Penny Hardaway caused quite the stir, if that is what you want to call it, when he went on the Sports 56/WHBQ radio and expressed his thoughts on how senior forward Kyvon Daveport could put more effort into watching film and studying the game. The media's response in the city varied from Hardaway being honest to him calling one of his guys out. He wanted to clear the air after the Tigers beat Temple to make sure people understood his perspective.
"I'm not here to please everybody," Hardaway said. "I hate that it kind of got out like I was on Kyvon. If everyone here remembers, like the months of November and December and half of January, I said that Kyvon was unstoppable....so you're not going to get those articles written."
Before we continue, let's point out the pointlessness of Hardaway making this claim. He has too many years of experience as an athlete from the collegiate level to playing in the pros til now to know when he went to the airways and was blunt as he was that would be the soundbite. He even addressed the team and tried to explain himself, but to be honest, what he said about players not watching film, he was being honest and there were no lies told.
"People say I was too blunt today, but I just keep it real," Hardaway said. "I'm not out to embarrass any kid, anybody knows that. I meant what I said... I'm just always going to be 100 percent real with my kids....unfortunately we live in a world where we can't be real all the time."
No disagreement here. Hardaway's honesty should be praised and respected. But, the more important topic of players watching film is something that all athletes should think about.
Look at it from this perspective, if a person is going into sports journalism to write about football and never watches a college or NFL game, can they really be successful?
There is an interesting split when it comes to college athletes and them watching film on their own time. Hardaway said it is vital because of how much they can learn from it
"Well, I think they should after every game watch themselves watch the team and kind of understand our schemes and what we wanted to do," Hardaway said. "They all know it and see how well we did and then we don't have to get on them as much. They'll kind of police themselves, if they watched.. I think as a player you need to see yourself and see what the team is doing. So you can kind of be more engaged in what's going on."
Hardaway's line of thought is shared by many current NBA players. Portland Trailblazer guard, CJ McCollum agrees with the Tigers head coach and said there's a big difference between watching film as a team versus individually.
"It is really individualized, but players can really gain a lot of knowledge about their game from it," McCollum said. "It is like the difference between reading a book aloud with the class and reading the book by yourself."
Head coach Penny Hardaway (tan suit) huddles with his team.
