We look at today’s NBA as almost a new golden age of point guards — Chris Paul, Rajon Rondo, Tony Parker, Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook, and the list goes on and on.
It’s a very different era from when Gary Payton was at the peak of his career. Back then Payton could body up on Michael Jordan or Tim Hardaway to defend them — he could hand check, hook them a little, be physical with them on the perimeter. Today, any little contact on the perimeter is whistled as a foul.
It’s a different world, one Payton is not sure he could be the same player in. Of course, the reverse is true of today’s best point guards in his era, the legendary Sonic said.
“It would be very hard for me to adjust because I was very aggressive,” Payton told ProBasketballTalk. “I was an aggressive basketball player. I probably wouldn’t be on the floor too often because I would have to be aggressive. Today you would have to adjust by being a finesse basketball player and just scoring. I don’t know….
“A lot of these players are very explosive and I couldn’t have been pressing up on them. But in our day these guys would have had a lot of problems because we can hand check, we can hold you, we could do a lot of things and you couldn’t go nowhere. We would have been doubling up and jumping out and a lot of players would have been getting hit. It just would have been a little bit different.”
Payton now spends time at his California home, working on his charitable foundations that help youth in Oakland where he grew up. He’s working with Nike to re-release “The Glove” signature shoes, but updated (kind of like Nike did with Penny Hardaway’s shoes recently). And Payton’s working to launch Thuzio in Los Angeles, a company that sets people or organizations up with athletes to come speak at an event or just go to a dinner party.
Payton also is watching a lot of basketball. And what point guards is he watching?
“I like Damian Lillard because he’s from Oakland, California, and he’s a phenomenal basketball player,” Payton said. “He should be the rookie of the year, he’s playing very well right now for Portland and I love his game.
“I’ve been watching Deron Williams for a long period of time now and I like him. He is the epitome of an old-school basketball player. He just goes out there and gets it done, he’s not about being fancy, going through your legs three or four times, pulling up in your face. He just gets it done. He just gets what he has to get, gets his assists, gets his rebounds, gets his points and just gets his team to win.”
Payton talked about a number of other topics with PBT as well (which you can hear more of in his own words in our Friday prodcast):
• On being nominated for the Hall of Fame: “It’s showing a lot of people have respected the things I’ve done in basketball and it’s showing I’ve done a lot in basketball. And I’m really happy for it. Not a lot of people can get in the Hall of Fame, it’s a great honor. I hope that I can make it.”
• On the NBA possibly returning to Seattle soon: “I don’t like to talk about it until it is done. Hopefully it will be there, hopefully it will come back. The Seattle people deserve it very much, they’ve been going on without basketball for seven years now and hopefully that can be done. It would be a great deal for the city of Seattle.”
• On defending Michael Jordan: “What you’ve got to understand is Michael Jordan couldn’t be stopped he could just be contained because he was a great offensive player. He could get to the free throw line. He could jump over you. He had great moves, he did a lot of things.”
“What I tried to do was tie him up, to get a little frustrated, and hopefully I could do that and it worked sometimes. But he would still get his 25-30 points because a guy like that, when he shoots the ball as many times as Michael Jordan does you can’t stop him. He’s going to make baskets and get to the free throw line. So I just tried to contain him. Just tie him up, don’t let him get the ball easy, don’t let him get in his comfort zone, make things difficult for him and try to get him frustrated where he’ll foul you and get in a little foul trouble, then something good will happen for me.”
• Payton is working with John Wall and helping the Wizards guard adjust to the NBA.
• On his charity work: “I work with kids now, try to get them out of the neighborhood, try to get them scholarships, because their families and their parents can’t give them enough money to get out. I give five scholars scholarships a year. In Oakland I have a youth center.”
• On the recent trash talk incident between Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Garnett, and report KG said something about ‘Melo’s wife: “That’s just disrespectful. It’s just the same thing where you can’t say something about somebody’s mom, or their father that was just sick and died or something. There’s just a fine line that you go to.
“You can talk the stuff but this this is nothing but a game. When it gets personal and people get their feelings involved then these guys can do anything. They start wanting to see you off the court and things like that. So we got to keep it a little bit under control.”
• And he was clearly excited about Thuzio and getting to mean fans through it: “It’s a good thing with Thuzio because it gives fans a lot of the memorable things with athletes that they really, really wanted to meet for a long time. There’s people who are like ‘Wow, I wish I could meet Gary Payton.’ Now Thuzio is giving you the opportunity to do that. You can come and have me as a coach, you can have me as a dinner partner, that is something that can be memorable for someone for the rest of their life.”
