Make ’em say … you’re hired.
Highly successful rapper, actor, businessman and one-time NBA hopeful Master P has had his eyes on the Association for a long time. So when Stan Van Gundy was recently canned by the Pelicans, Master P (real name Percy Miller) said “pass me the application.”
Speaking in a video released by TMZ, Miller says he wants the New Orleans coaching gig, saying it’s time for the NBA to embrace change among its coaching ranks:
I think it’s about putting the right fit, the right people together. … I think it’s time. I think the NBA gotta do something different, something unique. …The NBA is entertainment, I think it’s time for me to be the first hip-hop coach. … What I know as basketball — I played in the NBA, I done coached a lot of great players that are in the league, I done took my sons from being high-school athletes to maybe they’ll be the next, future big-time pro athletes. … I think it’s time for something different. I think that’ll be different, unique for the NBA. I know that I could show people like Zion (Williamson), all the great players that they have on that team, they need somebody that understand them. If they bring me in as a head coach, assistant coach, I think I could change the game.
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And if Miller is hired?
“We’ll win,” Miller said. “We’ll win and Zion will be happy. … I feel like motivating the players, understanding them, that’s the most important thing.”
The New Orleans native does have a modicum of hoop experience: He signed a few contracts in the late ’90s in the NBA but didn’t make an active roster. He coached AAU basketball, teaching up several current NBA stars, including DeMar DeRozan.
According to Miller, he was also at one point considered for a spot among Alvin Gentry’s coaching staff in New Orleans, something that obviously never came to be.
A recent report from The Athletic indicated that Zion Williamson may not be too thrilled to be in NOLA, with Williamson’s family supposedly very dissatisfied with the organization.
Well, if Master P is hired, you can say … he did that.