For Wolfie, fom Sportspickle.com

[JMarkJohns]

Darko Milicic doing great Christian Laettner impersonation on Pistons’ scout team


For the first time in his career, Pistons forward Darko Milicic has received high praise from Detroit head coach Larry Brown.

“We’ve been using Darko in Christian Laettner’s role on our scout team to help prep for the Heat,” said Brown. “And he’s been doing an absolutely fantastic job. He captures Laettner down to the last detail, from the lack of mobility to the overwhelming sense of career failure.”

Pistons forward Rasheed Wallace said Milicic’s work in practice was invaluable in preparing for Detroit’s Game 1 win.

“Thanks to Darko, we knew exactly what to expect when Laettner came into the game,” said Wallace. “Just like Darko did in practice, Laettner didn’t score a single point.”

Milicic hopes his role on the scout team will lead to bigger and better things.
“It’s great to finally have a role on this team, no matter how small,” said Milicic. “Two years ago I never thought I’d say this, but if my career has even half the success of Christian Laettner’s I’ll be thrilled.”

[indocat]

“Thanks to Darko, we knew exactly what to expect when Laettner came into the game,” said Wallace. “Just like Darko did in practice, Laettner didn’t score a single point.”

Milicic hopes his role on the scout team will lead to bigger and better things.
“It’s great to finally have a role on this team, no matter how small,” said Milicic. “Two years ago I never thought I’d say this, but if my career has even half the success of Christian Laettner’s I’ll be thrilled.”

:lol: to wolfie and :mad: to L-Brown.

is Darko THAT bad?

[JMarkJohns]

NO...he's just young and foreign and both do not mesh with Brown's age, nor style of play.

He'll be very good next year.

[indocat]

I thought a big can always be used in the L game? What's his weakness?
not aggresive? no post moves? cannot rebound? cannot shoot? i really don't understand.
I think his confidence is totally gone :flush . i feel sorry for the kid.

[JMarkJohns]

He's raw in every area and tends to range from overly aggressive, getting in foul trouble and sending opponants to the FT line to overly passive, allowing easy scores and looking lost.

Most will improve with experience, but right now, Brown doesn't want to bother.

He'll be fine. The one thing most experts all agreed on was his mentality was prime for the NBA. He wants to prove himself. When he gets his chance, he'll make the most of it.

[KrazyCatFan]

It amazes me how Duke is good year in and year out, but when it comes to the NBA who is doing anything? I mean the only one that gets mentioned is Grant Hill and thats cuz he was always hurt. If you wanna be a national power house and have everyone hate you got to Duke. If you wanna become a no body in the NBA, go to Duke.

[mines_bigger]

You would think with K's team play, some of his players might actually get a ring. I think all of K's NBA players have a combined ring total of 1. Same as Darko.

[KrazyCatFan]

Can we get a World Championship ring comparison between UA and Duke. Off the top of my head i get 3 alone with steve kerr and sean elliot.

[mines_bigger]

Kerr has 5 himself. Ferry was the only Dukie, and major contributor to the Spurs at 1.9PPG.

[JMarkJohns]

Brian Williams (1)
Sean Elliot (1)
Jud Buchler (3)
Steve Kerr (5)

With Jefferson being in two Finals series and Luke Walton being in one.

[KrazyCatFan]

OK now lets get a count from the Duke Alumni

[indocat]

It amazes me how Duke is good year in and year out, but when it comes to the NBA who is doing anything? I mean the only one that gets mentioned is Grant Hill and thats cuz he was always hurt.

Disagree. Grant Hill was a great player before slowed down by injury.
I believe J-Will had a fair shot to have all-star career before got involved the accident. Only elliot's potential that i think can match hill's level. I hope arenas/jeffersons can get there soon.
x-Cats players were good. But mostly role players to the teams that won the championships. None of them the 1st-2nd guy on the team.
Jordan/Pippen-TD/D-Rob were the reason for those rings.

[KrazyCatFan]

I agree they were the prime examples for all the rings. But you dont win championships with just 2 superstars on the court without the role players producing. Lakers proved that last year. This is a team game and each player played a role in the success of the teams thy played for. Kerr hit the game winning 3 for a championship with the bulls. without the role player superstars are nothing. just speaking of the bulls, Kerr earned those rings. He was a reason the bulls were successful. Yes jordan was great but could he have done it without his supporting cast.

[obioneginobolli]

Sean Elliott, and Steve Kerr two of my all time favorite Spurs!!!!!

[indocat]

wow, i just checked the 82games, it seems like when laettner on the court, Heat is better. :O shocking fact.

Player On Court +/- Off Court +/- Team Net+/-
E.Jones +11.1 -5.2 +16.3
Laettner +15.1 +6.6 +8.5
D.Jones +10.0 +4.6 +5.4
O'Neal +10.3 +6.1 +4.2
Haslem +9.1 +6.4 +2.7
Dooling +8.9 +8.1 +0.8
Wade +8.2 +9.4 -1.2
Butler +1.4 +9.5 -8.2
Doleac +1.0 +9.2 -8.2
Mourning +1.9 +12.1 -10.3
Anderson -5.4 +11.4 -16.8

[Wolfman Duke]

This should be required reading before anyone is allowed to slam his professional career. It's called PRIORITIES.


Some consider Heat player Christian Laettner aloof, surly and unapproachable. But the former Duke star also is a family man, a poet -- and very happy, thank you.

BY ISRAEL GUTIERREZ

igutierrez@herald.com


The first time you saw Christian Laettner show off the snarl after hitting a jump shot, it was difficult to tell exactly what it meant.

Maybe he was upset about how he had been playing to that point. Maybe his back went out -- again -- or he felt shooting pain in his foot. Again. Maybe he just had something stuck in his teeth.

Then, you saw Laettner's teammates on the bench falling over each other laughing, and it made even less sense.

This couldn't have been the Laettner who played on five teams previously and supposedly built a reputation as a difficult teammate. This wasn't the crotchety old veteran who was allegedly a large part of the chemistry problem that kept Michael Jordan and the Wizards out of the playoffs. This wasn't the Laettner who could look like a hippie with long hair and a headband in Minnesota and still seem void of all personality.

This Laettner looked fun, charismatic or even more unimaginable. He looked like he was having fun.

''Everyone thinks I've always been unhappy,'' the Heat backup forward/center said. 'People say, `You never look happy, you're not smiling.' ''

It's an easy assumption to make. Laettner left Duke as the two-time national champion everyone was waiting to embrace, but he quickly came across as an aloof NBA star because he stayed out of the spotlight, valued his privacy and rarely displayed emotion.

Letting people in wasn't his specialty. Still isn't.

Once he does offer a peek, you find that guy who has left his teammates in stitches with his atypical trash talk. And the guy who knew at 23 he wanted to be married because the NBA lifestyle was not for him. And the guy who writes and performs poems and songs for his wife and two daughters. And the guy who told his agent to get him to a Florida team simply because he wanted to be closer to his family in Ponte Vedra. And the guy who spends hours upon hours getting treatment on those sore feet and bad back so he can feel just once in the NBA what he did at Duke.

It takes a little while to see that Laettner. He's got to let you in.

''I thought he was really, really Duke-ish,'' Keyon Dooling said of his impression of Laettner, 35, before this season. ``That's usually kind of uptight and just a different type. But he's not like that. He's so laid-back. He's one of the coolest cats on the squad.

``I didn't know he was a trash-talker, I didn't know he was a comedian. I didn't know a lot about Laettner. He's been a very pleasant surprise. He's a good dude, a good family man, a great teammate.''

HE'S NO PITCHMAN

Maybe more people would have known that part of Laettner if he had accepted more of the endorsement opportunities he was offered early in his career. As the No. 3 pick in the 1992 draft who had been in the Final Four his entire college career and was the only college player on the 1992 Dream Team that won the Olympic gold medal, Laettner was on the verge of becoming one of the faces of the NBA. But it wasn't the direction he wanted to go. So he passed on almost everything.

''I wanted to be acknowledged and thought of as a good player, but not at the cost of me having to do all those image-related and media-related stuff that took away from my free time,'' Laettner said. ``There's a price you have to pay to do that. The upside is great: people will love you, you'll have a good image. But you have to put time in and you have to be committed to it, and I wasn't. I would rather have the time to myself.''

That left a lot of people guessing exactly who Laettner was.

''My first impression of him was I thought he was kind of cocky,'' said Laettner's wife, Lisa, a Minnesota native who met her future husband while he played for the Timberwolves. ``He has a confidence. But once I got to know him, he was the opposite of what I thought. He was the sweetest man I'd ever met.''

The two were married about a year after meeting, after Laettner was traded from the Timberwolves to the Atlanta Hawks. But he helped ease the transition for Lisa by buying a house in Minnesota near her family so they could visit during the offseasons.

Christian and Lisa have two girls, Sophia, 8, and Summer, 6. The girls have spent their entire lives moving from city to city as Laettner has changed teams, until two years ago when the family chose to settle in Ponte Vedra. But Laettner makes up for his absence by remaining so involved in the parenting that his wife jokingly refers to him as Dr. Phil.

''That's just who he is and how he is,'' she said. ``It's really sweet because he'll be hundreds of miles away and he will help coach me through a problem I'm having with the kids, so I tease him about that. Even though we're not with him all the time, when we see him, he'll write a poem for the girls or he'll have practiced on the guitar playing a song for them that he made up and wrote lyrics to for them. He is all about his little girls.''

That's the same straight-faced Laettner who looks like he's in a miserable mood 75 percent of the time you see him. That's the same Laettner who doesn't have a great relationship with the media because he just seems unapproachable.

''If I was smarter and I had the energy and I was more like a Hollywood person, I would flick on the charm and flick off the moodiness as soon as the reporters came in,'' Laettner said. ``Well, I wasn't raised to do that. I was raised to play basketball, so I'm not good at that. Magic Johnson was. Michael Jordan might have been.''

RECURRING INJURY

These days, it's kind of difficult for Laettner to look happy when his poorly constructed feet cause his back to give out like clockwork every preseason, which sent the forward into a temporary state of depression before this season.

But during those moments when he's not feeling every bit the 13-year veteran, Laettner is smiling a tad more. The snarl and the trash talk that gets his teammates going have come more consistently.

It helps that Laettner's on his best team ever, and that he's playing in his first conference finals with a shot at ending his pro career the way his college career did, with a championship.

But mostly, he's the same Laettner: occasionally moody, sometimes cranky, and always happy -- even if you can't see it.

''[Winning] makes you a little happier on the outside,'' Laettner said. 'But I've been extremely happy on the inside forever and ever. I have a buddy who's a therapist, and I told him about being depressed during the preseason, and he goes, `Were you depressed any other time?' And I said, `No, I've got the best life.'

``The only hard part about this year is that my family hasn't been here the whole time. But besides that, it's very fun, very rewarding.''

[budd1e_lee]

Is his "being a family man" also the reason he was suspended by the league for violating the drug policy? Or was that more the poet side coming through? :wink2: Maybe it was his way of fitting into the league a little better?

[Wolfman Duke]

He never was dumb enough to try to wrap it in foil and take it through an airport. :wink2:

[budd1e_lee]

He never was dumb enough to try to wrap it in foil and take it through an airport. :wink2:
I knew exactly what you were going to post, I almost posted it for you. I just find it funny that you are trying to portray him as a family man, yet 10+ years into the league he decides to get busted? Seems contradictory, and nobody ever claimed Damon was a smart man, although he hasnt had any career threatening auto accidents as yet. :wink2:

[Wolfman Duke]

gun charges ring a bell??? :wink2:

[budd1e_lee]

gun charges ring a bell??? :wink2:
Did he shoot anybody? Did he end his career with a stupid decision? Motorcycle license ring a bell? No??? Oh thats right, cuz there wasnt one involved.

[Wolfman Duke]

Jay Williams career is not over. He is making strides every day and will be back. Yes, stupid decision that he made, but thank the Lord he is alive and doing better every day. He is a great person and hero.

[budd1e_lee]

Jay Williams career is not over. He is making strides every day and will be back. Yes, stupid decision that he made, but thank the Lord he is alive and doing better every day. He is a great person and hero.
Hero? Youre kidding right? No professional athlete should EVER be considered a hero. And from all accounts Ive read, his quickness is NOWHERE near what it was, which is basically what he succeeded with.

[Wolfman Duke]

uh, NO. This conversation is not over, man! It will continue over alot of beer and whiskey.

[budd1e_lee]

uh, NO. This conversation is not over, man! It will continue over alot of beer and whiskey.
Who said the conversation was over, I would love to continue it over some beer and whiskey.

[indocat]

well....?!