Meow indeed

The Wizards Insider had some of the highlights of Kwame Brown's run with the Lakers, in particular the shots Phil Jackson took at him.

Two months into his Lakers tenure, Jackson questioned Brown's toughness and his inability to recover from a strained right hamstring. "I'm not putting pressure other than just call him (a sissy) every time I see him in the locker room," Jackson said. Jackson accented his assessment by making cat-like "meow" sounds as Brown walked past him. Later, Jackson walked into the locker room, pointed to a brown mink coat stashed on top of the coat rack and started laughing hysterically. "See that's Kwame's," he said.

After a triple-overtime loss to the Charlotte Bobcats in December of last season - in which Kobe Bryant scored 58 points - Jackson put the blame on Brown, who had three turnovers down the stretch. "We're going to feed him Butterfingers on the flight home just so he can feel the effects of it."

A few months later, when the Lakers visited Washington, Jackson skipped the morning shootaround and took his team on a tour of the monuments. He didn't waste the opportunity to take another dig at Brown. "I think we had other guys who'd never seen them, like Kwame Brown," Jackson said. "I hear he came here but I don't think he ever did that."

Yesterday, Jackson basically blamed most of Brown's struggles on injuries that have robbed him of his explosiveness and quickness. Then, he added, "Kwame still has an upside that people haven't seen. He's going to get better opportunities than he did here."

That might be news to Memphis General Manager Chris Wallace, who explained his reasoning for making the Pau Gasol deal by stating, "Brown was the largest expiring contact we could find." Ouch. He didn't even waste any time trying to make anyone believe that the Grizzlies expected anything from Brown, who might not be around long enough to get booed out of Memphis, like he did in Washington and Los Angeles.

I know Kwame has notoriously thin skin, but I'll give him enough credit that it wasn't Jackson's jokes that stunted his development to the point where he's averaging the fewest points since his rookie year.