Transcription
There were some games we were looking back over the numbers and stuff. There is a game. 2002-2003 season was insane. Between the two years, he made me fall. You shoot me something. We should be so bad.
What, what was it like going against each other? I loved it because I knew I was gonna get his best. There was no backing down. Like, I knew I had to come and play against this dude every single possession, and it brought the best out of me. Because, you know, you play some of these guys, some nights, you know you could drop 40 and you don't really have to go on with him. Yeah, you sleep on it.
Morton, you get embarrassed. I mean, I loved it. I relish those opportunities. I remember you had a coach, Coach. Ward and down in Orlando, and I came out early to say hi to Tyler, I think it was. And, you know, they were telling me, "Old Max ready for you. Max, Max ready for the game." And I remember reading about you having some tightness in your back. I said, "Yeah, how's his back?" "I'll show he's ready for us. He's gonna be fine."
When I hit him a check. Yeah, I would check that back. I had like 21 in the first half. I could have swore this dude. I think I came up, I got a rebound, and out when I went down, he jumped up behind me, and I swear I got it. I swear I got a contusion. Ours now, I had a contusion. I was like, "Yo, he did that?" Oh, because I was cooking in the first half, right? I just wanted to test the back. Oh, yeah, that's y'all healthy, but I need. I don't. I can't for him.
But I was watching him from afar when I was in Orlando, especially the old 2003 season when I led the league in scoring. And this dude went off like nine straight 40-point games. I was like, "Oh hell nah, I can't let him come get me for that scoring title. I might not win the championship this year, but I'm damn sure getting this scoring title."
Always wish I had one player to play with. It was this guy. Mmm, cuz he listened. He could do everything I could do, but he was taller. You would have liked that. Talking kids about that. Oh, that's what I told me. Ask about the hardest player I ever had to defend. I said, "It's pretty easy. I was tracing because he could do everything. He could do." But again, all that stuff came from him. No, like us training together as young pups and and seeing how he worked. And then watching him as he became this, you know, one of the greatest players to ever play the game. The footwork, right? How he approached the game. I took a couple of his moves, and I'm gonna sit here and say it. He don't have to. I know he took a couple marbles in particular. I see it all the time when he was playing of like, "Okay, we're not the only two guys that do that right there."
All right, so let's take this to present day because since the NBA ABA merger, there are only three humans on earth who have had these crazy scoring streaks of 30 points or more over and over and over again. You had a 14-game streak, you had a 16-game streak, and James Harden, of course, crazy streak this season. What do you think of what he's doing right now?
I think he, I'm not a fan of in terms of winning championships. That style, everyone wins championships. But at the same time, you have to keep your team's head above water to win games. So you have to do what you have to do to win games, and he's doing it right now.
I think so. Are you saying you don't think James Harden and the Rockets, as constructed, can win a title? Not with this style of play, it won't work, right? With one player dominating the ball. Now, when you have Chris Paul come back and you have more, more movement into the offense where you move guys around where you're harder to find, because listen, if you take one player, you put them at the top of the key, where you put them on the wing and running screen rolls, you're always in front of the defense. The defense can key in, particularly in the playoffs. That's easy. Yeah, it's easy to defend now.
What he's doing is absolutely remarkable, though. And I think it's a testament to how remarkable it is because people are now trying to minimize what it is that he's doing. I mean, he's doing some phenomenal stuff.
I could ask you about Anthony Davis. You went on the radio once, yeah, and said you wanted to be traded from LA. What do you think of AD wanting out of New Orleans?
He's got a right to do what the hell he wants to do. I mean, I listen, it's, you know, teams have the right to trade players, sign players, do whatever they want. And they can speak their piece, do whatever they want. Players have the freedom to be able to say and voice their opinion. I mean, at some point, you know, you spend six or seven years and you feel like you're not competing for a championship. Like, at some point, you're gonna want to get the hell out of there and go to an organization that is serious about winning. I dealt with that, right? I dealt with that in Orlando. You want to win. You see, you know, your contemporaries win a championship. You see your friends winning championships, and you know that's the ultimate goal.
All right, so Mr. Laker, how aggressive should this year's, this season's, this week's Los Angeles Lakers be? Johnson running his franchise. Do you want your team to make a big push for AD?
How it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Which long-term objectives are. Now, by signing LeBron, you're already making an indication that you want to win. Right? So I think it would be a smart thing to do for the Lakers to look at them. But at the same time, you know, it's, you got to play a little bit of poker, right?
I won't ask you about LeBron. I don't think it's a coincidence that he had the worst stretch of games, the worst injury of his career, went after he turned 34. You snapped your Achilles at age 34. What do you think LeBron's timeline is and the pressure that puts on the Lakers in terms of their overall?
He's fine. It just depends how he adapts his game. He's at some point, you have to evolve. So the speed and the power that he's used to playing with has to change, which he can because now he has a god-given size to be able to adapt and go to below the free-throw line, use more of a power game. You know, Magic did a lot of that, right? Magic at 6'9" went down to the post a lot, attracted double teams down to him, made plays from there. He's more than capable of doing that and playing for a long, long time.
So Michael Jordan played when he was 40. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played when he was 40. Vince Carter is out there playing when he's 42. One pickup. I tried. I tried at the house Monday. I was playing hurt. If I wanted to, I could. I don't want to. You're sure. I'm sure if I wanted to, I could. You know, you diet. You know, you got to really, really obsess about it. You can do it with the technology, nutrition studies now.
Hold on. This guy was doing stuff still can't do to this day. You know what I thought about? Because I know he participated in what was it, '97? And we had the lockout. What the next year, you, and Vince, you think you would have got it? No, it's not so. These two guys. Yep. Now that you're sitting here, 40 years old, 39 years old, you look back on all of this. Is there anything you tell these guys?
Before we go, yeah, in this day and age, we should try to figure out a way to trade and play with each other. We should have been talking about that at that age right there. Now, how can we get on the same thing? That would have been fun.