Best Beefs of the 2014-15 NBA Season
No one does rivalries better than the NBA.
The entire history of the sport can be summed up in iconic head-to-head battles: Bill Russell vs. Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Bird vs. Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan vs. The World, Los Angeles Lakers vs. Boston Celtics.
Basketball beefs are finer than any cut of meat served at 5-star steakhouses. And this season has provided a slew of captivating conflicts.
Players against players, players against coaches, players against former teammates, players against mascots—any feud a fan could want, this campaign has provided. While they might not stand the test of time like some of their predecessors, these skirmishes added another level of intrigue to what was already a brilliant year of hoops.
Grab your best set of cutlery as we feast on this season's best beefs.
Reggie Jackson vs. Oklahoma City Thunder
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The relationship between Reggie Jackson and the Oklahoma City Thunder was always bound to reach a breaking point.
With Russell Westbrook at the helm, the Thunder couldn't give Jackson the starting gig he wanted. Even if they could, that wasn't going to be enough.
Jackson, who spent most of his three-plus years in OKC as a reserve, wanted more than a spot in the opening lineup. He saw himself as a star, and he was never shy about sharing that vision.
"I want a chance to be great," Jackson said in October, per Basketball Insiders' Susan Bible. "If it doesn't work, oh well, at least I tried. That's just how I feel."
Jackson wasn't going to get his shot at greatness with the Thunder. The longer he stayed in the Sooner State, the more time he'd spend stuck behind Westbrook, Kevin Durant and Serge Ibaka on the team's totem pole.
With restricted free agency staring him in the face, Jackson had to get out. The Thunder granted that wish at the trade deadline and sent him to the Detroit Pistons in a three-team exchange. His former teammates didn't exactly shed a tear on his way out.
"He got what he wanted. You can't really [pausing] ... He got what he wanted," Durant said, per ESPN.com's Royce Young, adding, "It's tough, losing [Kendrick Perkins]. And other guys."
The divorce was more uncomfortable than hostile, but all that remains from this once-promising relationship is a scorched bridge.
Brian Shaw vs. Denver Nuggets
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The adage about a picture's worth certainly applies to the image above.
Brian Shaw and the Denver Nuggets never saw eye to eye during his one-plus seasons on the sideline. His system never fit his roster, and his messages were rarely received.
The Nuggets were built to play at top speed. Shaw suggested they take their foot off the gas.
"It won't be the same break-neck pace that it was last year," he said in October 2013, per ESPN.com's Dave McMenamin. "... We will play a more traditional style in terms of trying to develop an inside game."
Denver won 57 games the season prior to Shaw's arrival. It went 56-85 before his dismissal in March. There wasn't an inside game to develop with JaVale McGee, J.J. Hickson, Timofey Mozgov and Jusuf Nurkic manning the middle.
But poor schematic choices alone wouldn't have warranted a spot on this list. Rather, it was the constant bickering between Shaw and his players that made this a notable feud.
Last season, his relationship with Andre Miller soured after Shaw elected not to play the veteran point guard. This year, Jameer Nelson questioned everyone's effort—coaches included, per Chris Dempsey of The Denver Post. Shaw had "some tense locker-room moments" with Ty Lawson, sources told Grantland's Zach Lowe.
Shaw even wondered aloud if his players might be trying to lose. The Nuggets have been a near-.500 team since his exit, so maybe there was some truth to that.
"Inadvertently or not, the team quit on Shaw and is bringing more energy now that he's gone," wrote SB Nation's Jesus Gomez.
Both parties seem better off without one another.
Robin Lopez vs. Mascots
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Robin Lopez is a hero. The Portland Trail Blazers center stood up for the rest of us and decided that someone—more specifically, him—needed to stop the tyrannical reign of NBA mascots.
Well, that or the dude just really despises grownups in ridiculous costumes. (Although, given his love of all things comics, you'd think this line of work would be right up his alley.)
Either way, he's waging a one-man war against the league's seemingly harmless, occasionally horrifying furry friends.
"I think I'm kind of a hero," Lopez said in an interview for the Blazers' website. "I feel like I'm standing up for our squad, doing what I'm doing."
What he's doing is leaving mascots of all kinds bruised, battered and, in one case, even blinded. If there's a way to win this war, Lopez seems like he's finding it.
But the damage hasn't been entirely one-sided. The Memphis Grizzlies' mascot managed to stick a "Kick Me" sign on Lopez's back. The Cleveland Cavaliers' Moondog threw a couple of Twitter jabs at Lopez before posing for a picture with Robin's brother, Brook.
This is definitely one of the more bizarre rivalries the basketball world has ever seen, but it has to be one of the most entertaining ones too.
Andrew Bogut vs. Mark Jackson
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An ordained minister and a 7-foot Australian walk into the Golden State Warriors locker room...and not a single joke came from the situation.
There never seemed to be many laughs shared between Warriors center Andrew Bogut and his former coach Mark Jackson. In fact, there didn't seem to be a ton of interaction between the two at all, save for a public dispute over the source of a shoulder injury that cost Bogut a handful of games last season.
With Jackson back in the broadcast booth, the two no longer have to play nice—or even cordial.
Jackson has questioned the value of Bogut's primary role as an interior presence.
"To me, a rim protector is overrated in this league," Jackson said while working a Warriors-Cleveland Cavaliers game for ESPN, via Bay Area News Group's Diamond Leung. "No Andrew Bogut, their defense stays or even improves because of the identity."
Bogut has commended Kerr and his staff for having "no agendas" and not playing favorites, per Leung. Jackson, you might remember, had two assistants removed from his bench during last season's final weeks (Darren Erman and Brian Scalabrine).
When Kerr emailed fans disappointed in his decision to sit his stars during a mid-March road game with the Denver Nuggets, Bogut said, "He's great. He's very engaging. He's a normal guy. We're definitely not used to that in a head coach," via CSN Bay Area.
After Jackson's endorsement of James Harden as his MVP, reporters asked Bogut whether Stephen Curry deserved the award. "Well what's his name said no. What's that guy's name? Mark?" Bogut responded, via ESPN.com's Ethan Strauss.
Clearly, there's no love lost between the big man and his former coach.
Enes Kanter vs. Utah Jazz
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At some point this season, restricted-free-agent-to-be Enes Kanter decided he'd had enough with the Utah Jazz. By mid-February, the former No. 3 pick went public with his request to have a new home before the trade deadline passed.
Given the encouraging play of sophomore center Rudy Gobert, the Jazz may have wanted to move Kanter anyway. His desire to be dealt made the decision even easier, and Utah sent Kanter to the Oklahoma City Thunder in a three-team swap.
Before Kanter's first appearance as Salt Lake City visitor, he tore his former team to shreds.
"I never liked playing basketball before in my NBA career," Kanter told reporters before the Jazz and Thunder locked horns on March 28. He continued, "It wasn't just a one-game or two-game frustration. It was a three-and-a-half-year frustration. ... It wasn't just basketball stuff. It was professionalism of the team."
Kanter's scathing review was brutal. It was also known to the fans prior to tipoff, and the EnergySolutions Arena crowd serenaded him with a chorus of boos. Kanter gladly played the heel, cupping his ears with his hands and asking the fans for more.
His former teammates took over from there. They ignored him during pregame handshakes and then handed the Thunder a 94-89 loss. Kanter finished with 18 points and 11 rebounds, but it wasn't enough to stop his motivated old club.
"I definitely wanted to kick his butt," Jazz forward Trevor Booker said afterward, per Aaron Falk of The Salt Lake Tribune, adding, "He got his stats...and as always, he got the L, too."
As far as verbal wars go, this was a heavyweight brawl.
Goran Dragic vs. Phoenix Suns Front Office
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As the Phoenix Suns know all too well, life comes at you quickly in this business.
The Suns seemed ready to rise after last season's surprising success. They just missed the playoff party despite reeling off 48 wins. (It's called the Wild West for a reason.) They had a budding franchise face in Goran Dragic, who was named both the Most Improved Player and an All-NBA third-teamer. They regularly sliced and diced defenses under then-rookie coach Jeff Hornacek and his two-point guard scheme.
Then, they added a third floor general to the rotation in free-agent addition Isaiah Thomas. As Dragic's minutes decreased (and brought down his other counting categories with it), both he and the Suns realized there were too many cooks in the same kitchen.
Dragic, who can test free agency at season's end, came to the realization first. Unfortunately, when he did, he tied the Suns' hands with a mic-dropping quote about his feelings for the front office.
"I don't trust them anymore," Dragic said, per Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic. "It happens too many times. ... I just hit that point of my career that it's better for me and my family to move on."
Even if the Suns wanted to keep him—before he dropped that bombshell, they did—his words took that option off the table. Phoenix had to deal him, and it did, sending him to the Miami Heat in a three-team trade.
But the Suns threw a few barbs of their own on his way out.
Golden State Warriors vs. Los Angeles Clippers
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Is it OK to start calling this a rivalry yet?
The Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Clippers share so many things: same state, same division, (roughly) same timeline on their rags-to-riches climb to championship contention. That alone could make them natural rivals, but it's their shared dislike of one another—and their heated seven-game series in last year's opening round—that makes this the greatest NBA rivalry going.
"We don't like each other," Bogut explained, per Rusty Simmons of the San Francisco Chronicle, "and it's kind of one of those throwback games from back in the day, when there were flagrants and technicals and all of that type of stuff."
Including bumps during postgame interviews, apparently. And "Cool story, Glenn" T-shirts, which didn't quite make it 48 hours before Draymond Green stopped selling them.
The coaches have traded verbal barbs. Doc Rivers said it "was pretty predictable" when Green sat our their last meeting, adding "they didn't want to take the risk of going 2-2 [in the season series] with their regular guys," via ESPN.com's J.A. Adande and Arash Markazi.
That made it back to Kerr, who said, "Oh, is that right? Either that or we have a nine-game lead and a couple guys banged up. Somewhere in there."
Green, by the way, said he missed that game with "Blake-itis," via Leung.
In case there was the slightest bit of confusion, Green is not a fan of the Clippers.
"They have a cocky arrogance, like they've won something, and they haven't done nothing," Green told Grantland's Jonathan Abrams. "They pretty much been to the same spot in the playoffs we've been to. But they have this cockiness like you're supposed to bow down to them."
Take two talented teams, add some expert coaches, stir in lofty postseason aspirations and what do you get? Basketball's best beef of this season, the last several and probably many more to come.
