NBA
NBA champion Stephen Jackson defends Monty Williams and guarantees Phoenix will hire a white coach ‘so he can get all the credit’
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All posts by Antonio KozlowUpdated17 May 2023
Former NBA player Stephen Jackson is at it again, spitting fire across the NBA and creating more drama than necessary. His latest remarks suggest that the basketball league is full of racists, as he assures that Monty Williams shouldn’t have gotten fired by the Phoenix franchise.
The NBA champion with the San Antonio Spurs in 2003 assures that Williams, who won the league’s Coach of the Year award last season, will probably be replaced by a white coach that will steal his legacy in Arizona.
Stephen Jackson says the Suns did former Coach of the Year Monty Williams wrong:
“When teams come together like this, they quick to go and find a white coach, just throw him in that position so he can get all the credit.” 👀
Full #PaperRoute convo 📰 → https://t.co/Z8TBpEz3rg pic.twitter.com/TUou4UUuwm
— I AM ATHLETE (@IAMATHLETEpod) May 15, 2023
The Suns decided to part ways with the coach after back-to-back eliminations in the last two NBA Playoffs, even though both in 2022 and 2023 the team had strong regular seasons.
Jackson appeared recently on the “I Am Athlete” podcast, explaining why Monty needed more trust in his process after trading in for superstar Kevin Durant in February.
“Absolutely not,” he said when asked if he agreed with William’s dismissal. “You bring this team together at the end of the year, I don’t care if you have KD [Kevin Durant] or not. Chemistry still matters. I don’t care what stars you have.”
“Chemistry still matters,” he repeated. “They still need time. Even I said, if they lose, they was going to give this team another year, minus CP3 [Chris Paul]. I said that. Give this team another year to have a whole season of training camp and all this together to see if they can pull it off.”
Firing Williams really took Jackson off guard, as he was completely sure that the trainer was responsible for bringing the Phoenix franchise back to the light after decades in the shadows.
“I didn’t think they was gonna get rid of the coach. I think he was the right coach for the job,” he assured. “But you know how they do. When teams come together like this, they quick to go and find a White coach, somewhere around, just throw him in that position, so he can get all the credit.
“I don’t care. Ya, I said it. They do it too much.”
Jackson believes that black coaches have it more difficult in the NBA
Monty was hired by the Suns back in 2019 and took the Arizona franchise to their first NBA Finals in years during the 2020/21 campaign.
“Every time a black coach comes into the league, he gets the worst team in the league to start his career off,” Jackson guaranteed.
“But situations like this, they always find a White coach somewhere around — just like they did Steve Nash in Brooklyn — going to throw him in a spot where the team is really already basically together,” he added. “I think Monty Williams is a great coach and that’s why in the next day or two, you’re going to see him coaching somewhere else.
“They did Monty wrong. They know they shouldn’t have done that.”
With his recent dismissal, Williams has become one of three NBA coaches to have been fired the year after making it to the playoffs this current season. Bucks trainer Mike Budenholzer was another similar case, after Milwaukee’s historic upset in the first round against the Miami Heat.
The other example of this is former Philadelphia 76ers coach Doc Rivers, who was relieved from his duties this Tuesday after three competitions leading the club, right after they failed to make it to the Conference’s Finals for a third year in a row.
