Your Morning Dump... Where Shaq says the greatest center of all time is...

Every morning, we compile the links of the day and dump them here… highlighting the big story line. Because there’s nothing quite as satisfying as a good morning dump.

William Felton Russell.

In the past, O’Neal has discussed how much he values his time with Russell, who won 11 championships with the Celtics.

“I learned from experience that a lot of times conversations with ones that are greater than you will take you to that next level because those are stuff that you can’t buy, stuff you can’t practice,”

…

Later in the interview, O’Neal was asked to pick an all-time starting five with himself at the center position.

“I wouldn’t be on that team because I’m not that good,” he replied.

Instead, O’Neal put Russell in the middle

MassLive

Props from the big Shamrock. Another interesting tidbit in that article is that Shaq said he barely talked to Wilt and Kareem when he was playing: “I wish I would have had that opportunity with Kareem (Abdul-Jabaar) and Wilt (Chamberlain), but for some reason we never got to talk for more than five minutes.”

Which, you know, is kind of odd, given that all three of those guys ended up on the Lakers because they got tired of playing elsewhere.

I was a bit surprised that Shaq put Russell at the top of his list. Shaq was a good enough defender, but he never really hung his hat on his defense or his rebounding. I almost would’ve expected him to name Kareem.

At any rate, this is the week that Celtics beat writers get to enjoy the geographic coincidence that puts the basketball hall of fame a stone’s throw from Boston*

*Yes, I know it’s like a hundred miles. I’m from South Dakota. I laugh at your hundred miles.

This nearness of the Hall of Fame to Boston is probably also worth considering whenever Celtics fans get disgruntled about the ongoing absence of All Star games.

Page 2: An appreciation of Allen Iverson

And, from that moment on, it was great. Iverson was funny, poignant, heart-felt and thoughtful. He considered every question, took his time, and answered them — sometimes giving what the questioner was looking for, others taking it in a direction that he wanted to go, but always keeping his answers genuine and fascinating.

MassLive

Allen Iverson is about seven months older than me. He’s an inch shorter, and in his playing days he weighed just a bit more than I did.

That’s part of why I liked him. He was, in terms of stuff physically there, basically me. Only thing was, he was incredibly good at basketball and tough as nails. I could not imagine tossing my 155 pound frame into the lane and absorbing the pounding that he took night after night.

But now that the Hall of Fame festivities have brought him back into the spotlight, I’ve been thinking more about why it is that I liked him–apart from him being absolutely fearless on the court.

I mean, I really don’t like rap. I don’t have tattoos, nor am I likely to ever have them. I have like a pair of running shoes and a pair of hiking boots. I certainly don’t have cornrowed hair. I basically live at the corner of White and Bread. So, it’s not like I like AI’s style.

And the more I think about it, the more I believe that what I like about AI is pretty much the opposite of what I dislike so much about David Stern.

Allen Iverson can be–frequently is–honest even when it is not obviously in his best interests. Iverson is not adept at the politic falsehood. Yesterday, when he arrived late for his press conference and was asked about it, he didn’t have some cute story, or some nifty deflection. It was a mumbled answer that spoke volumes. “Personal matter.” “Family.”

On the other hand, David Stern is quite skilled at lying to further whatever agenda he’s pushing.

Then there’s the whole control thing. Allen Iverson fought it, and David Stern was all about exercising it.

The NBA’s mandatory dress code? That was all about control. That was about Stern–arguably going beyond any mandate he had from white owners who were afraid of losing some white fans–playing a power game with guys like Iverson.

And you could argue that Stern won. That he won when it came to clothes, and that he won everything else too.

Stern got a grandiose sendoff, with nauseating plaudits that were–from many corners–probably about as sincere as the fertilizer that Stern would dispense whenever circumstances called for him to say words about things.

Allen Iverson just kind of faded into retirement. He played in 85 games over his final two seasons, for four different teams. After that he played for a Turkish league, and then in 2011 he told Marc Spears that he would “play for anybody“. When nobody took him up on that offer, he announced his retirement.

On the day that Iverson’s number was retired, Adam Silver couldn’t resist tossing out yet another reminder that the establishment doesn’t understand people like Iverson. “Allen was a special player. The great things he did for the league far outweigh the occasional headache.”

Iverson never won a championship. He didn’t win a gold medal–in fact, he was unfairly scapegoated as exemplifying the worst aspects of basketball when Team USA finished 3rd in the 2004 Olympics.

So yeah, you could make a case that his unwillingness to go along to get along, to say the ‘right’ things, to dress the ‘right’ way, to cultivate an incredibly fake ‘likable’ image a la Michael Jordan, cost him something. But it’s not like he didn’t get to keep something as well.

Iverson paid a price in order to stay himself–or at the very least, to change and grow on his terms.

Today, when Iverson gives his speech, it’s going to be honest and authentic. It may not be polished, but it’s going to be Iverson talking.

Compare that video with Stern’s induction from 2014. It’s a stump speech. There’s no indication whatsoever that David Stern is a real human being and not, by this point in time, just a collection of pat phrases and anecdotes plastered over a bad temper.

And in the end, maybe Stern didn’t win after all.