Cleveland Cavaliers head coach John Beilein reportedly called his players a bunch of “thugs” in the locker room — and the comment took the NBA by storm.
Many sensitive souls heard echoes of racial insult and worse, while three guys who have earned the right to speak on the issue see it a lot differently.
Hall of Famers Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley, along with two-time NBA champ Kenny Smith, said this shouldn’t be a controversy at all.
All three NBA analysts have gone on record in the past saying that today’s NBA players typically get a little too much kid glove treatment. And this instance was no exception.
Why shouldn’t Beilein’s “thug” comment be an issue? O’Neal says it should have never left the locker room.
“If you offend me in the locker room, Coach, I gotta go back at you,” O’Neal said, revealing how the dust-up would have been handled in a previous era.
“Right there in the locker room,” O’Neal emphasized, saying that’s where it started and where it should have ended.
Barkley thinks the issue was, well, hardly the real issue. He thinks the real issue is the fact that the Cavaliers stink at basketball (his words, not ours).
And, as he says, “to be complaining” because Beilein “is trying to make you work on fundamentals because y’all stink, make y’all watch film, make y’all practice hard, this is starting to be a joke.”
