Worthy on Lakers: 'It's embarrassing and it's unacceptable'

Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer and Los Angeles Lakers legend James Worthy ripped his former team and the modern NBA player in a Thursday radio interview.

The 61-year-old Worthy appeared on Detroit radio station 97.1 The Ticket's Stoney & Jansen with Heather show where he decried the modern game's reliance on three-pointers and players leaving college too soon.

"Kareem had four years with John Wooden [at UCLA], Michael Jordan and I had three years with Dean Smith [at North Carolina], Isiah [Thomas] had some years with Bobby Knight [at Indiana], so you learned the fundamentals," Worthy said. "Not only that, you learned how to live. You learned how to balance your freaking checkbook in college, there’s a lot of things. When you don’t get that, guys are coming to the NBA who are not fundamentally sound. All they do is practice threes, lift weights, get tattoos, tweet and go on social media. That’s it."

A seven-time All-Star, Worthy said that the current NBA is lacking well-rounded players.

"So you don’t have that sound player; you have an athletic player," Worthy said. "And that’s what’s happening to the game. It’s a lot of ISO and looking for mismatches. Bill Russell told me one time, they had five options off of one play. You don’t see that anymore."

The Gastonia, NC native also despaired at the state of the Lakers, the team with which he spent the entirety of his 12-year career, pointed to the team's inability to properly build a roster.

"I think they have refused to build over the years," Worthy said. "We’ve had some good players: [Brandon] Ingram, [Julius] Randle, [Lonzo] Ball. We have tried to win quickly. In Kobe’s last few years, we brought in [Steve] Nash who was a little bit older, Dwight Howard came in with a