Leandro Barbosa: The Only Honest Man in Phoenix
Everything is juuuussst fine; seriously, nothing to worry about here.
This seems to be he company line in Phoenix. From the controversial Shaq trade, to the fiasco that was Mike D’Antoni’s departure. But there’s one guy who’s not toeing the company line.
That man is Leandro Barbosa, and the truth (may) set him free (literally).
A Brazilian sports newspaper, Lance, asked Suns guard Leandro Barbosa about talk that he might wind up following D’Antoni to New York.
“It’s not a rumor,” Barbosa said while in his hometown, Sao Paolo. “I will play where I have to play. It’s business.”
Barbosa also told Lance that the Shawn Marion-Shaquille O’Neal trade contributed to the Suns’ playoff elimination.
“With the arrival of Shaq, we lost our speed - our main characteristic,” he said. “We didn’t have time to mesh. This ended up hurting us. Shaq will be very useful, but it’ll be necessary to change the way the team plays.”
Is it just me or are foreign players far more candid when speaking to reporters outside of North America? They do realize that the Internet and translators exist, right?
33 Responses to “Leandro Barbosa: The Only Honest Man in Phoenix”
May.22 at 12:09 pm
James says:
it certainly seems that way
May.22 at 12:12 pm
namik says:
This is all well and good but what about the lakers game recap??
May.22 at 12:12 pm
maio says:
It’s not just you. Most foreign players assume that North American reporters are full of s*it.
May.22 at 12:12 pm
Lz - Cphfinest3 says:
Leandrinho is the MAN
May.22 at 12:14 pm
Lz - Cphfinest3 says:
Aren’t all reporters full of sh!t? I can guarantee you that the Brazilian ones are.
May.22 at 12:35 pm
maio says:
There used to be a player (I’m not revealing the name but recently Jeff Van Gundy compared Lamar Odom to him) on the Bulls who avoided American media for their perceived lack of decency. I guess the foreign media, while presumably also often full of it, don’t have as much pressure to deliver bombastic news or risk losing their job and tend to stick to the truth and to what players really said.
May.22 at 12:39 pm
starbury&stevey says:
welcome to NYC leandro..he follows the same path with stephon marbury..but wait a minute..what are they gonna do with Nate,Crawford,Stephon?leadro is good enough for a role player..coming off the bench.
May.22 at 1:21 pm
riggs says:
that practical joke isnt so practical now eh leandro?!?
May.22 at 1:34 pm
ciolkstar says:
Barbosa is fast but not a great player, esp when he’s missing his 3s. New york is a debacle but it’d be a mistake to give up too much for him.
May.22 at 1:40 pm
DP says:
He I can see Barbosa taking over the point guard duties in NY. It would be a perfect fit and NY could finallly find a way to rid yo boy Marbury from his woes. I hope this finds a way of happening.
May.22 at 1:45 pm
James the balla says:
I want the Lakers game notes!!!
May.22 at 1:55 pm
DP says:
Be patient James, I’m still working on them right now.
May.22 at 2:23 pm
chris says:
At least he gt the guts to say what this is all about:
BUISNESS! If you get paied more elsewhere, the players would be stupid not to grab the opportunity! They got a family to feed
May.22 at 2:39 pm
BxBaller says:
Stop the nonsense, Barbosa will not be a better pg than Marbury. He’s a good 2 guard coming off the bench, thats about it.
May.22 at 2:44 pm
Russ Bengtson says:
Who the hell would the Suns want from the Knicks? I’ll wait.
May.22 at 2:56 pm
Diogo says:
D’Antoni?
May.22 at 2:58 pm
chris says:
The suns could want Eddy Curry if their turning into an over-weight, slow-paced, underachieving team; which is likely
May.22 at 3:28 pm
Sko says:
David Lee, I read AntoniO doesn’t like him, something about too much defense
May.22 at 3:35 pm
E. Sneed says:
David Lee and Crawford are the best trade-bait on that team…but with Nash getting older they would be dumb to let Barbosa go…
May.22 at 3:36 pm
BETCATS says:
if the Suns added Eddy Curry to their rotation they would be a lean mean fighting machine that is not lean and sounds like Darth Vader
May.22 at 4:18 pm
feezy24 says:
shaq is a fatass
May.22 at 4:42 pm
Silky Slim says:
The Brazilian Blur spoke the truth!
May.22 at 4:45 pm
Rubens Borges says:
a possible shaq starbury duo 5 years too late?
May.22 at 5:19 pm
FS-23 says:
the shaq trade was good because this allows them to change their playing style as their run and gun offence was getting too predictable. Where did it get them in the end…nowhere.Changes need to be made..
May.22 at 5:34 pm
AB_40 says:
maio that’s most foreign people who follow basketball. and feezy24 he probably in better shape then you huh haha
May.22 at 9:03 pm
Niio says:
maio.. you talking about Deng? “Bulls player compared to Odom”
May.23 at 7:28 am
maio says:
@Niio: Deng? No. It was back when the Bulls mattered (and I don’t mean last year). Too bad he never talked to SLAM either. A really good, funny and outspoken guy.
May.23 at 8:57 am
Tavrich says:
too true leandro barbosa
but i hope he does not go to knicks we luv him here
May.23 at 10:05 am
sab says:
so everyone’s ignoring the bit where he says “shaq will be very useful”. typical…
May.23 at 6:17 pm
Diogo says:
NBA All-fast first team: PG - Parker, SG - Iverson, SF - Barbosa, PF - Paul, C - D. Williams. PLEASE, make this happen.
May.25 at 1:25 am
DeVIL boy says:
barbosa better watch his back..you know shaq he doesnt want getting upstaged
May.25 at 9:02 am
andrew says:
Remember when everyone, including Etan Thomas with his pseudo-intellectual self-righteous posturing, jumped on Andrew Bogut’s back when the Sydney Morning Herald published an interview with him and he was bitching out the entire league? Bogut had everything he said butchered and turned into a rant by that newspaper and all of a sudden he’s being talked about on PTI, called every type of a$$hole under the sun and bitched out by every person who took offense to what he said? Yeah. Turns out you can’t trust the media to accurately reflect what you want to get across. Journalists have agendas, especially big newspapers. The SMH’s agenda was profiling Bogut as the Aussie kid done good and keeping real to his suburban Melbourne roots, hence making him out to be a xenophobic jerk who hates American culture to anyone that is not Australian. The Brazilian paper, I’m sure, has the very same thing in mind when quoting Barbosa… Am I the only one who learnt to analyse media in high school? This is pretty basic critical analysis that I was taught in year ten at school..
May.25 at 1:53 pm
O-man says:
Please, no PLEASE, don’t use the phrase “family to feed” when talking NBA player’s salaries. It’s not just silly, it also became completely unusable when Spree turned down 3 years and 21 million with that same phrase.