Have you seen anyone in today’s game—like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander—who reminds you of players from your era? Michael Cooper: Yes. George Gervin. Kevin Durant. Yeah. You see players like him but he plays the game in a different kind of way. That young man is so….. The one thing I love about SGA is that if you look at his game, he never very rarely, maybe once a game but, I haven’t seen it in this playoff series see him take a bad shot. He doesn’t take falling back leaning all the way back — if he does, he scores. But he doesn’t take a lot of bad shots and he always plays the game at his speed and he gets what he wants. You know, one of the unique things that I was able to experience was a young Kobe Bryant. I worked Kobe out when he came in and did his workout with the Lakers and it was certain things that Jerry had wanted him to do — get to this spot, get to the elbow, get to the low post, get to the midrange and we put X’s on the floor to where he had to get to and my job was to keep him away from that. Now there were many times that he didn’t get there and there were many times that he did get there and every time he hit his shot but, the things that we saw with Kobe, is that he got to his spots. Great NBA players know where their spot is on the floor. Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson… These guys know where their spots are. They know if they get to that spot, 9 out of 10 times they’re going to hit that shot and that’s what SGA has. -via ScoopB.com / June 18, 2025
