NBA history Quotes

Everybody talks about that one when they first meet me. 'Man, I still remember the play you shook Jordan.' Everybody gonna always remember it because it was Jordan.

Lakers were able to maintain a certain level of talent and success and so were the Celtics. So after awhile it became part of people's sports lore...

Every kid who just played basketball knew about the Boston Celtics. They're one of the few teams who were always on national TV along with the Lakers.

John Stockton is one of the true marvels, not just of basketball, or in America, but in the history of Western Civilization!

A lot of black guys always ask me, 'Did Larry Bird really play that good?' I said, 'Larry Bird is so good it's frightening.'

I can probably go down in history as the best backup point guard ever in NBA history.

If you look at the history of the NBA, guys that came out of high school are the guys that held the NBA together. You look a Kobe Bryant, you look at a LeBron, these are household names.

LeBron is making a case for himself to be one of the greatest players to ever play.

Kobe Bryant has always been my favorite player, and he was drafted No. 13, too, in 1996.

People talk about Kobe's 81-point game, the second-highest scoring game in NBA history. I saw the game. I don't care if it was 79, 81 - I just remember the game. I remember the moves. I remember the shots. I remember the beauty of it. The numbers? What he shot from the field? I don't care.

I had a moment like that with Wilt (Chamberlain). He knocked me out of bounds, I came back and faked him, came across the middle and dunked on him.

Look at the NBA players back when Magic and Kareem played in the early 80's with the short shorts, look at what Michael looked like when he first came in the league compared to when he left. Every sport evolves. Every sport gets bigger and more athletic, and you have to keep up.

Cooper was my road roommate, and also happened to be the first African American player drafted by a National Basketball Association team.

The NBA's been around how long? A hundred years? Fifty years? So to change it now, whoever that person is needs his college degree revoked....Whoever did that needs to be fired. It was terrible, a terrible decision. Awful. I might get fined for saying that, but so what?

If Lebron was playing in the late 80's and early 90's, just an average player

Portland doesn't read like a basketball town, unless you remember what the NBA was like before it exploded into the mainstream in the Eighties: back when cities like Seattle, Baltimore, and Philadelphia moved the needle.

It's almost impossible to explain how little the NBA amounted to when I started covering it in 1963. It wasn't fair to call it bush, although everybody did. It was simply small - only nine teams - and insignificant.

When I first came in the league, a lot of people were surprised by my knowledge about the history of the game.

I remember placing the New Era cap on my head at the 2017 NBA draft - that moment changed my life. I'm excited to be a part of a brand that has a strong sport heritage and look forward to being a part of their history.

Bill Russell was the pivot on which the whole sport turned.

When you get to know some of the history of the game, Oscar Robertson is one of the names that pops up first.

Magic was always my favorite. I think Jordan was the best player ever, but Magic was my personal favorite.

In the summer of 1963, my second with 'Sports Illustrated,' Jerry Tax, the basketball editor, got the Celtics' Frank Ramsey, the NBA's first famous sixth man, to do a piece for the magazine revealing some of the devious little tricks of his trade. Things like surreptitiously holding an opponent's shorts - nickel-and-dime stuff.

A lot of people celebrate the '80s. I was a '90s guy. The best music, and basketball, was at its high in the '90s, with all of the best players, playing the best style of basketball in that era, and Michael Jordan winning six rings in the city I grew up in.

In 1979, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird entered the league. I remember that. Soon after this, the story began to be repeated ad nauseam: the NBA, a tottering mess in the seventies, was saved in the eighties by these two.