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Brendan Haywood: Gil is supposed to zip her up to the top of the key. He's supposed to drive on the weak side. I'm going to come down and pin down screen on Larry because everybody's going to be looking at Gil. Larry's going to pop wide open—Larry's having a great game—but knock down the jumper. Gil catches the ball at the top of the key. Cool. I'm thinking he's going to drive through the middle of the court. Does not. Drives the ball away from Larry, goes to between the mid-post and the baseline, and pulls a jumper up. Iconic shot. A hand in his face. Bow. Game winner. We all rush him, and we’re celebrating in the locker room. I walk over to him and say, "Yo, man, how’d you know to go to the left and not give the ball to Larry?" This man, with all seriousness, looked me in my eyes and said, "Larry was supposed to get the ball?" I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "I just watched the play to the moment. I knew where I was going to get the ball, and I just started figuring out how I was going to get my shot." I said, "Dog, you weren’t even shooting well." He said, "I knew I was going to shoot that one."
Gilbert Arenas: 'I hated playing against Dwyane Wade'
Udonis Haslem: Dwyane Wade used to hate playing against your ass, D-Wade used to hate playing against you. Gilbert Arenas: I hated playing against him! Haslem: D-Wade hated playing against you. Arenas: I don't know if you ever heard the story. So the beginning of the season started, this is like, it was after the 03-04 season, yeah because he was on the 2004 Team USA and they lost at the Olympics, right? And we're coming into the 04-05 season and everybody's talking about the Heat, you know? Shaq went over there and I said ‘oh yeah we'll just treat D-Wade like they did him at the Olympics, just play a zone defense’. Then you’re looking at the scoreboards because Miami is coming close, like we got three games ahead, and he’s like 40 points, 45, 45… Did he circle the date against us? Because he's coming towards us! I called the hotel hey is Dwayne there? Hey man listen yeah this is Gil, hey that stuff I don't know if you seen it about two weeks ago… I ain't say it like that right? I just to let you know, right? Then at the warmup he didn’t look like the phone call helped… Then at halftime, Larry Hughes is like ‘hey if you’re gonna start talking sh*t about players, you guard him!’ … That was the last time I ever said anything.
Brandon "Scoop B" Robinson: On why there was so much friction is between Mike D’Antoni and other players around the league… Tim Thomas: Oh I don’t know… I mean, I had a great relationship with him and I just think with my game and my skill set I could fit in anywhere, right? So many other guys that you might be talking about might’ve had trouble based off of their skill set and not being able to flourish in that type of offense but, with his offense if you could handle the ball, shoot the ball and run the floor? You should be fine, right? You should be fine. But I don’t know. I just had a great relationship with most of my coaches. The only one that I had a headache with was Larry Brown and come to find out later, he just never really liked rookies, you know? So that was basically the problem with myself and Larry Hughes not being able to help Allen Iverson out in Philly.
A 9-year-old Jayson Tatum was in the stands with his father as his godfather Larry Hughes’ Cleveland Cavaliers played the San Antonio Spurs in the 2007 NBA Finals. Fifteen years later, longtime best friends Hughes and Justin Tatum will be in the stands together watching “Lil J” as he tries to lead the Boston Celtics to a title over the Golden State Warriors. “When a kid sees that a dream is real, it’s easier, but not easy, to chase that dream,” Hughes told Andscape this week. “I was glad that he was able to see that making the NBA was possible. I’m hoping he earns his award.”
“He saw the nice cars and how we carried ourselves. He understood how we were able to travel. Experiences like that was something he wanted. You can see now that he knew what he wanted and how to go there to get it.” - Former NBA player Larry Hughes on Jayson Tatum’s exposure to the NBA lifestyle at an early age. Tatum was blessed to be able to touch an NBA player and see what the inside world was like long before he put on a Celtics uniform. But his father deserves much of the credit for helping build the foundation of the basketball star he is today.
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Nick Friedell: JTA: "I'm a Warrior for life. Regardless if I'm here the rest of my career or I'm just here for another year, this is always going to be a part of my heart and a part of me...I grew up idolizing Larry Hughes, now I get to play with Stephen Curry."
Only four players in league history were teammates with both Jordan and James: Scott Williams, Larry Hughes, Jerry Stackhouse and Brendan Haywood. HoopsHype was able to connect with all four of them.
“I don’t think it would be fair to give a comparison on them,” Stackhouse, who only played seven games with James in 2010, told HoopsHype. “I played with LeBron at the prime of his career and I played with Michael in the last year of his career. I just think both are unbelievable players. They’re probably one and two in the history of the game. That’s where I’ll leave it.”
WHAT WERE SOME OF YOUR CONVERSATIONS LIKE WITH MJ? Larry Hughes: It was great. It’s not too many times you get to take a plane ride and go on trips and gamble with The Boss. That’s what it was. We were gambling with The Boss. We were doing shooting games at the practice arena from half court with The Boss. It was fun. We all competed. We all had a couple of dollars. We didn’t take it too far. You see him with the cigars. You see that stuff on video. I got to experience that. I can verify that that’s how that guy moves around. It was a fun experience for me.
Brendan Haywood: It was great playing with LeBron because he is one of the best teammates ever. He really wants to have everybody included. He wants to have guys on the same page. He wants to do things off the court to get guys engaged with each other, whether it’s taking guys out to the movies or having a room in the hotel where everybody could down and watch TV, eat, play video games. We knew we couldn’t go out in the city but we were still able to get out of the room. He is just thoughtful like that. He is always thinking about how he can help his teammates and he is the best gift-giver ever. We had all the Beats by Dre headphones. If he had a commercial for it, we had like ten of those. If he did Samsung phones, we all had them. If the new LeBron shoes came out, everybody would get them. He is an incredible, thoughtful teammate. It made guys want to run through a wall for him. It made his teammates work even harder. I think he learned a lot of that from the Heat. Dwyane Wade and Pat Riley taught him how to include everybody but he took it to the next level.
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Scott Williams: The competitive part of MJ’s game was off the charts. I always considered myself a competitive person. I don’t think anybody that makes it to the professional level in any sport doesn’t have a degree of competitiveness and a feistiness in them. Nobody had that gear like Michael had that gear. It’s been talked about and written about. But during my rookie year, I played with MJ before he had a championship ring. I’ve never seen a guy so hellbent on every single thing that he did, from the moment that he woke up in the morning. I’m not even talking about when he was at the practice facility. I’m just talking about the whole aspect of his day and his night before he goes his eyes to go to sleep. All he could think about was getting an NBA championship. His intensity was off the charts. It was electric. You could sometimes feel the hair on your arms raise up with how intense things would get at moments in practice. I’m not talking about the games! I’m talking about practice! Our training camps were like playoff basketball. It was almost a sickness with this guy. I don’t think people can comprehend what it was like with MJ.
Brendan Haywood: The thing that they most have in common is that they impact winning. But they go about in totally different ways. That is why it’s so unfair that LeBron is always compared to Mike. He doesn’t play like Mike! He wasn’t trying to fully dominate like Mike! LeBron wants to play an overall floor game. Bron is more like Magic Johnson but with next-level athleticism. That allows him to do incredible things. LeBron wants to get the 8, 9, 10 assists. He wants to get the rebounds. He wants to get his 26, 27 points. He isn’t just worried about scoring, though. He’s not trying to destroy you. He’s not worried about how many buckets he gets.
Hughes believe it could be entirely true that Charania’s reporting was accurate when he said Wall wants to be traded. He also believed it could still be entirely true that Sheppard hasn’t heard from Wall directly about wanting to be traded. “Players will come out to their agents or other people and say, ‘Hey, I want to be moved’ and then never say a word (to the team),” said Hughes. “I’ve seen players that on one end say ‘Get me out of here’ and then on the other end act like it’s all roses. I’ve seen that happen.”
Former Saint Louis University and NBA basketball star Larry Hughes has joined a partnership to open two medical marijuana dispensaries and a cultivation and processing center in St. Louis. Viola Missouri is a partnership involving Hughes and his former NBA teammate Al Harrington, CEO of Viola Brands, a medical marijuana company he formed in 2011, according to a Forbes report. It is the only Black-owned and operated cannabis company in Missouri.
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