Bart Scott doesn’t want his son to play football

Most NFL players don't want their kids to play football. I was watching ESPN First Take recently, and Darren Woodson and this other former NFL player who I forgot both said they didn't want their sons playing football.

I disagree with making your kids wait until HS though. If they're going to play, they should play at an early age so that they can get the fundamentals down and get used to taking contact.

:)

done

wow

Scott said that he doesn’t want his son to have to deal with concussions.

The Knicks’ wild 2011-12 season provides a window into this question. Charles Oakley can talk all he wants about how Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire need to play better defense – he’s right — but the basic fact that defined New York’s crazy season, and the one that will define its future, is this: New York scored only 98.5 points per 100 possessions with Anthony, Stoudemire and Tyson Chandler on the court together. That’s a mark that would have tied Toronto for 25th in points per possession, per NBA.com’s stats tool. The Knicks spent most of the season as one of the league’s 10 worst offensive teams and one of its 10 stingiest defensive teams. If the offense doesn’t improve, especially when all the high-priced stars play together, the Knicks have a limited ceiling.

Taken together, these stats tell us that Anthony is an enormously powerful force when he attacks the basket from far outside. Watch video of all his shot attempts within five feet of the rim, as I did via NBA.com’s fantastic stats database, and it’s easy to see why. Melo loves to drive from the deep wing area, especially from the left side, where he is dynamite at faking right and squeezing along the left baseline for a right-handed lay-up. (His dependence on right-handed finishes can get him in trouble on the left side if a shot-blocker is around). He’s deadly driving from the elbow areas, with a tendency to go left and a first step too good for almost every defender — especially the power forwards who defended him late in the season, a subject we’ll pick up again later.

A related item: Stoudemire touched the ball at the elbow much more frequently than Anthony did, nearly seven times per game compared to 3.75 for Anthony, one of the 10 highest numbers in the league. He also shot the ball on 42 percent of those possessions, a very high number. There was just one problem: He was ineffective. Stoudemire shot a middling 46 percent on those elbow possessions and turned the ball over at a pretty high rate. Stoudemire is actually a decent passer when he catches above the foul line and has time to survey the floor, but he’s not near the Gasols’ level and can’t regularly punish defenses — or invigorate offenses — with his high-post passing.

But that alone won’t make the Lakers title favorites — not with the Thunder going through the same self-discovery process that the Heat went through last season, and not with questions about Dwight Howard’s back and the general age of the core players. A Lakers team that doesn’t meet something close to its full potential will have a difficult time winning the title. The difference between truly approaching that potential and missing it by a larger margin comes down to thousands of little decisions that take place across 100 or so games, all of which add up to form a team’s ultimate identity and balance. Those decisions might crystallize in one particularly memorable stretch — say, Bryant shooting the Lakers out of Game 4 against the Thunder — but their outcome will be visible even if no such flashbulb moment happens.

Nowitzki turned 34 in July, so he’ll be that age next season and 35 for the 2013-14 season. Since the institution of the three-point line, only 11 players 34 or older (as defined by their age on Feb. 1) and 6-foot-10 or taller have logged at least 1,500 minutes and posted a Player Efficiency Rating of 20.0 — a general approximation for an All-Star — in any season, according to Basketball-Reference. Those 11 players pulled the trick a combined 23 times, with three players — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, David Robinson and Hakeem Olajuwon — combining for 12. Players 36 or older under that Feb. 1 definition accounted for just eight of those 23 seasons, with the above-mentioned trio hitting the minutes/PER double six times in 36-plus seasons.

• Kobe Bryant: Bryant’s deal, the largest per-year contract in the league, also expires after the 2013-14 season. He will make a hair above $30 million in that final season, a deal so cap-cripplingly large that some folks around the league wondered if the Lakers might use the amnesty provision on Bryant before that season. That was probably never a realistic option, and the acquisitions of Steve Nash (on a three-year deal) and Dwight Howard (whom the Lakers would surely like to re-sign beyond next season) signal that L.A. is willing to break the bank over the next two seasons in pursuit of a ring.

And before you ask: Ginobili should be a first-ballot Hall of Famer despite his so-so raw stat totals (just over 10,000 regular-season points) and meager two All-Star appearances. He’s an international basketball legend who didn’t come to the NBA until he was 25 and played his entire career under a coach who prioritizes long-term health above short-term minutes totals. Ginobili should finish his career with one of the 35 or 40 highest PERs of all time, and his per-36 minute numbers project to just about 20 points, five assists and five rebounds per game — historically elite territory.

Pierce will turn 35 in October, so he’ll be at a natural retirement age by the end of his current deal.

• LaMarcus Aldridge: Three relatively affordable years on his deal (about $15 million annually) as the centerpiece on a rebuilding team. Portland will get calls.

It has been an eventful offseason for Joe Johnson, whose trade from Atlanta to Brooklyn clinched the re-signing of Deron Williams and sparked mixed reactions among diehard Atlanta fans. Right now, Johnson is one of about a dozen NBA players going through a week-long “boot camp” with trainer Manning Sumner at Sumner’s Legacy Fit facility in Miami. Johnson took some time before a workout to chat with SI.com about the last few months and what comes next in Brooklyn. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation:

Johnson: I’m doing more agility work, more weight training, even some sled-pushing. It’s crazy what goes on down here. If people could watch us work, they wouldn’t believe it.

As I’ve written before, you can use it to measure player speed, the height of the ball on a particular rebound, how well a player shoots from a precise position on the floor, how well he shoots after one or two dribbles and lots of other things.

With Duncan locked up and Tony Parker on the books for another two seasons after 2012-13, will it be time for San Antonio to move on from one of its three core players? Would Ginobili, as loyal to San Antonio as Duncan, actually want to move on at age 36?

He has never played in all 82 games of an NBA season, and he’s been on a steady downhill slide for most of the last seven years.

The score wasn’t the point, but some clear impressions were made by the players and their excitement playing together and against each other was evident.