Saturday, March 14, 2009

It's exceptional when you find a role player who's just happy to be there

Lots of interesting audio and transcriptions of interviews with athletes and coaches on the Sports Radio Interviews website.

Here's a good one from yesterday with the legendary Dr. J -- Julius Erving -- and his thoughts on how the game has changed since he played in the '70s and '80s:

“I think one of the major differences is every player to a man is regarded as, at least maybe in his own mind, a basketball star. During our era, there was a clear delineation between a guy who was a star, a guy who was a role player, and a guy who was just happy to be there. I don’t think you have too many guys today that are just happy to be there. The economics just set it up that way where there’s a star mentality 1 through 12. It’s exceptional when you find somebody who is humble and happy to be there and capable of deferring to the guys that are the actually stars.”

[Great video of some vintage Dr. J here.]