my beef ain't even with certain people that playde for the Celtics. And I'm gonna tell you right now I can say this on TV: My beef ain't even with Kevin Garnett. He said something the other day and I was like ‘you know what? me and KG, cool’. you know what I'm saying? That's real. Paul Pierce? We gonna have to figure that out. Tony Allen: And that's why I'm here, let's squash this beef, we stronger together. Udonis Haslem: I agree a thousand percent, but I'm gonna say this man, I just come from a place where you just can't say what you want to say to people. That comes consequences with that. And they got to a point sometimes where they used to say things on the court to people I just didn't think it was okay.
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