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February 03, 2014

The NBA’s Laziest Players

Posted in: Sports



We admit that we’re a bit lazy in not coming up with the idea to write about the laziest professional athletes in sports. One single article could do no justice on just how many athletes exist in sports that get paid millions of dollars to entertain the public and do poorly at their job on a yearly basis. We define laziness as a chronic illness where victims lack the willpower to do anything. We would also include the terms slow-moving and sluggish to help round out our definition of the world. The first group of lazy athletes to be profiled are professional basketball players. Most owners and/or GMs refuse to view lazy stars as employees. We put these players on a pedestal and treat them like royalty when there’s a greater chance of them taking a night off and not giving all of their effort despite their insane skills or talent. Basketball players have a smaller talent pool compared to other professional sports. You have 5 starters who make a difference on the court and a bunch of bench players who usually don’t make a difference on the scoreboard in most games. An NBA star is going to get the ball of often and he’s going to get a high percentage of quality shooting chances. If he screws up, fans will notice on the scoreboard but also on the player’s stats sheet. Let’s take a look at some of the lazier players in the league.


Andrea Bargnani



—We think that this guy needs to lay off of the Primo pasta!—

-You’re going to get a lot of attention when you’re the very first person selected in the NBA draft. The Toronto Raptors took an unconventional route and drafted the big Italian player out of Europe rather than selecting someone from a USA college basketball program. When GM Bryan Colangelo drafted Bargnani, he thought that Bargnani was going to be a powerhouse up the middle. The team thought that Bargnani could be a dominant center in the league who could play dirty near the rim and get many rebounds and control the front court. It turns out that Bargnani isn’t really a fan of getting his hands dirty near the front of the rim. The 7 ft. ‘Il Mago’ truly is a magician who tricked the team into thinking that he would be a dominant center in the league.

Instead, the center/power forward plays more like a shooting guard who prefers to throw up 3 pointers from anywhere far on the court. Raptors management learned from their mistake and shipped Bargnani to the Knicks where attention to his laziness grew tenfold. Knicks fans are witnessing the very same mistakes that raptors fans saw. Several sports websites have made fun of Bargnani for his horrible defensive play as he often looks like a ‘Deer in the Headlights’ when trying to defend. To make matters worse, the Knicks were up by two points in a game against the Milwaukee Bucks and got the ball back with less than 25 seconds left in the game. Rather than hold on to the ball and force the Bucks to foul, Bargnani took one of the dumbest shots in NBA history and almost cost the Knicks the victory as he was too lazy to look at how much time was left on the clock.


Andrew Bynum



—I might seem disinterested in basketball but I’m a wizard at cosmic bowling.—

-Our next lazy candidate is Andrew Bynum. He was selected with the 10th overall pick by the Los Angeles Lakers. He played pretty good for the Lakers but was always injured. The Lakers were finally fed up with his injury issues and shipped him to the Philadelphia 76ers. The former All-Star center did additional damage to his knees in the off-season while bowling. Instead of trying to spend the effort on rehabbing his knees, he got hurt playing a sport that you can barely break a sweat participating in. He never even suited up for one game with the 76ers and ended up missing the entire 2012-2013 season because of knee problems. He signed as a free agent with Cleveland, where he briefly played before being suspended indefinitely for conduct detrimental to the team. Could it be because he’s lazy? The team issued a statement that basically said that there was a continued insistence from Bynum to do what he wants with little regard to team goals. Even his old high school basketball coach thinks that he’s lazy. St. Joe’s athletic director Jerry Smith said ‘Everyone here at school says the same thing: What’s wrong with him? Why does he act like that? He went from someone we’re proud of to someone whose name we don’t even mention anymore.’

Heck, even one of the greatest Lakers players of all time thinks that Bynum is lazy. Magic Johnson said that Bynum ‘Wasn’t a guy who worked hard to get back. This doesn’t surprise me.’ The fact that it came from Johnson on national television only adds insult to injury. Even Bynum’s former teammate Kobe Bryant famously used to have to push him to compete at a high level, and a former teammate of his was quoted as saying Bynum ‘doesn’t like basketball.’ All of these stories seem to reinforce the prevailing assumption that Bynum simply doesn’t care. That basketball is just a way to make money. A job. Not a career.


Allen Iverson



—I’m the best point guard in the NBA. I just hate practice and having to learn from my mistakes.—

-Here’s an ethical question. Can you be a great player but have a lazy attitude? This certainly seems to be the case with former all-star guard, Allen Iverson. He’s a player with an amazing talent to put up points but we imagine this would be true of most point guards who hold on to the ball for a long period of time and don’t pass the ball to their teammates. On the court, he’ll blow past a couple defenders and then miss the chance to pass the ball only to take an off-balance shot from behind the basket. When asked by a reporter about his lack of effort in practice, Iverson responded ‘Man look, I hear you… it’s funny to me too, I mean it’s strange… it’s strange to me too, but we’re talking about practice man, we’re not even talking about the game… the actual game, when it matters… We’re talking about practice.’

He was notorious for getting into arguments with his coach Larry Brown and was finally traded to the Denver Nuggets. He was then traded to the Detroit Piston and Memphis Grizzlies and stated publicly (while playing for either team) that he’d rather retire than be moved to the bench. He eventually left the NBA and signed with a Turkish basketball team for a brief stint before leaving midway through the season after realizing that he only signed with the team for money and didn’t feel motivated enough to help them win any actual championships. Money may be a motivating factor for an NBA comeback as he’s reportedly broke after a rough divorce and may or may not have filed for bankruptcy.


Oliver Miller



—I might be fat but I still consider myself a power forward.—

– Sometimes being lazy just means that you eat the wrong food and don’t put in the same type of effort that you once did in order to keep yourself in game shape. Unfortunately this was the case for Oliver Miller, who ballooned to way over 300 lbs. during his career, limiting his stamina and mobility over the years. This guy ate his way out of the NBA. Oliver Miller literally cost himself in upwards of $50 million by not staying in shape and becoming fat and lazy. On multiple occasions, he was late to practice and walked in with a McDonald’s bag. Miller took top prize by being rated as the fattest player in NBA history. You would think that his troubles for being lazy would end after his NBA career ended. But, it seems that his appetite got himself in trouble off the court when he was arrested for pistol whipping some dude at a BBQ. Jeez, we can only wonder what might have been the cause for this dispute. Did someone eat the last burger?


Vince Carter



—Yeah, I kind of admit to not always trying my hardest every night on the court.—

-Vince Carter was once one of the most entertaining players in the NBA. He would get fans out of their seats with his highlight reel dunks. Carter became such a star that he started to believe his own hype and started to get preferential treatment by management on personnel decisions by requesting which free agents he would like ownership to sign and be teammates with. Once these decisions backfired, management started to make their own talent decisions and Vince began to act cranky. Carter stopped trying for Toronto. He didn’t get the supporting cast he wanted, grew disgruntled with the organization and quit. He spent the rest of his time with the Raptors on the bench until he got traded to the New Jersey Nets. Many have questioned Carter’s dedication, his commitment to off season conditioning and his desire to improve, but some where were surprised to hear Carter acknowledge it himself. In an interview with analyst John Thompson, Carter admitted to being lazy and quitting on the team. ‘ In years past, no. I was fortunate to have the talent . . . you get spoiled when you’re able to do a lot of things. You see that you don’t have to work at it’ Carter said.

To make matters worse, Carter’s effort and compete level suddenly changed in New Jersey and he started to play some of the best basketball of his career. This left a resentful feeling with pissed off Raptor fans who knew he was mailing it in the last year or two in Toronto. Raptors broadcaster Leo Rautins also accused Carter of playing his hardest outside of Toronto. ‘I was shocked last year when Carter went to the all-star game (in Los Angeles),’ Rautins said. ‘He ran faster and jumped higher than I had seen in three years. What’s the difference? Why there?’ Carter would eventually help lead the New Jersey Nets to the NBA Finals one year. It just goes to show that you can become strategically lazy in order to help get yourself traded to a better team and a better situation for yourself.

This wraps up our article on the NBA’s laziest players. We’re pretty sure that they’re not the least bit interested in what we have to say anyways. We move over to another pro league now and look at some of the National Hockey League’s laziest players next…

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