Mark Jackson uses Lakers taping drama to take shot at ex-assistant
“The Warriors are Seriously Going to Win 73 Games” Division, anyway — was the Hollywood drama surrounding the Los Angeles Lakers after the leaking of a video surreptitiously recorded by rookie D’Angelo Russell in which teammate Nick Young spoke about having relationships outside of his engagement to musician Iggy Azalea. (You might have read a thing or two about this whole deal.)
The biggest story in the NBA last week — Non-The NBA world continued buzzing about the prank gone wrong this weekend. It even made its way to ABC’s Sunday matinee between the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder, with commentators and former NBA head coaches Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson discussing the thorny issue … a segment that ended with JVG setting his partner up for a somewhat stunning goof:
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“It’s absolutely inexcusable what [Russell] did,” Jackson said. “I like the fact that he owned it. The good news for him is, he very well one day could be an associate head coach in this league.”
“Oh, there we go!” exclaimed Van Gundy. “Shots fired!”
In case you’re wondering what the big deal is, let’s cast our minds back in time aaaaaaalllllll the way back to April of 2014, when Jackson was still the head coach of the Golden State Warriors, and this report by ESPN.com’s Chris Broussard raised all kinds of eyebrows around the league:
When Golden State Warriors assistant coach Darren Erman was fired earlier this month, the reason given was a “violation of company policy.”
It turns out that Erman’s violation was secretly recording conversations between the team’s coaches and players, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.
Sources said Erman, who was coach Mark Jackson’s second assistant, would record coaches’ meetings, meetings between the coaches and players, and informal discussions among coaches that took place in the team’s coaches room — all without the participants’ knowledge.
“He was taping everything,” one source said. “Taping pregame speeches wouldn’t have been that bad, but he was taping guys just sitting around talking in the coaches’ office.”
Several weeks after his firing, Erman joined the Boston Celtics as their director of NBA scouting. Prior to this season, Erman left Boston to sign with the New Orleans Pelicans, joining the newly hired Alvin Gentry’s staff as — you guessed it — New Orleans’ associate head coach.
As noted by Des Bieler of the Washington Post, this isn’t the first time Jackson has publicly fired a shot across the bow at Erman. One day after his own firing from the Warriors’ bench, Jackson discussed both Erman’s dismissal and the reassignment of then-Warriors assistant Brian Scalabrine in an interview on SiriusXM Radio, as transcribed by Ben Golliver of Sports Illustrated:
As far as assistants, you have to pick people who are loyal and dedicated. It’s inexcusable what the second assistant [Erman] did. That cannot be tolerated. For folks to say, two situations, it’s obviously documented that they both were 100 percent wrong. The only fault I got is hiring those guys. I would use wisdom in who is around me.” […]
“I’m not saying these guys, I’m just saying in general, you get some loyal guys and you get some guys that are looking for a gray area or an edge. I’m not saying these guys, but I’m just saying it’s an environment where you can add to that or nip it in the bud initially.
That was nearly two years ago. The Warriors, now led by Steve Kerr, won the 2014-15 NBA championship, and improved to 69-8 on Sunday. They are three wins away from tying the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls’ all-time record for wins in a regular season.
Evidently, in this particular instance, the ordained minister is still working on that whole “turn the other cheek”/”forgive and forget” thing.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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