Wanted to inform some the readers here
at Tru School Sports about something going on at the other website I
write for The League News. At The League News there are so many
writers and it was decided that 30 writers from the site would
partake in an all-time draft of players in NBA history. So any player
who put on an NBA jersey is fair game. Each writer are representing
1 NBA franchise.A few Writers on this site are actually taking part
in it such as Brian, Daniel, TJ and myself. We recently just
completed the 1st round and here are how the Tru School
Sports writers picked in the 1st round.
23rd New Orleans
Pleicans-Charles Barkely (Daniel Soden)
27th Charlotte
Hornets-Isiah Thomas (Brendan Taylor)
For the rest of
the 1st round in the writers all-time draft click on the
link below and stay tuned to The League News for all the other rounds
coming up.
Kemba Walker for the 1st time in his career has
respectable talent around him and that is enough for me to think he will
elevate his game to a new level this season in Charlotte.
In
the very long line of great 1990's sneaker commercials the Converse“Grandmama” ads for then Charlotte Hornets star forward rank near
the very top right next to the “Lil Penny” ads for Nike and all
those great Air Jordan commercials. With the retro movement being
very alive in the sneaker world I think this is the perfect time for
Converse to re release the Larry Johnson sneakers to the public.
With
Brands like Jordan, Nike and Reebok all flooding the market with
retro releases I think there is still a void to be filled as far as
variety goes. It's been a very long time since Converse made a huge
impact in the shoe game. With no athletes to produce new sneakers for
and market to the public Converse has had to rely on its history to
sell its product. The Brand can get away with that because the
sneaker has such a foothold among fashion in American culture that it
will continue to sell at a high level because Chuck Taylor's are
simply timeless. It's been a long time though since Converse had any
sneaker that people see ads for or rush to store go buy since
probably the Wades back in the mid 2000's when Wade 1st
broke in the league. Re Releasing classics by LJ such as the “React”
or “Aero Jams” would bring more variety to local sneaker stores
and it would provide a chance for people like myself who love the
Aero Jams but never had the chance to buy them a chance to get
themselves a pair. The move can't do nothing but help the Converse
brand.
The
Biggest reason that this move is perfect to make at this time is that
the Charlotte Hornets name is coming back to Charlotte next NBA
season and we all know how many popular sneakers used teal&purple
over the last few years. Just check out some of the best Hornet
colored sneakers we have had over the last few years.
Lebron
10 Hornets
Retro
Air Jordan Grape 5's
Adidas
Crazy Quick Teal/Purple
Those
are 3 examples right there of sneakers in the shoe game that made a
huge impact and with the name coming back to the NBA dropping
arguably the greatest sneaker of that team's era just makes perfect
sense. So Converse call LJ or his people and make it happen for the
sneaker heads worldwide.
Several
hours ago I made what seems to be an all to frequent trip to Aventura
mall to go shop for some new indoor basketball shoes due to lack of
padding and comfort ability of my old basketball sneakers. As I was
shopping for sneakers I noticed something on the Mitchell&ness
shirt rack in Champs I noticed that they had a bunch of cutoff
t-shirts of many different teams suchs as the
Heat,Sonics,Bulls,Knicks and Raptors. This compelled me to check for
Charlotte Hornets gear and not only did they have Charlotte Hornets
gear they had a Larry Johnson shirt as pictured in the middle I
wasted no time in buying it along with a hat.
When
shopping for some new basketball shoes I wanted something light,
comfortable and stylish. This led me to purchase the Adidas Crazy
quick in teal and purple also pictured above. What is it about that
combination of Teal and purple? What did Alexander Julian know about
those colors that we didn't? Maybe it was that something so gaudy
that made such a statement was part of an NBA uniform and when that
uniform spoke it always said boldly “This Is Charlotte”.
It's
been a horrendous 2 season in Charlotte but I like any other
Charlotte basketball fan I am looking forward to the future with a
good young nucleus of players we have building with guys like Kemba
Walker, Michael Kidd-gilchrist, Bizmac Biyombo and now Cody Zeller.
Free agency along with the possibility has me realistically having
hopes for the franchise in the CLT for the 1st time in a
while.
The
2013-2014 Season will be a season of excitement, development but the
2014-2015 season will mark the rebirth of one of the NBA's more
iconic franchises and the return of Charlotte basketball's identity.
Most importantly though it will mark Charlotte's return to the NBA
playoffs and for people like me who play basketball daily that teal
and purple being relevant to today’s NBA will be a great feeling
when I wear the city on my Teal and purple Adidas sneakers.
Tonight
is one of the biggest nights of the year for me and many basketball
fans across the country as the decisions will impact our franchises
for years to come. Speaking as a Charlotte basketball fan I witnessed
so many horrible draft picks over the year such as Adam Morrison,
Sean May and D.J Augustein. I've also seen a few good ones like Baron
Davis, Kemba Walker and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist but when it comes to
the draft I always expect the worst when it comes to my teams
decision making. Today on throwback Thursday we reflect on arguably
the worst 1st overall pick in NBA history.
June
27 2001 was the date and with the first overall pick belonged to the
Washington Wizards. The board had many guys that could have helped
their team become better such as Tyson Chandler, Pau Gasol, Jason
Richardson, Gerald Wallace even Shane Battier. All these guys went on
to have a good NBA career making an all-star team, winning a
championship,defensive player of the year or just helping a team out
in the playoffs, but did the Wizards pick any one of them??
Well..........NO!!! They picked Kwame Brown the 6'11 290 pound blob
of center. He was a beast coming out of High school but he is the
living example of everything general manager doesn’t want out of
its 1st round draft pick which is someone who is lazy and
doesn’t take his game seriously. You can sense that about Kwame
Brown just by watching him on the court over the years and looking at
the back of any of his cheap basketball cards at his stats. He never
progressed or took any dramatic steps forward to ever become anything
more then a serviceable NBA backup. That’s what strikes me about
Kwame is that someone who is or was once talented at basketball gets
to the highest level of basketball and decides to just collect a
check. I feel like if you work that hard to get there you should work
harder to deserve to stay.
The
same guy who drafted Kwame in Washington has the final say for my
beloved Charlotte Bobcats (Soon to be Hornets) in tonight’s draft.
I'm Hoping Michael Jordan stays on the right track like he has the
last few years drafting the right guys like Kemba Walker and Michael
Kidd-gilchrist and stays away from the Adam Morrison/Kwame Brown type
draft picks that haunted his legacy as an owner.
With
that said I hope tonight my Bobcats make the kind of move that
impacts this franchise the same way drafting guys like Baron Davis,
Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnson did. Here is to better days in
Charlotte for basketball and good luck to your teams tonight if you
have a rooting interest in tonight’s draft.
Today
June 20th 2013 marks the 1 year anniversary of Tru School
Sports. Time flies by fast when you are having fun I guess. It's been
one of the greatest years of my life and I have add the chance to
connect with so many great people worldwide. So before I get into
this article shout out to a few people. Jerry Stackhouse,Jacorry
Harris for retweeting my articles on twitter. Thanks to everybody who
has ever been on this blog or gave Tru School Sports the time of day,
you don't know how much it means to me. So without further ado I'm
going to look back at the year that was and the people who made it
just a bit more special along the way.
One
of the very first “Throwback Thursday” articles I ever did was on
Miami Dolphins Hall of fame quarterback Dan Marino. After tweeting it
to him he actually responded, check the tweet down below.
The
most viewed article on this blog was my New York Knicks-Brooklyn Nets
piece which I wrote before this past season got under way. After it
garnered a decent amount of recognition I decided to tweet it out to
several New York area sports writers and ESPN New York's Ian Begley
responded to me, apparently he liked what he saw.
One
of the reasons I even like basketball in the 1st place is
because of Baron Davis. Some of my earliest memories of the NBA are
of him Dunking on Tim Hardaway in the playoffs and leading the 6th
seeded Charlotte Hornets to a 3 game sweep over the 3rd
seeded Miami Heat. I wrote a “Throwback Thursday” Article on the
legendary NBA Street video game and he read it and gave me a retweet.
So cool stuff to get from one of my basketball favorites. If your on
twitter go follow Baron Davis.
Early when 1st starting the Blog I remember writing a piece on how I thought The Memphis Grizzlies and how I thought they could go far in the playoffsand then Shared it with people who are around the Grizzlies on a day to day basis. On of the people was Memphis Native and former NBA Player Eliott “Socks” Perry. He liked and showed love so thank you Eliott!!!
Earlier
this year I had one of the most pleasant experiences in blogging so
far when I got to interview Basketball legend “Pat The Roc”. He
is honestly one of the most humble dudes I have ever talked to and it
was a privilege interviewing him back in January. If you don't know
anything about him check out that interview I did with him in the
tweet down below it should be in a link.
RT @ThatboyBTaylor: Pat The Roc Interview from last month just hit 1k Views, im happ about that S/O to @PatTheRoc...
I
just graduated from South Broward less than a month ago and I did an
article of the 5 greatest athletes to ever dawn the red and gold.
After I was done I tweeted it to the one that are young enough to
have social networks. So I hit up Former Bulldog/ Miami Dolphin and
Current Kansas City Cheifs cornerback Travis Daniels and he
responded. Shoutout to Travis Daniels, good luck with the photography
career and football as well.
The other person the list of the best South Broward athletes happens to be the great Tamara James. The former Bulldog standout and WNBA 1st round draft pick saw my article on South Broward athletes and responded. I kinda messed up so she had to correct me but it's all good shout out to Tamara James!
@ThatboyBTaylor How awesome was that. I spent 2 yrs with the Mystics tho. ;) Such a great article! Thanks.
— Tamara James (@TamaraJames_) May 27, 2013
One
of the better things that happened in the past year took a bit of
initiative to manifest but I did it with the Help of my dad and
friend Isaiah. In November I reached out to Former voice of the
Charlotte Hornets and current voice of Charlotte Bobcats announcer
Steve Martin on Twitter about meeting him and Charlotte Hornets great
Dell Curry in Orlando at the Magic game and I got this response.
Steve
and Dell were gracious with their time we talked basketball, Dell
Currry signed my basketball card and I was one happy camper.
Being
a Charlotte native it's only right that I like speaking with other
people from my hometown. So with Donte Clark who is a Charlotte
native being an ESPN Top 100 recruit and going to play college
basketball at Virginia Tech next season I felt it would be cool to
interview him. He was a pretty chill laid back dude and equally as
humble I'm expecting big things from DC this upcoming season so Shout
out to Donte Clark.
Several
weeks ago when writing my “Tru School Of Kicks” segment I wrote
about the Grant Hill Fila's that are coming out pretty soon so stay
tuned for that. I tweeted to the Iconic sneaker brand and they showed
love back so Shout Out to Fila. Being a hip-hop fan I know how iconic
Fila is even though they aren't as big as they used to be but they
are coming back!!!
Several
days ago I shot this video featuring the new Shaq soda by the Arizona
drink company. I shared it with them just yesterday and they gave me
a positive response and a follow back so shout out to Arizona
beverages, I just had one last night #WatermelonTea
I
live in South Florida so odds are if you turn on a TV at any point
from the evening to late in the night you will see Donovan Campbell
on the air talking about sports in our area. Whether its the Marlins,
Heat, Dolphins or the Panthers DC does his thing with his own unique
flavor. I sent him my Pat The Roc interview and he liked it. So Shout
out to Donovan Campbell stay tuned for him on channel 7 if you live
in the South Florida area.
Also
a special thanks to someone who I think is a very cool person
Charlotte Bobcats dancer the beautiful, Jennifer Embler. If your in
the Charlotte area and at the Time Warner Cable Arena watch out for
her and the the lady cats doing their thing. Shout out to her for
reading my basketball analysis on Kemba Walker, Kyrie Irving and
Damian Lilllard.
@ThatboyBTaylor stumbled upon a nice little bball analysis of yours someone retweeted 😉
— Jennifer Embler (@JenEmbler) February 28, 2013
This
shouldn't even be called a shout out, this is more of a scream out.
So HUGE thank you to the guys at Bring back the buzz, helping get the
Charlotte Hornets name back to to Charlotte. These guys have so much
passion for basketball in the Queen City I feel most people won't
ever rival it. These guys have been supporting me since day 1 so
thanks to them. Follow them on twitter @Bringbackthebuzz
@ThatboyBTaylor love the Kendrick Lamar reference! Great Artist, Great Song!
— The Buzz is Back (@BringBackTheBuz) July 30, 2012
@ThatboyBTaylor you have no idea!!! That was all we played Jamal and baron!
— The Buzz is Back (@BringBackTheBuz) August 2, 2012
Got
to give a huge amount of credit for this dude right here. Paul
Martinez Aka Fynishline is the reason there is even a “Tru School
Sports” he encouraged me to start a blog and I thank him for
believing in me. He is an up and coming rapper and will soon take
over the hip hop game so If you don't know who he is get to know him
in the video below.Follow
him on twitter @Paulmartinez305
Thanks
to my main man Brian who's been supporting me pretty strong
throughout the year just like on this Vince Carter “Throwback
Thursday” right here. Watch out for him he has something big in the
works coming soon. If your a basketball fan I suggest you follow him
if you have a twitter dude is a well of basketball knowledge.
@ThatboyBTaylor Good stuff on that throwback vinsanity 2k dunk contest. Still got that one on tape
— BJC (@CarthensBC) February 11, 2013
Even though I just met him Shout out to Brian Rzeppa for all the support. He like myself is a writer he does stuff for Rant Sports and The League news, So Google him!
@ThatboyBTaylor thanks alot! i just bookmarked that site, so ill be waiting on new stuff
— Brian Rzeppa (@brianrzeppa) May 22, 2013
Last
but certainly not least shout out to Roman Perez for all the
encouragement. Thanks for Reading!!!
If
you supported me at any point throughout the course of this past year
in any way, shape or form let me say thank you if I didn't single you
out. It's been one of the greatest years of my life and I'm glad you
are on along the ride with me this is just the beginning.
So
Thursday night as I firmly plopped my behind on my couch in
anticipation for the NBA Finals I nonchalantly went on Facebook
because you know I got a page to admin and maintain. So as I'm
scrolling down my news feed I came across some disturbing news. The
picture you see above this paragraph made me eat my heart out. It
pictured the basketball player I hate more then anything pictured on
something I love dearly. Of course I am speaking about Lebron James
being featured on the cover of NBA 2K14.
Not
going to lie that caught me off guard but I had a game to watch so I
didn't care for now. The Spurs took game 1 92-88 due in large part to
some great execution down the stretch from the team and a big time
shot by Tony Parker.
After
the game ended and I had gotten over the fact that LBJ would be on
the cover of 2K but it got even worse. I did some research on some of
the new features in the game and I got even more pissed. Apparently
they are having a new game mode this year which features Lebron
called “Path to greatness”. ARE YOU SERIOUS?!! This guy is a
phenomenal talent and the biggest thing in basketball from a
marketing standpoint but to have all this already is premature his
story is still being written. In other words he isn't Michael Jordan.
2K
picked the perfect time to put him on the cover though his popularity
is at an all-time high and they're are less people like myself who
despise the guy so they will sell really high especially with this
being his 1st ever video game cover. They have something
called the “Lebron Pack” where you can buy the game for more
money and get exclusive features such as Lebron James in blacktop
mode and his signature skill. So 2k is going to max out his rating
most likely, make him unbeatable and basically make him immortal,
well being the cocky 2K player I am fearful of nobody I responded by
saying this on Twitter to Lebron Fans who play 2K and 2K Sports.
guys are goin to give Lebron all these signature skills and max out his rating but he is still getting crossed up by Kemba Walker #TrustMe
— Brendan Taylor (@ThatboyBTaylor) June 7, 2013
Btw
hit that follow button if you have a twitter and I'll follow back!
Alright
been wanting to write this for awhile but just haven't got to it so
this is for my Baseball card bloggers and just card bloggers in
general. I want to connect with each and every one of you. I want to
know what type of cards you like, sets you prefer and players that
you collect. I know you all have your lists of that on your blogs but
I want you to comment in the box below so I can know without having
to look and we can get to trading. I have a decent amount of Baseball
cards but my collection isn't limited to just that I have much better
artifacts that transcend cards so if the right amount of cards were
ever presented my way, then I would part ways with it.
Let
me tell you guys some of the Players and cards I like to collect.
2003 Marlins are my favorite team so any Marlins card you have of
anyone on that team I will take, so that means Dontrelle Willis,
Miguel Cabrera, Mike Lowell,Juan Pierre,Jeff Conine and Luis Castillo
are all guys who will make me jump on a trade because I will always
love my Marlins. Other players I like to collect are Ken Griffey Jr,
Derek Jeter, Adam Jones and Justin Upton just to name a few.
If
you are one of those bloggers who collects basketball cards here are
some ballers I collect. Being a bigtime Charlotte Hornets fan (Happy
about the name change) I obviously collect Muggsy Bouges, Dell Curry,
Alonzo Mourning, Larry Johnson, Kendall Gill, Baron Davis, Jamal
Mashburn, Glen Rice and Anthony Mason. Other Basketball Players I
collect are Kemba Walker, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Michael Jordan, Tim
Duncan,Oscar Robertson, Chris Webber, Steve Nash, Jason Kidd, Penny
Hardaway and Magic Johnson.
So
yeah there you go If you follow this blog comment if you have any
Rookies,Autos or Jersey cards of any of the following players I just
named. If you know any bloggers who don't follow this blog tell them
about this post and tell them to follow it.
Several days ago Michael Jordan and company made the
announcement that the Hornets name will be returning to the Queen city in the
2014-15 season. I recently spoke on this in a video, check it out below.
The NBA draft is rapidly approaching by the day and I can only begin to wonder about all the different ways my Charlotte Bobcats will screw up whatever pick they get I look at this card for hope. Larry Johnson pictured in the card above was selected 1st overall in the 1991 NBA Draft and would go on to win Rookie of the year honors in 1992. LJ was a franchise changing talent and fresh off a national Championship at UNLV gave the Hornets instant credibility. Although it was before my time I have a deep appreciation for those Muggsy Bouges-Alonzo Mourning-Kendall Gill-Dell Curry and LJ teams of the early to mid 90's it represents a golden era for basketball in my hometown. This picture captures one of the greatest draft picks made by any Charlotte sports team, I can only hope that who ever we draft this year turns out to be what LJ was during his time with the Hornets.
Hello and Good afternoon everyone going to make this short and sweet. I recently was contacted by a guy named Kevin and Kevin Runs "The Diamond King" a pretty solid Blog on Sports cards and cards in the hobby. Kevin was doing his Pwe where he sends cards to fellow writers in the Sports card Blogosphere and at my request he sent me some sick cards of some of my favorite Charlotte Hornets of All-Time Such as Muggsy Bouges,Larry Johnson and Baron Davis. I just got them in the Mail yesterday and they are really good. Shoutout to Kevin again at The Diamond King.
Check out his blog http://thediamondking.blogspot.com/
Hey everybody hope your Sunday is a blessed one. Just wanted to let all of you know that i recently purchased a new camcorder so i'll have a much more of a presence visually through videos touching on a number of different things. To stay up to date with everything you can follow me on my new youtube channel at youtube.com/Truschoolsports make sure you hit that "Subscribe" button while your at it to
If you haven't seen already check out my 1st video on The Charlotte Bobcats rebranding to get the Charlotte Hornets name back....Remember to subscribe again!
