“I didn’t want to be in the league anymore, I was fed up”

Daily Show (DR) / Keith Allison (CC)

Being a member of the NBA is a great honor, but sometimes some people get tired of it, especially because of what’s going on behind the scenes. This is precisely what a former coach of the Year explained recently, who allowed himself a judgment without language of wood on the games of power within the franchises.

After winning three titles during the Showtime era of the Lakers, Byron Scott began a rather contrasting retraining in coaching. On the one hand, he was regularly criticized for his lack of tactical genius, as well as his management of the players which often pushed them into conflict with him. On the other hand though, he twice went to the NBA Finals coaching the Nets and was also the one who developed Chris Paul in New Orleans.

The former tactician Kobe Bryant is therefore far from unanimous, and it has been almost seven years since he has been on a bench in the league. On the other hand, it’s not fair because no one wanted to hire him, because he explained recently that he had simply been fed up. Having invited his ex-teammate Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on his podcast, Scott let go by settling accounts with franchise executives. In particular, he does not appreciate that the latter pushed him to choose between immediate sports results or contenting himself with pleasing his bosses:

Byron Scott ultra-cash on NBA coaching

Captain, you know what? I asked myself this question for regarding a year when I was in New Jersey and then I said, “You know what? Life goes on “. You know, I didn’t understand, to be honest with you. It was a bit the same thing in New Orleans, when I won Coach of the Year, when we had the most wins in franchise history (56-26 in 2007 -08, note).

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The following year, we had a ton of injuries, we still made the playoffs and we lost once morest Denver who ended up losing once morest the Lakers in the conference finals and I was fired. I think a lot of it was because I wasn’t submitting to what they wanted. Sometimes GMs would come up to me and be like, “We need you to play this guy,” and I’d be like, “Look, I’m going to play the guys that I think will give me a chance to win every evening “.

I always wanted to stay true to my principles because I said, “You’re going to fire me anyway whether I do what you want or not, you’re going to fire me anyway, so I’m not going to do what you want and you’re going to fire me anyway. I’m going to do what I want to do, I’m going to play the guys that I think can help me win because at the end of the day it’s going to be the same alternative, you’re going to fire me anyway ” .

So it was just one of those things that following so long and following a while you realize it’s eating away at you and you get to the point where you just don’t want to deal with it anymore. This is where I hit the point of no return in the league, where I just didn’t want to deal with league politics.

Byron Scott should no longer return to coaching in the NBA, he who devoted nearly thirty years of his life to the orange ball as a player and coach. Not a problem for him, who seems to be done with the big league.