Transcription
Alright man, peace. So brothers, during this previous NBA All-Star weekend, the resident pea-brain idiot of ESPN, Ryan Hollins, he stopped by the Steven Naismith and Max Kellerman show and actually attempted to propagate his erroneous notion about LeBron James being better than Michael Jordan. And fortunately, they did their best to shut him down. They did not quite do as good a job as they were supposed to, but they did a well enough job of showing him how much of an idiot he is.
So, of course, they're gonna talk about it. "No more chime," he said yesterday on this show, "that LeBron James doesn't have the clutch gene." I disagree with Pippen about that. I think that LeBron James has shown, especially in the last three or four years, that he is willing to be aggressive in the clutch. He's willing to take jump shots in the clutch. What he's not willing to do is drive the basketball to the basket, which is something that Skip Bayless has always harped on, and it's the truth. LeBron does not want to go to the free-throw line in a clutch situation, but he is going to take clutch jump shots.
"Michael or Kobe," had both of you said there and heard him say that, and I understand. MJ, the scooters under spin, and then he throws up Kobe Bryant and he says that Michael and Kobe aren't the player that LeBron James is. Last time I checked, well, actually, he said that LeBron is not the player that Michael and Kobe are, and I do agree with you. When he's doing Kobe, that was just nonsense. But I know why Scotty's doing this. Guy, he's doing this because he's upset that LeBron James said that he's the greatest of all time. He's also upset at what he sees from LeBron James on the basketball floor defensively. Scotty's a guy that if he sees you're not giving any effort on defense, he's going to lose a lot of respect for you. So that's the reason why he's, why he's been trying to go ham on LeBron lately.
The questions are with the mentality. Well, LeBron passes better than Kobe. I'm not quite sure every pass is better than Jordan. Did LeBron is a better floor general than Kobe Bryant? But you have to play in the LeBron James system, and many Kobe fans will be very upset by this. It's okay. I've gone over this with them before. Kobe Bryant is the most overrated all-time great player in the history of basketball. I don't care who doesn't like that. You can mythologize him, you could lionize him, you can forget about the warts all you want. Kobe Bryant is not a top 10 all-time and great NBA player. He's just not.
Now, if you fit him into the right system, he can be one of the greatest weapons in the history of the NBA, no doubt about it. He's a phenomenal weapon. So be given the appropriate coach and the appropriate offensive system, space the floor properly, he can detonate, no doubt about it. He gets hotter than any player that I've ever seen. But he was a volume shooter who gave great effort on defense, but he was a bit overrated as a defender as well. He had his best season as a defender in the championship years, both in the first three-peat and in the back-to-back championship years with Pau Gasol. Other than that, he was mildly overrated as a defensive player.
So let's see. LeBron James, no. It's called be a top 10 all-time great, no muss guy. He threw him in there just to throw a little salt on LeBron. Everyone is back just a little bit. Kobe Bryant, and he says that Michael, then Kobe aren't the player that LeBron James is. Last time I checked, LeBron passes better, he's bigger, he's taller, he's stronger. Well, he's bigger, taller, and stronger, but basketball is a skill game, and I get it. The questions are with the mentality, and this was the knock that people have on LeBron James. We touched on this yesterday, is that he's not a killer. He's, he's not gonna go down fighting. He's not gonna do all the little things. If last year's NBA Finals didn't prove that to you, well, I think that you actually mean last year's NBA playoff run, because what the finals actually showed you is that LeBron James, you can get him to quit.
Now, I'm sure that many Kobe feds will say, "See through what you say he built and Kobe?" Because I can cite three, four examples, but Kobe quit. LeBron, you can get LeBron to quit, and you can also get Kobe to quit. Let's not forget what happened in that Phoenix Suns series, a '06, when they were up 3-1, and Kobe decided that he was not going to shoot in Game 7, okay? So I've seen Kobe give up before. I saw him in 2008 in Boston, Game 6, where they had him so scared to drive the lane, he took three straight 35-foot three-pointers because they were locking him down so hard, they'd been so physical with him. So miss me with all the Kobe Bryant does not give up stuff. Yes, you can get LeBron James to quit. You can also get Kobe to quit.
Well, we know that. We know that. You confused? Just one quick interruption. I know I'm gonna correct you. I know you meant the playoffs as opposed to the finals, because he got swept in the finals. Not only that, but after he got swept, he had the nerve to come to the dais after Game 4 with his wife's black scarf wrapped around his head. LeBron James, the fella we saw. So if the only knock is to say that he's not an assassin, he's not a killer, he doesn't bring a game up to date, can we look at some stats right now? Because the Bron James, wise, what? No, LeBron James is not a better clutch player than Michael Jordan, but LeBron James is a very underrated clutch player. He's a better clutch player. He's a better clutch performer, proficiency-wise, than Kobe Bryant. A lot of people are not going to like that. Kobe Bryant's one of the more overrated clutch players ever. What he is, is a volume shooter. You knew that Kobe was going to take the last shot, whether it was a good shot, bad shot, single coverage, triple coverage, Kobe was going to take the last shot. So that's where he was able to build up this reputation at this great clutch performer when he really was not that great in the clutch. When you great, how many times he was successful versus how many shots he actually attempted? So I gauge clutchless based on proficiency and also your eagerness or your verb to have that last shot. So that's why Jordan is easily the most clutch player ever. When I think clutch, I think of Michael Jordan. I think of Larry Bird. LeBron James is more clutch than they give him credit for, but during those moments, he also can have a brain freeze. Kobe Bryant is phenomenally overrated when it comes to clutching this. He's just old, eager to take the last shot that you know people believe that he's more clutching he actually is because he hasn't taken time off in many more playoff series. A lot of those are likely lower leverage games, and there are many more games to choose from. Those are counting numbers, okay? There's no order to me to make that LeBron is more clutch. Dangler, I mean, I could think of three or four game-winning shots that one will consider clutch, just in the last couple of final series that Jordan played against the Utah Jazz. In the '97 series, he hit the game-winner in Game 1 and Game 5. The flu game, he had that big three-point shot with about 30 seconds left, which I'm pretty sure would not count as a clutch shot. In Game 6 in '98, of course, we all know here at the last shot to win that game, and of course, after that, they made the big defensive play on John Stockton. So just in those two series right there, there were three clutch shots. And then of course, you have the shot against Cleveland. You also have the other shot that gets Cleveland in '93. So it depends on how they compiled these quote-unquote clutch stats because they claim that Jordan only hit three game-winners and that his, his stats in the clutch were such and such. But I could think of many clutch shots that he hit that probably would not fit within the parameters of how they were trying to discern what clutch this is. Securi does need to remove his ass. They need to throw him out headfirst like Jazz from Fresh Prince. What I'll take into consideration is this. We're not going to bring up the six NBA, five or six NBA Finals MVPs. Never get to a Game 7 because never allowed it. You're not gonna get into any of that. That's booed at me. We know. Well, Michael Jordan won six NBA farmers that never lost one. That's the number LeBron James superfan argument. Who did do a play against? Do who did he play against? Two. He did play get anybody in the finals. So they want you to think that he went to six finals and never faced any top-notch competition because the excuse-making from the LeBron James superfans is that he's gonna against all these gargantuan teams. The Golden State Warriors are an all-time great team. An all-time great team. I would love to see them go up against in 1996 Seattle SuperSonics with Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp, Detlef Schrempf, Sam Perkins, Hershey Hawkins, with '90s rules, just to see what would happen. I would love to see that. And even beyond all that, LeBron James is the only player that I've ever seen that every time he loses in the finals, there's always an excuse. It was Kyrie and Kevin Love with hurt. It was he was so young against San Antonio and '07. Then it was Golden State had a stacked team against him. They had a super team against him, even though all the players that they have on their team were drafted until they brought in Kevin Durant. And now, of course, they've added a heavily compromised DeMarcus Cousins. Golden State did not become a super team until 2017. And I've stated this in the past, that was the LeBron James Cleveland Cavaliers who were favored to win the NBA championship coming into the 2014-2015 season and the 2015-2016 season. So he's actually underachieved. Is who you gonna get? You just brought up competition. No disrespect, but him blowing through the Toronto Raptors, really? We can't bring up, you know, I can bring up losing to Orlando in the playoffs. I can bring up them bringing in Reading in Indiana, based he wouldn't up it coming Paul George, you know, with other guys. Bring up winning the finals, Ray Allen coming to the rescue. I can bring up him losing the NBA Finals with eight points in a game. Thank you, sir. Being guarded by JJ Barea and Jason Terry. Like to me, that's conversation over right there. Bring up the fact that Michael Jordan went seven kids bitchin plus 30 being the number one option. And oh, by the way, didn't have this Mansur saddle with it. I'll just go make the right place all up front up against a Mac. Speaking to you all, I'm gonna say is this to you. Here's the thing. I think that LeBron James is one of the top three greatest players who have ever lived. Well, you're overrating him because he's not top three. He's not even top five. LeBron James is outside of the top five. Some people might even have him outside of the top 10. I can't see him being any lower than 10 on my list. I can see arguments for Tim Duncan. I came over him. I could even see arguments for Shaq over him. I can also see arguments for Wilt Chamberlain over him. But I have LeBron in that six to 10 area. It's fluid, but right now I have him at six. But when we talk about him against Jordan, and I'll leave it to Max with this, what annoys me about people who are supportive of LeBron James over Jordan is they look at him now. And I'm saying, what did it take for you to get there? What he developed? And it took him a decade to kill. Michael Jordan walked into the league that way. Well, not quite. Michael Jordan had to go through a development period as well. He had to learn how to win in the NBA. So that's a false narrative as well. It's not good to try to go against a false narrative with your own false narrative. Let's address it with the truth. The fact of the matter is that Michael Jordan has the best stats when it comes to proficiency levels. Another fact of the matter is that Michael Jordan changed the paradigm of winning in the NBA. Where before him, the common consensus was that in order for you to win multiple championships, you needed a transcendent big man. Jordan was the first player to win as many championships as he did without having an offensively dominant frontcourt. He was the first player to do that. He created a whole different paradigm. And what we see today from LeBron James and even the Golden State Warriors was Steph Curry, Kobe Bryant and the Lakers, that was all based off of the paradigm created by Jordan, where now you could go through a wing player and your big man would just be there to defend and get rebounds. That that was almost never done before Jordan. Now, you had the great Isiah Thomas, who won two straight World Championships in '89 and '90, but he had a very prominent frontcourt with Mark McGwire and Bill Laimbeer, Dennis Rodman, etc. So those players could play, and they had to contribute offensively. They also had to rebound, things of that nature. So that's why I have Isiah Thomas ranked so high because of what he was able to do. But Jordan was the player who changed the complete paradigm. To me, that's the best argument for him, in addition to that, having such extreme proficiency levels on more offense and defense. Clutch was not right now. Hold up, everybody. I'm not to now. Kobe, LeBron is better than Kobe. Kobe was, I agree, sir. So slept on nowadays? Absolutely. I said it all the time. When you said that Larry Bird was better than LeBron James, people get very upset. Larry Bird, from 1979 to 1988, the greatest and most impactful small forward of all time. Please keep in mind, once again, his first season with the Boston Celtics, he took a different 29-win team to a 61-win team, and the next season they won the championship. And his rookie year, there was no Kevin McHale there. There was no Dennis Johnson there. There was no Robert Parish there. LeBron's better than those guys. LeBron's obviously way better than anyone today. I'm talking no. He's no. He's not about MJ. Everyone fall back by every analytic and most advanced measure, and LeBron uses these numbers and Jaden uses these numbers. Absolutely. LeBron's crime is not quite as high as MJ's prime. I'm just about the numbers, the most advanced analytics. But now let's talk about the story of the whole thing. You know, this nonsense of Bran had to learn to get by the Pistons. Do you know that? I'm sorry, Jordan. You know, the first time Jordan played with another all-star, it was with Scottie Pippen. Well, Michael Jordan actually did have to learn how to get by the Pistons. They had to implement a proper offensive game plan, the triangle offense. He had to learn to trust his teammates. So it wasn't just about Pitman's development. Michael Jordan had to mature mentally as well and realize and understand that as magnificent as he was individually, no, he could not be by himself. But once he realized how to trust his teammates and how to use them, and once they've matured physically and he matured mentally, they swept right through the Pistons. The first all-star played with that season that Pippin made the all-star team. Keeps with the defending champion Pistons, seven games. You know how he lost? Hip and had a migraine. Place 42 minutes, scored three points. So once again, Jordan was without another all-star. The second highest scorer on the team, our screen at 10 points. Jordan went for 31. '98, okay? So that. So Jordan didn't have an offering. He didn't knock out the Pistons. But first I be at an all-star. Next season, Pippin's an all-star again. Now Jordan, he never again didn't twins of finals in under seven games. Now think about that for a second. Undefeated under seven games. You bring up the competition. With Jordan came back for the second three-peat, your Orlando Magic, you got into the finals the previous season with Shaq and Penny and Grant and all those dudes. Hold up. Jordan swept them, a 60-win team. Then in the finals, destroyed in six games, a 64-win Sonic's team. Well, I wouldn't say today destroyed the Sonics. They started out very fast, and then the Sonics started to, they started to get the Bulls' rhythm a little bit. And I'd be quite honest with you, the Bulls are very fortunate in that series. The first three game, in the first three games, the Sonics, they just got hit with a molly-whopped. Game 3 in Seattle, Jordan had a great first half. You scored like 27 points. The second half, he just coasted. Games 4 and 5, I mean, that was a maelstrom. I'm not quite sure if I've ever seen anything like that. I cannot remember a stadium or an arena that was ever that loud, a basketball arena that was ever as loud as that old Key Arena. I mean, they were incredible, and they really, they just pushed the Bulls right out of that building. Game 6, the Bulls were able to win a defensive struggle, and that was basically all she wrote. But had the Bulls been able to close out Seattle in four games, they would have been almost uniformly considered the greatest team ever. When they lost those two games against the arrow, people started to dispute whether they were the greatest team ever or not. One sec. 62 in Jazz, did he beat in 1998? What are you talking about? The Utah Jazz in '97 and '98, they're the most underrated team of all time. Now, because so many of LeBron James, the superfans want to try to denigrate that team to try to pump him up. And we know why they do it because those Utah Jazz teams, they had three white boys in their starting lineup. They had John Stockton there, Jeff Hornacek, and they also had Greg Ostertag. So people look back in this year where, you know, those little white boys, they don't say it per se, but they try to throw that notion out there that they were not really as good as today's teams because of what their starting lineup was comprised of. Anybody who saw Utah play knows how great they were. I remember one of these idiots, Wentz Eddie, has told me, oh, well, you know, LeBron, he went against Turner, Tony, and they have, they have four first-ballot Hall of Famers. They had Tim Duncan, had Tony Parker, they had Manu, and they had Kawhi Leonard. I'm like, this dude's really trying to stretch it. Manager, nobody was a two-time all-star. Will he be a first-ballot Hall of Famer? Absolutely yes, he will. But because of what he was able to do as a great role player on San Antonio, as well as his international play, but they only made the all-star team two times. You know how many times Jeff Hornacek made the all-star team? I believe, I believe he also made it twice. Jeff Hornacek was a very good player, and that Utah Jazz team from the late '90s, they beat down so many teams and frustrated so many teams. They would sweep the Lakers with Shaq and Kobe, of course, a young Kobe, but Shaq and Kobe, they would embarrass them. And they also beat Tim Duncan and the Spurs in '98. They beat them in '98. I think they beat him in five games, maybe six games. That team that had Tim Duncan, as well as having David Robinson, knock them right out of the playoffs. So this notion that Utah was not a great team, that's incorrect. They were a phenomenal team. [Applause] What JJ Barea? That's how you got LeBron James. You got him with JJ Barea. You don't have to answer a question with a question. When he asks, how do you got LeBron James? Very easy. Got him with JJ Barea. Once again, the LeBron James super fans are trying to argue what they see from LeBron James today as opposed to what we've seen from him over the course of his career. I saw him against JJ Barea. [Applause] Ryan Hollins, he talks a lot of [ __ ] for scrub. Michael Jordan won against Clyde Drexler in 1992 because that's another, that's another argument that of many of the Jordan detractors will try to use, that he did not go up against great defenders, he wouldn't begin or the defenders that he went up against were smaller than him. Clyde Drexler was six-foot-seven, he averaged 35 a game against him in the '92 finals. Dan Majerle was six-six, he averaged 41 points a game against him in 1993 finals. I mean, it's not so much about the size and the stature, it's about the skill level defensively. Joe Dumars, one of the greatest defensive shooting guards of all time. Yeah, he was about 6'4", but he was still an unbelievable defender. And Jordan would custom early light him up. And when we looked at the eras, Michael Jordan probably played in the greatest era for shooting guards in the history of the NBA, and we know that he would dominate over most of them. LeBron James has played in almost a, a weak era for small forwards. I'm not gonna hold a weak era because he's played against a good amount of Hall of Famers, KD, Paul Pierce, Vince Carter, T-Mac, Paul George is trending towards the Hall of Fame. So he's playing, you fight against some very good small forwards, Kawhi Leonard as well. But, um, have you take him back to the '80s where it was more physical? LeBron will still be a great player because LeBron, he's dominating. But Larry Bird went against even greater small forwards than LeBron James, who were allowed to be much more physical with him. I would love to see LeBron James be guarded by Dennis Rodman, just to see how he would respond, especially to the handshaking. All right, and Max, you've learned well. Congratulations. Here's the deal. We'll close out this segment by saying this. Michael Jordan, first championship, beats Magic. Second championship, Drexler and the crew. Third championship, Barkley's Marley, Kevin Johnson. Enough goes into retirement, comes out of it, beats Stockton and Malone twice. Beats the Glove, Gary Payton, what Sean Kemp before he became Shawn Kemp. The bottom line is, when you look at Michael Jordan and you look at the game the way it was played back then, to the softest cotton out ditches circumstances that exist now. There's nothing 82 games. It gets security for his ass. Many would. That's basically it on that. That was an interesting conversation. It was nice to see them attack a lot of his little silly arguments because I've seen his pinhead Ryan Hollins on TV trying to argue this point before. Now this makes an ass of himself. So peace.