Greater Respect For Christian Laettner

While my level of respect for Bobby Hurley plummeted (after his weak comments challenging the words of the University of Michigan players following the airing of the Fab Five documentary on ESPN), my respect level for Christian Laettner increased tremendously.

While I didn't always like Laettner as a player for Duke University (admit it ... unless you were a diehard Blue Devil you hated Laettner in college), I did come to like him much more as a professional player. Full disclosure: I respected the hell out of his game as a college player though. He earned all of the accolades he got in college (although some question his spot on the 1992 Dream Team over Shaquille O'Neal).

While Hurley whined and tried to act like Jalen Rose and the Michigan guys could not have played for Duke or would not have played much for Duke, Laettner took the high road and seemed to understand the greater context and bigger picture of what was being said in the documentary (either that or he figured it was not worth being a Scottie Pippen).

Here is some of what Laettner had to say from the Bay City Times (Mich.):

Referred to by members of the Fab Five as "soft, overrated, pretty boy" — and far worse — Laettner said he found it all "kind of funny."

“When you’re competing against people, trying to cut their heads off and beat them, you can’t expect them to love you — or even like you," Laettner said. "All you can ask is they respect you after the game and say the game was decided fair and square.

“Jalen Rose has always been a good guy to me. Chris Webber has always been a good to me... But I don’t expect them to love me. I can’t even get Grant Hill to love me all the time.”

Laettner and the Blue Devils defeated Michigan during the regular season and again in the national championship game when the Fab Five were in their freshman year in 1992.

In the Fab Five documentary, former Michigan center Juwan Howard said "Duke was America's team and Christian Laettner was like God. And I did not like him."

Laettner took the high road and realized that, in the end, it was all about respect and the comments were more about initial impressions and honesty. In the end, Laettner and Duke earned the respect, victories and championships.

Laettner earned more respect. Too bad Hurley stopped learning when he left Duke.

Suns To Deal Shaq To Cavaliers For Very Little

The Phoenix Suns have agreed to assist the Cleveland Cavaliers’ pursuit of an NBA championship by handing them Shaquille O’Neal for Sasha Pavlovic, Ben Wallace and some money. From the Phoenix perspective, this seems to be a salary-cap trade. Shaq makes like $21 million a year so bringing in Ben and Pavlovic will give them some salary relief and possibly put the Suns on course to be a player in the free-agent market in the near future. The new question is this: How much will the acquisition of Shaq help the Cleveland Cavaliers move closer to winning an NBA championship? In my mind, Cleveland was going to be maybe the third-best team in the Eastern Conference next season behind Boston (presuming they return a healthy Kevin Garnett) and Orlando. Will Shaq alter Cleveland’s up-tempo style of play? LeBron James can co-exist with pretty much any kind of player, but it will be interesting to see how Mike Brown adjusts the offense to accommodate Shaq who doesn’t run the floor the way he used to, but still is a beast in the paint.

Yahoo Sports:
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=aw-shaq062409&prov=yhoo&type=lgns