LeBron James "EXPOSED" By Isaiah Thomas And Jae Crowder?!

I'm at peace. So for those of you brothers who have been following my channel for a while, you know that when I assess LeBron James, I detail that he is a phenomenal player, an all-time great. But in the offenses that are catered to him, they have to run a specific style, what I call the LeBron system. I've been saying that for a while now, and now many of the former players who were on his team are testifying to this, such as Isiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, etc. They are saying that in order for you to play with LeBron, you have to play according to his specific style. And that now that I'm on another team, I'm happy to be playing in an actual system.

Of course, they're gonna talk about it, and I'm going to chime in. Fair enough. Want to focus on the Cavs though. They weren't playing around last Thursday, trading away six players, receiving four in return from three different teams. And the ex-Cavs players are not going quietly. We heard Isiah Thomas of the party shot yesterday. Now Jae Crowder highlighted how he enjoys playing. He's having fun again and playing with a great group of guys in Utah. Of course, because in the system, certain players are told that when you only run this play, as long as you do such-and-such, you're gonna get the basketball. In the LeBron James system, you only get the ball when he feels like it. That's all that works. And that is why so many players start to tune him out.

And once again, his fanboys, they come on my channel sometimes with a little bitch-assness because they don't really understand the game. They set up in a room all day smoking weed and playing video games, then they come on YouTube to see if they can watch some more highlights of their boo. That boo thing LeBron. And anytime they hear a video that is actually going according to empirical data and is assessing the situation, they get frustrated. And I get it. It's okay. You're just a two-dimensional thinker. It doesn't take away from LeBron's greatness. It's just that as a player, he's not malleable. He's not someone who can play in various forms of offense or defense. You have to carry you to him. And and that happens. It's okay. But what Jae Crowder is attesting to is something I've been saying for a very long time. When is when a player like Jae Crowder, who has come up through a college system into the into the pros, and he's played for a real coach, that's what he's used to. And that's why Kyrie Irving ran off the team because he wanted to be a part of a real team, a real system. He wanted to learn.

LeBron James is human, and he is subject to peer influence like most other people. And if people don't think that, if you think that makes him less than an ideal or perfect leader, I have news. There's no such thing as perfect, and perfect is the enemy of the good. What the hell is this guy talking about? What Jae Crowder basically stated is that it's nice to play on a team that is running an actual system. That was as much a shot at the coach, Tyronn Lue, as it was LeBron. But it's also a shot at LeBron because whatever it is that Tyronn Lue is running, it is predicated on appeasing LeBron James. And that has nothing to do with peer pressure or wherever Max Kellerman is going with his low-level psychological evaluation. Go ahead, do so at your own peril. LeBron is an outstanding leader of NBA teams. I don't know how you could say that LeBron James is an outstanding leader of NBA teams when you go through his history, you cannot prove that. I'm sorry. And I know that people may get frustrated. That is okay.

In his first stint on Cleveland, he flamed out because a lot of his emotional tactics, they didn't work. One thing that ended up happening was his mother got a damn train ran on her. That's all that happened. It came down to Miami to hopefully have one of his good friends, Dwyane Wade, as well as Chris Bosh, assist him in winning his first title. They flamed out in the finals, worst performance in NBA history by a great player, 2011 Finals by LeBron James. 2012 and 2013, he was able to win a couple of titles by teaming up with D-Wade and having the team divested over to him, where they would run the LeBron James system, and LeBron would receive psychological support from Dwyane Wade and leadership from Pat Riley. Pat Riley is and was the leader of that franchise, and as long as he's there, he always will be. Pat Riley trumps Dwyane Wade, as we saw by the negotiations a couple of years ago. That's how that goes.

LeBron came back to Cleveland, went back and forth with Kyrie Irving, who clearly senses many of the same things that I sense, which is that LeBron James is is a male lion with the heart and the brain of a female lion. Kyrie said, "Okay, no problem. I'll work with him because together maybe we can come to some form of success." Due to a series of maladies that befell the Golden State Warriors in the finals, they were able to get one championship. After that, many of his teammates turned on him. So where is this, where is the empirical data supporting LeBron James being a great leader? You wanna know what a great leader is? Magic Johnson. He's a great leader. He was a great leader on the basketball court. Michael Jordan became a great leader. He wasn't one at first, but he became one. Tim Duncan was a great leader. Kobe Bryant even became a serviceable leader in his last couple of years, but I would put him as a leader above LeBron James. As a leader, Kobe Bryant is above LeBron James. I was a player? No, but as a leader, yes. His last couple of years, along, you know, along with, of course, Phil Jackson, who was able to temper more of the toxic and corrosive elements of Kobe's personality. Kobe was able to become a more effective leader than LeBron James was or is.

While well-intentioned, as I say about this situation, Stephen A., from the beginning, the road to hell is paved with intentions. And whatever Dwyane Wade's intentions, the actual effect, and I noticed this happening, I've heard things coming out of Chicago that apply as it relates to Jimmy Butler when Wade was there. And I and I see the same thing with LeBron while he was there. The effect was to isolate LeBron because this guy acts like Dwyane Wade came in with five ounces of coke and put it down in lines and said, "Come on, LeBron, let's get back to what we're doing out of Miami." Like, come on, you're blaming Dwyane Wade now? Dwyane Wade was brought in to Cleveland to provide some form of emotional support for LeBron James. That's why he was brought in because the Cleveland brass, they know LeBron, and they know that in the aftermath of the Kyrie Irving situation, LeBron was ready to have a mental breakdown. So our [ __ ] was in the gym before the sieve number. They want to see me fall. [ __ ] in the gym playing Russian roulette with himself. No doubt. A damn goddamn sticks. You to one bullet in there. Then I can't take it anymore. Guys like Crowder and others, because they were veterans. So all the LeBron is appear, please, as a peer. You guys among the all-time greats and world champions, multiple-time world champions, Finals MVP types. No, LeBron, a chirp ear. But Dwyane Wade is is pure. None of those guys thought or wanted to be LeBron James is pure. All they wanted to do was be a part of a real offense where they ran real plays. All this extra [ __ ] he's talking about doesn't make any sense at all whatsoever.

Now, the Dwyane Wade angle, let me say this. Dwyane Wade had an issue in Chicago because he thought he was gonna come into Chicago very similar to a Paul Pierce. A lot of these guys think that they're Kobe in regards to esteem. And and Kobe only has that esteem with the Lakers. If Kobe would have went to another team and tried a lot of his shenanigans, he would have got his feelings hurt. Dwyane Wade has clout in Miami. He thought he was going to carry that [ __ ] to Chicago, and that didn't work. They wasn't having it. They said, "You can't talk to us like that, and you're not even practicing right. You want a [ __ ] bike? Go practice. If you want to talk to somebody like that, you know, go talk to somebody who's at the Tour de France because that's that's what you need to be. You on a bike all damn day. Now you want to give somebody a pep talk? Go talk to Lance Armstrong. But you can't talk to us like that." And that's what drove Dwyane Wade away. When he got to Cleveland, that show was all messed up because of Kyrie's departure. It had nothing to do with Dwyane Wade. Then the season started, and they, the players who came from Boston, who were used to running a real system, both offensively and defensively, realized that they were just playing street ball in Cleveland. Friends did isolate LeBron from the team. It poised into the situation. The Cavs got rid of all the toxic players. Again, I'm not saying Dwyane Wade is toxic, but given this situation, his presence, it seems to me, became toxic. I think that the mix was toxic. It's like chemistry. Even you take two chemicals and you mix them, it can be, it can lead to a toxic combustion. It is what it is. You have two chemicals, they may be inert when they're separate, but when you mix them together, it could lead to an explosion. That was just not a good mix, especially in the aftermath of the vestiges of the Kyrie Irving experience with Cleveland. There was just too much negative energy left over. And when Isaiah Thomas came back, and he was a shell of his former self, that was a setup for disaster. It was his fault. They shipped him out too, and they got rid of the problem, and they looked rejuvenated. So I take Crowder's comments, yes, to be aimed at LeBron. And I take them to mean LeBron's a human being, is imperfect. Also, please understand that Jae Crowder and Isiah Thomas, they formed their own two-person clique in the Cleveland locker room. When you, when you're traded to a team that you have been prepped and trained to hate and despise, like they were in Boston, trained to hate Cleveland, and now you're put in that situation, it is going to take a long time to, you know, to become ingratiated with the power structure there. No, to become melded into the overall, to the overall aspect of the team. So from that standpoint, from that perspective, I can understand why there was a divide between Isiah Thomas and Jae Crowder and the rest of the team.

Break news. LeBron's not perfect. Like any other. Thank you, Sammy. It's like that's your take. That's probably deep. La-dee-da. Here's the reality of the situation. We can't ignore the fact that LeBron, as a leader, you know, didn't do his job in that particular situation. And that doesn't make him a bad person by any stretch of the imagination. He's the greatest player in the world. I don't think that's deniable. We all know this to be the case. I agree. Here's the best player in the world right now, even though some guys think it might be KD, some people think it might be, no, whoever, Kawhi. But I was still give it to LeBron. He's but in the process, you have graduated to a point where because you're a champion, you were the individual, you got to take this into consideration about LeBron James' history. Max, when he arrived in Miami, he was incredibly reluctant and reticent to take the lead. Dwyane Wade not only had to step back or push him forward and say, "We're a better team when you're taking the lead." Exactly. And that was a psychological ploy that D-Wade executed extremely well. Shows you how well he understands LeBron. Once again, that's why they brought D-Wade in. Wade basically is one of LeBron James' handlers. I'm not saying that from an MK Ultra perspective, just in general, just off general principles. Sometimes the upper brass will bring in someone who they know will provide emotional support. That was D-Wade's job. But it was just too many, too many variables in their locker room. We're not the player that you are. We also need you to step up and be that leader because you're the best in the world. And LeBron took that literally, took the bull by the horns. Ultimately, it lets in capture him back to that championship in Miami, and the rest is history. But the flip side is that what has transpired ever since that time? What can you tell him? He's a champion. He's sit at the best in the world. And as a result, everybody who plays with him is a lesser version than say him, per se. Look, you know, the kid, the little brother, my guys, my team, I got to lead these guys, etc., etc. Well, guess what? You accepted that accountability. That's what you said. Belong to you. Then ultimately, we have to look at what has transpired. He is ball dominant. He's a great passer. He's a great player. He's a great athlete. But he's also somebody that commands the ball. Why the Kyrie want to leave? It wasn't just because of the relationship, will lack thereof, off the court. On the court, I, Kyrie Irving wanted to be more of a god. He wanted to step out and prove whatever your point on. In other words, Stephen A., you're finally starting to understand what I was stating on this channel six, seven months ago. Congratulations, sir. Welcome to the club. Welcome to welcome to the truth. Good job.

You heard all the things that Stephen A. stated about LeBron. He's ball dominant. That he is a great player, great athlete, so on and so forth. Basically, it's very difficult for other prominent players to play with him because you have to conform to the style of play that is conducive to maximizing not only LeBron James's performance but his profile. That's been my point for the longest time, and many of these analysts on television are finally starting to come to that conclusion. So good. And he also touched on why Kyrie left because Kyrie is bigger than that. He's bigger than just somebody who hangs out on the wing and LeBron gives him the ball and says, "Okay, little fella, go to work." No, Kyrie did not want to be Starscream. He wanted to be Megatron, and he has the clout to say so. He has the clout to do that. He has the brain to do that. Could do it in Cleveland? Well, why can't we step back and ask myself this question, Max? Since you're LeBron James and you're so great and there are so many things that you can do so well on the basketball court, what would have been the harm stepping back and let Kyrie do exactly what Kyrie wanted to do? Wait a minute. Well, you can't say that it would have been a worse team because as of right now, the Boston Celtics have been extremely successful, even though the team for the most part has not been healthy, especially since the player who they expected to be their top scorer, Hayward, has been down. No one can deny the effect that Kyrie Irving has brought to that team. That's number one. Number two, LeBron James has shown, even when Kyrie was there, that he was willing to divest a certain amount of responsibility to Kyrie because he recognized Kyrie's greatness, even though he still wanted to maintain the same overall framework of the team, that being the LeBron James system. So we can't say that it would have been a worse team because the Cleveland Cavaliers were not a championship-level team. The one championship that they won pretty much was because of a series of mishaps that occurred. So you're either champions, you're the champions, or you're not. So it's difficult to talk about how much worse of a team that would have been had Kyrie been allowed to run an actual offense. Really? What Max Kellerman is saying, being the LeBron James superfan that he is, is that if Kyrie was allowed to play actual point guard, LeBron would have been exposed as a player who can only play on one type of offense because he would have been standing on the elbow or on the wing with an angry look on his face. He doesn't move off the ball. He doesn't set picks. So he would have gotten exposed. Two times. My point is, if you're that great and that versatile, why would it have been a worse team? Because he's great, but he's great his way, and he's not versatile. LeBron James is not versatile. Now, he can do a diversity of things on the court, but versatile means that he actually has many different forms or many different styles that he can exhibit on the basketball court, and he doesn't. Once again, he can only play in the LeBron James system. You never know. I will answer that question because the greatest point guard on earth is LeBron James. He's just in the body of a power forward. He's a better point guard than Kyrie. He's also a better two guard, a three, four, or five. He's just better than Kyrie. Every, whatever, whatever you need to do. You want me to punish you in the paint when it counts? LeBron is better. So the point is, the team functions best with LeBron as the primary ball handler. Stephen A., it's the reason why Kobe Bryant wasn't as good with Steve Nash as with Derek Fisher. It's the reason why Michael Jordan was better when he had a guy like BJ Armstrong or her or someone like that playing next to him than a ball-dominant point guard because these guys need to control the flow of the game, need to control the ball. It makes the teams better. And LeBron is a better point guard than Kobe. What the mortar weren't you, weren't obviously at the point? Well, LeBron is definitely a better point guard than Kobe. How good Jordan could have been had he been allowed to play in the style that Doug Collins asked him to play at the end of the '89 season? Who knows? When he averaged a triple-double and, you know, the end of the season averaging 32, 8, and 8. We don't know because back in that era, that's not really something that they asked most shooting guards to do in that era, the late '80s into the '90s. The, the positions were far more rigid and what they were asked to do. Now they pretty much play positionless basketball. It's hard to tell the difference for the most part between an average forward and an average point guard. Right. Teams basically run offenses predicated on how good certain players are at certain skills. So this is just a different era. But Kellerman makes relatively valid points. I just believe that if you truly were dead set on maintaining Kyrie, then you would have divested a certain amount or a certain level of of clout, of preeminence, whatever you want to call it, prestige on the team to him. So you had to be ready to let him go if you want to maintain that style of play. And when you try to compare Jordan or Kobe to the players that they were playing with their quote-unquote backcourt, neither one of them ever played with a player anywhere near as talented as Kyrie. So the dynamic is a little different. The analogy is a little different, even though I see Kellerman's point to a certain degree.

Let me respond to that because it's a philosophical difference that I want to educate you about when it comes to the game of basketball that I truly want you to understand. When we talk about LeBron, yes, LeBron is your best point guard. Yes, LeBron is your best player. My problem with your analysis most of the time, Max, when it comes to the game of basketball, and let me say this, LeBron is probably a better passer than Kyrie, but it's not by much. If you look at the individual player and you talk about their greatness, but you don't think about the totality in terms of the effect that they have or the guys around them, your thinking is, well, they went to the finals three consecutive years and they won the finals. My point is, is that but you might have done that with LeBron letting Kyrie be Kyrie, LeBron figuring out a way because he's great enough to do it to figure out other ways to evolve and to really elevate his game and that of the other guys around him. But you know what? Steve, part of that is on LeBron, but most of that's on Ty Lue. I can't put the onus on LeBron to bring out all of the potential in Kyrie. And that goes back to Kyrie Irving's sit-down interview when he was on First Take, where he alluded to the fact that it's not just LeBron why he's leaving the team, but also Tyronn Lue. It was very obvious and very clear that he wanted to go to a team and play for a coach where he'll be challenged mentally. He wanted to be pushed intellectually on the basketball court, and he could not get that from Ty Lue. So I can't put all the blame, quote-unquote, on LeBron for why Kyrie was never allowed to have the level of responsibility on the offensive side for the Cleveland Cavaliers that he was unable to get. I can't put that all on on LeBron. I have to put a lot of that on Ty Lue, while also keeping Kyrie interested, invigorated, and more importantly, hell-bent on staying in Cleveland as opposed to the party. When you look at it from that perspective, I'm not trying to say that you're wrong about what LeBron means to a team. What I'm saying is, because he's so great and he's so versatile, he could have, unlike most, he could have afforded to give Kyrie what he wanted, when he wanted it, how he wanted it, and still figured out a way to win. That's what I'm saying. Maybe. Well, I'm sure that LeBron James would respond back by saying that if you look at Kyrie's last year, we pretty much had the same usage rate. So I had given him as bad as much as I was going to give him. To give another player on my team the ball, basically had a 50% level when I believe that I'm the best player in the world and probably the best player of all time. That's what LeBron thinks. That's his version of saying, "I did that for Kyrie, and he still left." Why is that? Because, as I stated to you brothers already on this channel, when you have two male lions, you can't have both of them running the pride unless they're brothers. After a while, they're gonna fight. The winner keeps the pride, the loser goes off and finds his own pride. That's how that goes. You cannot have two kings running a kingdom unless they're related, and even then, sometimes they end up killing each other. Doesn't drive out a future Hall of Famer when he's 25 years old, right? Which it appears that Kyrie will be one day if he keeps this up in the Hall of Fame. No, no. Kyrie's heading to the Hall of Fame. About two or three more years of how he's playing right now, he's gonna be a Hall of Famer and just entering his prime. That's all. LeBron, you figure out a way to make that work. LeBron, it's also unkindly. It takes two. But primarily, I'm with you on that. LeBron watched that, and I think when he gets older, he'll look back and through the Shaq, you know, like when Shaq talked about Penny and he was just immature and all that. And I think, well, I think that I think that LeBron is going to acknowledge from an off-the-court perspective that he did certain things to alienate Kyrie. I don't think that Kyrie's antipathy for LeBron is based wholly on, based totally on on-the-court detachment. I think that something happened between them personally. And Stephen A. Smith has alluded to it in the past, most likely over a woman, but I'm sure that it will eventually come out. But LeBron, as the primary, LeBron's responsibility here is to make the most out of any group. And when he's the primary ball handler, and Kyrie takes, you know, when he needs a breather, Kyrie becomes that guy, or Kyrie's used as an offensive weapon, the Cavs actually functioned optimally. I think. But it's not even important of what I think. It's what LeBron thinks. Who knows more about basketball than everyone else? Like the thing that makes LeBron special is, you know, primarily, it is six foot eight. He's the fastest guy. Just the hard stuff. No, it's that he's a basketball genius. So he looks at this is the way it functions best and deploys the guys that way. No, sir. LeBron is a basketball genius. There's no doubt about that. But what makes him great is the combination of his mental and his physical. Now, does LeBron know what matchups will provide the optimal level of performance? Maybe he does. But if that's the case, to make him the coach. I mean, that's my thing. Everybody just wants to act like LeBron is an expert in every aspect of basketball. If that's the case, then make him the coach with the hell of Ty Lue. Therefore, it also works to his advantage. It also works to his advantage, and it makes him happy. But if it's making you happy at the expense of 11 other guys, you've got a problem.

Let's look at Michael Jordan from this perspective. Max Kellerman, you will watch a basketball in my end. Michael Jordan's heyday. Don't tell me that you thought Michael Jordan and a let go. Tell me that you saw a Michael Jordan on the court that was always just MJ. There were concessions that he was willing to make because it was going to not only facilitate Chicago winning, but more importantly than that, it made the guys around him happy to play with him. All right, mater, I tell you what you're talking about. Can I tell you what we're talking about? In my opinion, Stephen A., and this is why I want LeBron to go to San Antonio. Well, and why he works in Miami. Who is alpha in Miami? Pat Riley. I don't give a damn who else you got. Agreed. And to be quite frank with you, Mr. Max Kellerman, you're refuting your initial sentiment that LeBron James is a great leader because that is why I stated early on when he tried to allege, which many LeBron James superfans try to ignorantly allege, that LeBron is a great leader. I don't know how you can prove that. He's never shown that in his career. The most success he's had was when Pat Riley was the alpha male. LeBron is not a good alpha because he's too emotional. He's extremely intelligent on the basketball floor, but a lot of times his mind is clouded by his emotions. And as Max Kellerman has it has himself attested to, Pat Riley was the alpha because he had the male energy to overpower LeBron's feminine energy. There's nothing there in Cleveland like that. You know, it's just not there. And I like our exposed for a lot. But LeBron has not yet played with a coach who can do for him what Phil Jackson did for Michael Jordan, which was partly to harness his ego and use it productively in the group. Insofar as LeBron's ego is destructive and not productive, I believe it's because he hasn't yet played for a dominant coach. Apologies to Spoelstra. Let me say this. Max Kellerman makes another very relevant point there, but one must wonder at this point in LeBron James' career, especially with super fans like Max Kellerman telling him how he knows where every player on the floor should be. Can LeBron handle another brain that he may view as a rival on the floor? Can he handle being told by Gregg Popovich, "No, LeBron, you're not going to handle the ball in the half-court. That's going to go to that to that player." I always say this is easy for LeBron when they play the Spurs after the game to go give Popovich a big hug. You know, they both walk anyway and then give the big fake smile and all this other stuff and try to act like he would love to play for Popovich so much. There's a whole other thing to do it. Like Kobe Bryant spent spent all those years talking about how much he'd love to play for Mike D'Antoni. As soon as he did, he got confounded. He's like, "What the hell is going on here? All this guy wants to do is run up and down the floor and shoot as quick as possible. I thought I would like this, but I don't." I could see the same thing with LeBron. The reason why Michael, Michael Jordan was able to perform so well under Phil Jackson was because he had a history of being coached. And that's where LeBron loses a lot of credibility because he didn't go to college. And he spent most of his high school and and even pre-high school days playing the LeBron James system. That's all he's ever played. So even though it took Jordan a while to accept the triangle offense, at the end of the day, they played a system offense at North Carolina under under Dean Smith. It's not one of his early MK handlers. That neither here nor there. That's a video for another day. So that's that's one of the separations between Jordan and LeBron James. In order to be coached, you have to know how to be coached. You have to know how to be led. Also, remember that Jordan comes from a very strong patriarchal background with a strong father figure. So he's accustomed to having men direct him. A coach is just a father figure. When you have the support of the man, the unwavering support of the man, by virtue of that, during extension of that individual, and that gives you an elevated level of class, shape, in the case, and that's why weren't obviously that. Well, wait a minute. In the case, it obviously that's not the case. Remember, David Blatt was Jan Gilbert's guy, not Tyronn Lue. David Griffin, the GM, was the one that wanted Tyronn Lue, which is why he made Tyronn Lue the highest-paid assistant just recently, according to my sources. When Kobe old mitt walked into a locker room after the Cavs loss, LeBron told him to shut the hell up. "Get out my face. You ain't been around here long enough to be talking to me." LeBron actually said that to this guy. Now, this is a guy that's promising future in the NBA. That's not something LeBron would have ever uttered out of his mouth. George Pat Riley. Clearly, you could say that to a rookie GM. It's called be open. Well, you can also say that when you've been pandered to by the Cleveland franchise, and he has no respect for anybody who's there. He doesn't respect the owner. So why the hell will he respect the GM, especially the GM who played hardball with him and traded Kyrie and was one of the main reasons why LeBron had went through so much hardship all the way through January? So that's that's why LeBron was spaz on him like that. Jordan, Jordan and Kobe were the same thing. They need a strong personality running the show.

Well, look, it is what it is. We're gonna wrap it up here, but I think that Kellerman made as many points to prove his overall sentiment as he did to make points to disprove his overall sentiment. So he pretty much balances out at a zero. I don't think that Stephen A. even understood a lot of the points that he himself was trying to make. Point being is this: LeBron is what he is. He's like a Sherman tank. He's gonna keep coming forward. You cannot ask a Sherman tank to be no to move, to be light on his feet. That's just not LeBron at this point. He's not gonna be able to play in a system. But anyway, peace.