On Christmas Day, the Golden State Warriors, who started the season 24-0, beat the Cleveland Cavaliers 89-83 to improve to 28-1, a mark largely influenced by stellar play from guard Stephen Curry, the reigning MVP who leads the league in scoring with an average of 30.8 points per game and in three-point shooting, with averages of 4.6 made and 10.4 attempts.
Apparently, all that's not good enough for former Warriors coach and current ESPN commentator Mark Jackson, who was working the Warriors game Friday.
"He's hurting the game," Jackson said. "And what I mean by that is that I go into these high school gyms, I watch these kids, and the first thing they do is they run to the three-point line. You are not Steph Curry. Work on the other aspects of the game."
Tough talk from a coach who led the Warriors to 121-109 record in three seasons, and not worth listening to, according to Warriors big man Andrew Bogut.
"Anything he [Jackson] says, you can take that with a grain of salt," said Bogut, who has had his own series of tiffs with his former coach.
Curry addressed Jackon's comments Saturday, saying he needed to have a talk with his former coach.
"I don't know what he means by that," Curry told Yahoo Sports. "If you can shoot, shoot. If you can't, stop."
Ever the nice guy, Curry listened to Jackson's entire comment, then told the Bay Area News Group he thinks Jackson was trying to compliment him.
""I understand where he's coming from -- that being for the youth of today and how they watch us play or watch me in particular, and they want to go out and try to do the same thing," Cury said. "It's all about practice and routine and repetition that can help you get to that point, so you can't skip that part of the process.
"I wish he would have phrased it just a little bit differently. I think I'm trying to inspire people to see the game differently in a positive way. ... I get what he was saying. There was a compliment in there. Knowing him personally, I think that's what he meant."
Sure thing, Steph.
'Turrible, just turrible'
Charles Barkley is not a fan of Christmas.
An appearance on ESPN's Mike & Mike last week gave Sir Charles a chance to tell everyone how he feels:
"Man, ya know, Christmas is not a lot of fun for me," Barkley said. "It's just a big waste of money.
"When you're black and rich, everybody thinks they're a part of your family. Everybody is a relative. Everybody wants a really nice gift. It's like your family members, one year you buy them a house, the next year you buy them a car, the next year you buy them a sweater. They look at you like, 'You only got me a sweater?'
"They always want the gifts to escalate, so you can't ever get them a sweater if you bought them a house the year before because they get pissed.
"I'm not a big Christmas fan. I'm a firm believer that Santa Claus should only bring kids gifts. I think Santa Claus should bring gifts to everybody until they get out of high school, and then that's it. That's my personal opinion."
Hey, at least he's rooting for the kids.
WTF?
The World Taekwondo Federation is making plans to rebrand itself in an effort to distance itself from a commonly used acronym.
It is not yet clear whether the WTF will ultimately go a step further and change it name completely, or eliminate all WTF branding from events, but WTF secretary general Hoss Rafaty told insidethegames that the organization plans to shorten its name to World Taekwondo in the future with the body to continue owning the rights to the WTF name., based on discussions held at the WTF Extraordinary Council meeting in Mexico City earlier this month.
There's not a lot else to say about that.
Sports quiz
How many points and rebounds per game did Charles Barkley average during his 16 seasons in the NBA?
Answer
22.1 points and 11.7 rebounds
Sports on 12/28/2015