Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton has had a phenomenal breakout season that points to him becoming a first-time All-Star.
He’s led the Pacers to be a top 8 seed in the East while averaging 21 points and a league-leading 10.5 assists, so it seems like he’d be an easy choice for an All-Star. Almost everyone thinks so.
One person that doesn’t, though, is former Timberwolves one-time Allstar and Knicks color analyst Wally Szczerbiak who weirdly had some criticism for Haliburton calling him a wannabe Allstar.
Haliburton responded by saying he’s never asked for Allstar votes or pleaded to be an Allstar and said he knows the name Wally Szczerbiak but couldn’t tell you anything about him. Former NBA player Matt Barnes though, had some much harsher criticism for Szczerbiak, saying he doesn’t see why former players disrespect the young guys now, calling it super weak and talking about how much he doesn’t like it.
Barnes is right because it’s not like Haliburton said anything about Szczerbiak or his career, but Szczerbiak went out of his way to criticize Haliburton for no reason at all.
Here is what Barnes had to say.
“I don’t see why former players feel like it’s their spot…to disrespect these guys,” Barnes said on the ShoBasketball podcast. “To me, that shit is super weak, I don’t like it, there’s been 5,000 players in the history of the NBA, and that’s why it bothers me when former players have to sh*t on the younger players…guys can respect and understand how hard it is for these guys to make their way…if you know the game well enough, you can talk about plenty of other sh*t.”
I think Wally just wanted to go viral, and this was his way of doing it. With the media these days, it seems people care more about attention than just speaking about the game.
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