NBA News 2016: Kobe Bryant Says Fans Did Not Appreciate Pau Gasol; Coaches For East and West All-Star Teams Revealed
Los Angeles Lakers superstar franchise player Kobe Bryant feels that the team's fans had a lack of appreciation for former big man Pau Gasol.
Now with the Chicago Bulls, Gasol was a part of the Lakers championship team of the late 2000's, particularly in 2009 and 2010. And in a report by Baxter Holmes for ESPN, "The Black Mamba" feels Laker fans were not grateful enough for the six years that the Spanish player spent with the team and the contributions he put in along the way.
"I think the city of L.A. didn't really appreciate what he did and what we had, and so as a consequence, everybody kind of fell in line with the Mike D'Antoni rhetoric of small ball and all this other bulls---," Bryant said. "For a guy that has two championships to be treated that way, you don't do that, man."
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The report also noted how Bryant had constantly defended Gasol while he was with L.A., as the latter was constantly involved in trade rumors during his final years with the team. Bryant says he thought all the rumors were plainly silly, which was why he would constantly defend the team's starting big man.
Gasol played for the Lakers from 2008-2014.
Meanwhile, the respective coaches for both the Eastern and Western conference All-Star teams has been revealed.
According to two separate reports from ESPN, newly minted Cleveland Cavaliers head coach Tyronne Lue will skipper the East All-Stars. San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich, on the other hand, will be mentoring the West team.
For Lue, getting to coach the East All-Stars team would be his way of paying tribute to the recently released David Blatt. The Cavaliers fired Blatt a few weeks ago.
For Popovich, who will be coaching the West All-Stars for the fourth time, the experience of being in the same locker room with some of today's elite players is something he considers as a "humbling" experience.
The NBA All-Star Weekend is scheduled to take place from February 12-14, at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Canada.
