Russell will be Fine

[moonpie]

This could be it guys. Russell didn't want to push around a fake baby in a stroller so now Byron's got a grudge.

"Who the hell does this punk think he is? Back in the day we used to push our fake babies around town with PRIDE, HEART, AND GRIT!"

[Slava]

This old-school hard ass approach is just dumb. I mean, there's something to be said for high expectations and all of that. Popovich used to light Parker up so bad he'd cry. But that's on a championship contender. And Pop still threw him into the deep end 10 games or so into his rookie season. Byron strikes me as the kind of coach who just does stuff without any real rhyme or reason to it. Like how he's had rookies on past teams wear kid's backpacks and whatnot -- moronic. What purpose does that serve? You can still be tough, but if you're not investing in your players personally, you're cutting your own throat.

I don't think the kiddie backpacks is byron's doing, its more like hazing administered by the senior players. So in our case that would have been Swaggy P, Boozer and Jordan Hill.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/byron-scott-really-wants-lakers-rookies-to-take-care-of-their-fake-babies-042615597.html

In isolation, this hazing is not especially notable — plenty of teams will do similar things over the course of the season. What makes the Lakers different is that head coach Byron Scott, not a veteran player, seems to be the driving force behind the efforts. From Kurt Helin for ProBasketballTalk:

“Absolutely…” Scott confirmed when asked if it was his idea. “They are in charge of bringing them to every home game, making sure they are right by their locker, that the baby is not crying or anything like that, then after the game take them home. My only concern is the will go in the family room, there are so many kids there they might try to take their babies. So they have to watch their babies, then on game days on the road they have to wear baby backpacks.”

Scott has been criticized at various points this season for holding decidedly retrograde views of proper on-court strategy, and I suppose it's possible to view his considerable interest in fake child-rearing qualifies as more of the same. From another perspective, though, this is really weird. It would be one thing if Scott was just focused on making sure the players wore backpacks when they were supposed, but he seems very interested in proper childcare at all times. It's as if he was meant to be a high school health teacher grading at-risk youth on how they took care of their bag-of-flour babies.

Good God, this guy is the high school bully that never grew up.

[iamworthy]

I don't think the kiddie backpacks is byron's doing, its more like hazing administered by the senior players. So in our case that would have been Swaggy P, Boozer and Jordan Hill.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/byron-scott-really-wants-lakers-rookies-to-take-care-of-their-fake-babies-042615597.html

In isolation, this hazing is not especially notable — plenty of teams will do similar things over the course of the season. What makes the Lakers different is that head coach Byron Scott, not a veteran player, seems to be the driving force behind the efforts. From Kurt Helin for ProBasketballTalk:

“Absolutely…” Scott confirmed when asked if it was his idea. “They are in charge of bringing them to every home game, making sure they are right by their locker, that the baby is not crying or anything like that, then after the game take them home. My only concern is the will go in the family room, there are so many kids there they might try to take their babies. So they have to watch their babies, then on game days on the road they have to wear baby backpacks.”

Scott has been criticized at various points this season for holding decidedly retrograde views of proper on-court strategy, and I suppose it's possible to view his considerable interest in fake child-rearing qualifies as more of the same. From another perspective, though, this is really weird. It would be one thing if Scott was just focused on making sure the players wore backpacks when they were supposed, but he seems very interested in proper childcare at all times. It's as if he was meant to be a high school health teacher grading at-risk youth on how they took care of their bag-of-flour babies.

[Sedale Threatt]

I saw that with the Cavaliers at a Spurs game, some of the rookies wearing little girls backpacks, and I thought the Spurs would never, ever let something like that fly. And come to find out the COACH was the one pushing it...just, wow.

[ratra_1211]

You broke my heart sedale threatt. As much as i hate byron i never thought he would do that. I genuinely thought the vets did that baby stroller stuff. Im done with byron scott. So done.