Celtics Legend: Hassan Whiteside Looks Like "Tim Duncan in the Post"
If anyone knows firsthand what a NBA superstar big looks like, it's Cedric "Cornbread" Maxwell.
The Celtics broadcaster played with some all-time greats during Boston's golden years in the 70s and 80s, including Larry Bird, Robert Parish, Dave Cowens, and Kevin McHale. So when he's comparing Hassan Whiteside to a generational big man like Tim Duncan, as he did on The Marc Hochman Show With Zach Krantz yesterday, it holds some weight. It widens some eyes.
"He would be a dinosaur, if you think about it in terms of the way he plays the game," Maxwell said on WQAM. "He's a very skilled big man and there are very few of them in the league right now and Miami has one of the better ones. I watched him against the Celtics -- he showed me every possible skillset that I'd want to have as a big.
"If I was Miami I would be trying to tear that contract up and try to reup him to a long-term deal. I saw him make a couple of moves that looked like a young Tim Duncan in the post."
Maybe this was one of the moves he was referring to?
Courtesy of CSN
Reflecting on how the league has changed over the years, conversation hovered around the drastic improvements off the court since Maxwell's days with the Celtics. Today's players don't realize how good they have it. Private planes. Clean uniforms that don't reek.
Cornbread spoke of a time when players traveled commercially with everybody else and how they even had to wash their own uniforms on the road. This inevitably led to some "funky brothers," as Maxwell says, like Hall of Famers Dave Cowens and Bill Walton.
"[Cowens] never washed it -- his road uniform -- and that was back in the day when we had to wash our own uniforms. There was always somebody on the other team that smelled worse -- try Bill Walton. Bill Walton believed in not using deodorant so he had that mountain look going already and a mountain smell going with him.
"Now Bill Walton's not like that today. As a matter of fact, I consider him not a close friend but a friend. But back then, Bill Walton was run out of Portland."
Catch more of the entertaining interview on Hochman and Krantz's audio page.
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