Transcription
Alright man, peace. You know, brothers, in the realm of intrigue and espionage, it is widely known that those who know the most could have the potential to talk the most. And when they start talking, they have to be removed, or at least threatened to be removed, because it's very dangerous to the overall enterprise when you have people walking around with knowledge and loose lips.
Well, I've already been a series of videos pertaining to David Griffin, now the president of operations of the New Orleans Pelicans, and how he relates to LeBron James, how important he is to LeBron James's career. And my sentiment that he was placed in the position of being president of the New Orleans Pelicans by Adam Silver, as well as LeBron James and Rich Paul, to assist the Lakers in acquiring Anthony Davis in order to move the LeBron James narrative forward. They need LeBron to be in the playoffs again. The NBA experienced a ratings drop last postseason because there was no LeBron. We know that LeBron brings a lot of chaos. Chaos brings interest, so they need him. And in his last three or four years, how many years he has left in the NBA, I mentioned this already. The NBA wants to squeeze as much juice out of that orange as possible, and that just makes good business sense for everyone involved.
So, I always knew that the Lakers were going to get Anthony Davis. He was not going to go to the Boston Celtics for a hot second. Possibly, he may have considered the New York Knicks, but he always wanted to go to the Lakers. The Lakers always wanted him. He always wanted to play with LeBron. LeBron knows that he needs Anthony Davis because no other stars want to play with him. The descent, and his hourglass is wearing out, and he's not worth the trouble anymore. It's just not worth it to even try to play with LeBron because it has gotten around the NBA that he's toxic. He creates a toxic atmosphere, and he cannot get out of his own way. He's still very talented, but he pretty much only plays on one end of the floor, and you're gonna get all the blame if you lose. He's going to get all the credit if he wins, or if his team wins, and you have to be good with that. The good news for LeBron James is that Anthony Davis appears to be good with that. Anthony Davis pretty much appears to be the quintessential beta player. He's that secondary player who doesn't mind playing the background. He doesn't really want the spotlight or the limelight, and he doesn't care if, when he gets his first championship, he's not viewed as the reason why they got their first championship. So he'll fit in with LeBron perfectly.
That brings us back to David Griffin, who acted as the wolf. I liken him to the wolf, the character in the film Pulp Fiction, whose job it was to clean up the mess that was made by Jules and Vincent Vega. His role was to swoop in and make it look like nothing happened. And that's the same job that David Griffin was commissioned by Adam Silver to perform, to do. But along the lines, he started to feel himself a little bit too much. He started to talk a little bit too much. That's the same reason why they had to get rid of Lee Harvey Oswald, who was just a pawn. They had to remove him because there was a danger that he would start to talk. So that's why Jack Ruby swept in to get him out of the way. Jack Ruby, not to digress, was an associate of the Bush family, as well as Richard Nixon. But that's neither here nor there. At the end of the day, loose lips sink ships. So this was a warning to David Griffin: watch what you say about our cash cow, LeBron James. Do not run your mouth like this. We don't care how you feel. It's all about perception. The NBA is theater, and what goes on behind the curtains is totally different from what goes on in front of the curtains. What they show to the quote-unquote fence.
Kyrie Irving has already let it slip out that LeBron creates a toxic atmosphere. Kevin Durant has let that slip out. Now David Griffin has let that slip out. It's very obvious that it is the truth. It's the truth, but they know, look, we have to build up LeBron for these last three years, get what we can get out of him, and send him away with his little accolades, maybe one more ring, or what have you. So David Griffin was forced to issue a public mea culpa on national television just because he spoke the truth about LeBron James. It's whenever they gonna talk about it, and I'm gonna chime in. We start today's show. New developments to the story we led with yesterday. Pelicans executive vice president of basketball operations David Griffin spoke to Sports Illustrated about his future in New Orleans and his past in Cleveland as the general manager. Griff told SI, "Everything we did was so inorganic and unsustainable and frankly not fun." In other words, everything was fabricated in order to amplify LeBron James's legacy. There was nothing that we were doing in order to build camaraderie amongst the team, and a lot of what you saw on TV was phony.
Once again, not to digress or go off on a tangent, but you'll notice that many of the players on television that defend LeBron James are low-level role players. Players like Dante Jones, or what's this other guy's name, Damon Jones. These guys get on TV and all they do is defend LeBron James because they know they would not have been in the NBA were not for LeBron. LeBron always gets along very well with those low-level role players whose job it is to just defend and hit wide-open threes because that's what's the most conducive to being an important part of the LeBron James system. You have to be willing to defend and hit wide-open threes as the other stars or superstars that he tends to have a problem with, unless they're close friends with him, like a Dwyane Wade.
LeBron posted on Twitter yesterday afternoon. Now, when you read nonsense like this, what should be conveyed to you is that LeBron James has become a Frankenstein monster. He's a monster that has been created by the media. He says that the throne has been played with too much, and of course, he used the wrong version of "throne," but that's neither here nor there. At the end of the day, how could you be in the throne when you did not win the championship last season? Whoever wins the championship is the player that's in the throne. But he's so accustomed to being called the king to the point where he actually believes that he is not only of the NBA, but of the NBA's history, that everyone's supposed to bow down to him. No, bro, you're not in the throne right now. The person occupying the throne is Kawhi Leonard.
Coming soon, we now welcome in David Griffin to The Jump. Griff, thank you for joining us. The Pelicans reached out to us last night because he wanted to set the record straight. What would you like to specifically set the record straight about? Well, first of all, the, the fact that I'm even needing to do this at all, or felt compelled to do this, really speaks to the original point I was trying to make in the piece. And I absolutely, the point being that the media creates such a toxic atmosphere around LeBron James and hyper-scrutiny for everyone who's within his, his halo or his aura, that it just makes it a very untenable situation. People become very unhappy very quickly because he just sucks all the life and the fun out of playing the game of basketball because not only do the expectations jump sky-high, but unlike a Michael Jordan, you end up not even winning a championship. So you're gonna get blamed more than you get to bask in the, in the glow of winning something with LeBron because, for the most part, he loses in the big spot.
The whole backdrop of that conversation was about the noise around that Cavaliers team and the media portrayal of all of it. The fact that there was so much scrutiny and everything that we did. When I was speaking about being uncomfortable and, quote, "being miserable," it was my inability to deal with that media scrutiny. It wasn't the man himself. It was everything that came with a team led by LeBron James. Had nothing to do with being miserable with LeBron. We had blah blah blah. Stop trying to backtrack, man. We all know what you meant. It's very similar to someone who, whose job it is to caretake for a Hollywood star. They have their list of demands. I need to have 5,000 M&Ms in my dressing room and remove all the brown M&Ms. Make sure that I have 72 water bottles, all Dasani, in my dressing room. If I see Poland Spring, it's going to be hell to pay. Stuff like that. That's what they had to deal with with LeBron James. Something along those lines, of course, not exactly like that. But LeBron is very demanding. And we all know that one of the prerequisites for LeBron to come back to was that he would have the run of the mill, a very positive relationship. So that was one issue. The other thing that bothered me the most, and frankly, none of this really matters other than the fact that it's inherently wrong. This story, none of it mattered other than that it's inherently wrong. So that means all of it matters, especially if you're going to try to rebut it with a counter-interview.
Everything we had learned through our failings, we were going to apply to how we want to build this Pelicans family, right? But David Griffin, you have to be a student of the game. You have to understand that once you start to mention the name LeBron James and you juxtapose it with anything that could be construed or misconstrued to be even remotely negative, that you're gonna be raked over the coals because that's just how his fanboys in the media work. They're not going to let you make these type of statements about LeBron and get away with it. Number one, LeBron James is a super liberal pawn. I've said this for a very long time now. Supposedly, people are supposed to think that he's some type of revolutionary athlete. No, he is not. All he is is another corporate [expletive] for Nike, and he's so desperate to be socially relevant that he allows them to concoct all these fake narratives around him. Like he had the front gate of his house in Brentwood spray-painted with the word "[expletive]". To this day, over two years later, no one has been caught for allegedly committing that crime. You know why? Because it was a hoax to build up his social profile. They were trying to piggyback off of the Colin Kaepernick [expletive] and they wanted to make LeBron James the new basketball Muhammad Ali. So suddenly, everybody's out to attack LeBron James because he's black, and now he's in the house with an AK-47 looking out the window like he's Malcolm X. Get the [expletive] out.
It was just [expletive] many people in the organization about our team and what we were trying to do. So I was disappointed that the story really became about me in a sensationalized version of quotes that were taken totally out of context. And quite frankly, none of the information was new information. I've said, well, the information is not new. For those of us who pay attention, we all know that LeBron James is toxic, that the atmosphere around him is toxic, and that everyone around him eventually becomes miserable unless you're a slave. Because LeBron James thinks like Peter Pan. He thinks that when he sprinkles his pixie dust on everyone around him, they all supposed to smile and just exalt his presence and bow down to him. And if they don't, something's wrong with them. It's not that something's wrong with him. While working in media for the last two years, coming back, so I was just disappointed with the way everything I presented. You should have been disappointed in yourself because what you said was silly. Unless you're gonna stand your ground, don't say something like that unless you're gonna stand your ground. LeBron is one of the major NBA cash cows. So I have no idea how you could sit down for an interview, say that LeBron is not the same, he doesn't have the same love to win as he used to have, that you were miserable working alongside him, and you did not understand that there was going to be some, some type of blowback because of those statements. It's just silly or naive, or maybe you're just a part of another force media narrative to get them through August. They always have to concoct some [expletive] to get them through August from around the time that the NBA offseason ends all the way to when the NFL starts. That's when you get a lot of [expletive] concocted media narratives. So who knows, David Griffin might just be playing along with them to try to cast LeBron as the victim, to maybe set up some type of championship run this season, or everybody came out against me and look what I did, blah, blah, blah. So we'll see.
Let's just go straight to the point then. What would you like to say about your relationship with LeBron James and how would you characterize working with him and with Rich Paul's agent? He should just say it was help, and they can wolf kiss my ass. This is in the story, and I think the thing that's fascinating is if you look at the story itself and you actually read it in its entirety, the part about the noise around building a star-laden team is alluded to in a very cursory way towards the end. The entire backdrop of the conversation was about that and how poorly I dealt with that. So I would say that my relationship with LeBron and Rich was very strong and remains very strong. According to who? According to you. Well, you're done with them. They're done with you. You can't forget it. They operate like La Cosa Nostra. There's no going back after what you stated. Certainly, as a week ago, LeBron tweeting something about my wife and a charity event she was working with. So I would say, absolutely, we had a very strong relationship and enjoyed working together here.
If I wanna ask you about the comment you also made in the story where you said that LeBron, after winning the championship in 2016, wasn't the same animal about winning as he was before that accomplishment. And either what you were really meant by it, or and also if you didn't mean it, what were you seeing that was different in '16, '17 than he was in the two previous seasons? It's very obvious what he meant by that. That being that LeBron James thought that defeating the 73-win Golden State Warriors team put a nice little bow on his career, and it gave him the entitlement to claim that he's the greatest NBA player ever. And that's something that LeBron James has said himself, that he believes that he's the greatest player ever because he was able to come back from down 3-1 against the Golden State Warriors, which in and of itself entailed that LeBron believes that he won as an individual and not as a team. Because if he was truly trying to compare himself to the other great players in the history of the NBA, he would be gunning for Michael Jordan's amount of championships in the modern era, which is six, or at the very least, Magic Johnson's five. And then maybe he could say, well, I played in so many other championship rounds that I can consider myself the greatest because of how much I participated at a higher level and won something like that. But for him to say, "I want my third chip and beat the 73-20, that makes me the greatest ever," that should tell you that he has some entitlement issues. He's accustomed to people giving him credit for things that he does not deserve. And that's what David Griffin's getting at. LeBron believes that his career basically is over, that everything else is just icing on the cake after he beat a 73-win team. A team that, to be quite frank with you, this is not one of the all-time great championship-quality teams. They were a great metrics team, the 2016 Warriors. They're a great metrics team because they play in a three-point era. They're able to offset a lot of teams, or they were able to offset a lot of teams that were physically superior to them because of their three-point shooting. The OKC Thunder were a better team than the 2016 Warriors, but the Warriors' three-point shooting and the idiotic play of Russell Westbrook allowed them to come back and win that series. There's a reason why you win a Game 6 in OKC and Klay Thompson makes what, eleven, twelve three-point shots. Steph Curry makes another seven, eight three-point shots. OKC had a physically superior team, but they could not snipe with them. And then you had KD playing alongside that nutjob Russell Westbrook. He couldn't get the basketball in appropriate positions to optimize his scoring opportunities. He basically was playing one-on-five because Golden State knew how to box KD in with their defense because they knew what he was going to receive the basketball. There was very little movement without the basketball by the OKC Thunder. So really, if they should have lost to them, then they get to the Finals, go out 3-1, and then a physically superior Cleveland Cavaliers team comes back and beats them. The real question is, why was Cleveland down three games to one in the first place in that series? Because they had the better roster. White people don't understand that Cleveland had the better roster. Even Michael Jordan, after that series, said the better team won. Cleveland had the better team. He was saying that because, man for man, comparing the 2016 Cavaliers to the 2016 Warriors, Cleveland was supposed to win that series. They never should have been down 3-1 in the first place. It's because of the scientific way in which Golden State played and the greatness of their jump shooting that they were able to get to the Finals in the first place.
Again, this was a conversation that started around our failings previously, the things we learned, and how we were going to learn from them and apply those lessons moving forward with how we build the Pelicans. And one of those things I took ownership while talking about this, and I have done so, I believe, even on Whoa Just Pod, is that I failed miserably in getting everyone to the right sense of urgency following the championship. And my belief at that time was, there's no way anyone can be born in Akron, Ohio, delivered the first championship in 52 years to Cleveland, Ohio, and be the same human being. It's not possible. You're a person, you're a human being. Another word, David Griffin is saying that the success and the fame has gotten to LeBron's head, and he's correct. LeBron is one of the biggest narcissists that I've ever seen in professional sports. Know your fear at that time was that you would have to, you'd have to be the general manager over that nutjob for another couple of seasons, and you had to get the hell up out of there. You know, I did a video or series of videos pertaining to David Griffin and Kyrie Irving during that time period where Kyrie Irving demanded a trade, and I stated that it was very clear to me that David Griffin agreed with Kyrie about LeBron. This was way before anything came out about what we're seeing here with David Griffin and LeBron. I stated this two years ago. Just the fact that David Griffin was so ready to trade Kyrie Irving away proves, or at least proved to me back then, that he agreed with Kyrie's assessment about LeBron James, and he was trying to get Kyrie out of there while also jettisoning himself as well. He was ready to get out of there also. Multiple finals was an unfounded fear I had at the time. But the article doesn't give you the context that I was talking about that particular point in time. [Expletive] the context was LeBron James is very difficult to work with and to preside over, and you're happy to not to mess with him anymore. Again, ironically, LeBron himself has addressed this subsequently to that point in time and said he doesn't have anything left to prove and things similar to that. Yes, he has said that, and all that does is confirm that in LeBron James's mind, he knows that he's not going to get anywhere near six championships, and he wants the people to stop evaluating him in comparison to Michael Jordan because he knows he can't match Michael Jordan when it comes to overall winning.
New information. It was just presented in such a way that made it sound like I'm currently saying that, and that is not at all what took place. Griff, LeBron aside, you also said in the story, "Everything we did was so inorganic and unsustainable and frankly not fun," that you were miserable. You said, "Literally the moment we won the championship, I knew I was gonna leave. There was no way I was gonna stay for any amount of money." So what exactly made you feel that way? Again, it was my inability to deal with all of the scrutiny around that team. Everything. No, it was your inability to be happy working in an environment where you believed that you actually had a say-so in what's going on. You were probably receiving text messages and calls from Rich Paul and LeBron James at all times of the night with them complaining about some player or other on the team, and why haven't you moved this guy yet? Why haven't you traded this dude yet? It's already on record that Rich Paul approaches Adam Silver with complaints about coaches and things of that nature. So you can only imagine what he would do with David Griffin. So much all the time that was not an enjoyable process. When the only thing that marks success for an organization is a championship, that's not a terribly enjoyable thing. Now, having said that, nobody cares whether or not someone's miserable or enjoys what they're doing. We were really blessed to have people in our lives like Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love and LeBron, that we're playing at a really high level, and a coach like Ty Lue, that was obviously a journey that was well worth going on. But all of the noise around it really sapped a lot of the joy from it. And the piece does touch on some of the things about, you become so caught up in results every single day that your joy for the game of basketball got zapped a little bit. Not, I learned a lot from that, but it was very inorganic because what we did, and Dave, you were with us in Cleveland and saw this happen firsthand. We went from a team that was in the lottery multiple years to a team that LeBron comes back to, and you must win a championship right now. Well, you can't do that in a sustainable way. It's damn the torpedoes, let's go win right now. That's not an enjoyable process from a team-building perspective, right? But I have a hard time believing your spiel, David Griffin, because the whole point of beginning the climb up the mountain is to get to the pinnacle. You can't get to the pinnacle and get depressed. You guys got to the pinnacle, and what you want people to believe is that you were depressed because you were at the pinnacle, or that the expectation was that you were going to get to the pinnacle in a day. I don't believe you. I believe that you were depressed because you did not enjoy who you had to climb the mountain with. I think that the person who you had to climb the mountain with made it a very unpleasant experience, and that's what you were upset about. Because it's not sustainable, it is totally inorganic. And the piece goes into some detail about comparing and contrasting by way of example how Golden State got to go through the process, learning how to win together, learning how to win, lose together, and deal with that. That's very true. But if you're going to compare Golden State and the Golden State experience to the Cleveland experience, then we have to evaluate and juxtapose their best player, Steph Curry, against Cleveland's best player, LeBron James. And the first thing that we notice is that Steph Curry, as someone who's always eager to give credit to others, LeBron James is always eager to take credit for himself. So that clearly is the issue that you have, David Griffin. Not only that the, that the conditions of the climb to the top were inorganic, but the prime mover of that climb was the person who was making it inorganic, that'd be LeBron. So you're just envious, or really just upset that you were not able to enjoy the experience. You're going to look back at your life, people are going to ask you about that time period of winning a championship with the Cavaliers, and you know, it's almost like somebody asking you about your first marriage. But on your wedding night, you caught your wife sleeping with the best man. Don't ask me about, don't ask me about my wedding night. David Griffin got married when the Cleveland Cavaliers won a championship in 2016, but whenever he thinks about it, he gets miserable. It's very obvious there's a reason for that. I was there, I know the pressure cooker was for everyone involved. Once again, this dude, Dave McMenamin, is one of LeBron James' plants in the mainstream liberal sports media. Players, media, all of us, we're just this day-to-day tornado you're going through. But having lived that, like, I guess the question is, why? Why make these comments having been in it for three years and knowing where the comments can go? Because some people that were also with us in Cleveland look at that time, players, coaches have reached out to me asking, why? Why would Griff do this? Because that's how he felt. But I do agree that he certainly showed a lack of shrewdness to make these statements and not expect some type of backlash. Yeah, well, first of all, again, this was done in a conversation that took place at Summer League, and you must have been drinking against the backdrop of, we're doing a story on the Pelicans and everything that you've done in the past and how that led you to want the opportunity with Mrs. Benson and her ownership group here. Well, we know how that happened. Adam Silver contacted you and Miss Benson, and Adam Silver told Miss Benson, this is the guy who's going to help that Anthony Davis move happen. In return, you're going to get the number one overall draft pick, that being Zion Williamson. Case closed. What led you to this as being the right opportunity and the ability to do it in an organic, family-first way was what spoke to us about it. And so it is very obvious also that LeBron and Rich Paul, they must be very difficult to work with because they had to tap a person who's already accustomed to dealing with them and their ways to make sure that everything went off without a hitch. The conversation that took place was really given as sort of a context of, this is the person I am, and this is how I got here. I never believed the story was gonna be written about me. I believed the story was gonna be written about the Pelicans and where we're heading in the future. Do once again, once you mention LeBron James and miserable in the same sentence, that's all the media's gonna care about. You know that already. Well, I should have dawned on you. You mean to tell me, as bold as your ass is, you can't see the sun when it comes up? Knock it off. You were there in Cleveland when LeBron decides to come home to Cleveland and also to say, "I'm gonna sign one-and-one deals" because one, that gives him leverage, but two, he also made over the course of his four years there probably an extra twenty million dollars by doing those types of deals. And then in New Orleans, you're on the other side of where Anthony Davis says, "I would like to be traded. I'm not going to re-sign here." Where do you feel that your place in history is on, just this particular issue, on, you know, the players taking control of their careers? Players can take control of their quote-unquote careers and their destinies because they're operating from the higher ground due to how much money they make off the court. I've stated this incessantly in numerous videos. They talk all this [expletive] like they're finally making a stand, they have so much courage. All that [expletive], it's easy to make a quote-unquote stand when you know that you're going to be getting checks from about ten other corporations that are sponsoring you. I look at it, having been in that circumstance, and this is a totally different era. I think to a huge degree, the signature shoe situation has changed a lot of what happens. The mathematics behind what happens. Players have the bandwidth now, financially, to take a year-to-year chance, to continue to hold organizations accountable for growing and building a winner. Thank you, sir. David Griffin, welcome to the channel. I think you're seeing that more and more because they have the ability to do that. The money is tremendous now in the game. The money's tremendous off the court, and so because of that, it affords players a different sort of leverage than they had before. Thank you. Courage had nothing to do with it. I've said this for a very long time. A lot of these woke dudes on the internet, they try to give LeBron James all this credit like he's in the Turner of the NBA or some [expletive] like that. All LeBron James is is someone who has inherited a lot of the spoils that were created for him by the Dr. J's, by the Oscar Robertsons, and later on by the Magic Johnsons, the Michael Jordans. They set the stage for him to be able to act woke because they opened up the financial portfolio opportunities, the potential to make money in other venues, in other areas. So now he could sit up there like he's a revolutionary. There's nothing to do with David Griffin and my particular place in history. I've, I've dealt with it just as other people have dealt with it. And frankly, if I dealt with it as well as say, Steph, I probably wouldn't be sitting here right now.
Griff, you thought that the, the story was mostly about the Pelicans and where you guys are headed. And obviously, after everything you've discussed here and in that story, how will things be different this time around for you in New Orleans? It's gonna be happier because there's no LeBron. I would have told you that from a media perspective. I think something should be really clear in this, and I can't help but kind of look at the irony of the fact that we're sitting here having this conversation, yeah, because the media has to hold you accountable whenever you say something that they'd find off-putting about their booth. Saying LeBron James, you can't say anything about this dude because supposedly there's this, this false narrative that gets propagated that he's the most criticized athlete of all time. LeBron James is the least criticized great athlete, at least in team sports, that I can remember. Other than his first move from Cleveland to Miami, I cannot think of anything that he's been criticized for unjustly. Now, that he was inordinately, we've honestly criticized for. And I actually rooted for him to be successful in Miami because of that, due to the fact that it was very obvious that there was a subtext of a so-called black man leaving his plantation. There's no doubt about that. And fortunately, that's where he found his most success for years in Miami. But since then, it's been nothing but smooth sailing for LeBron James, especially in how he relates with the media. I mean, it depends. They're certain of the players. If you were on TV, oh, you had an interview where you said that presiding over Steph Curry for for two years or three years made me miserable, people would say, "What are you talking about? What's going on there?" There would be questions that would be asked of you. I understand where you're coming from. There's no doubt that the media basically fulfilled the prophecy that you laid out by asking all these questions. But at the end of the day, your verbiage was very irresponsible. There was no prudence there, no understanding there of what was going to befall you after you made those statements. I think you're talking about a guy who by himself is sensationalized for the sake of ratings and for clickbait, and I think that happens with him all the time. So, yeah, to the point that was made earlier, should I have learned the lesson and not put myself in that position? Absolutely. But nothing could crystallize this more clearly than the point I was trying to make, and obviously did it poorly, that we're having this dialogue now.
Do you think your team can be the fastest pace team in the history of the game? You and Alvin played, you know, were around one of the fastest pace teams in history with the Phoenix Suns. How does this probably compare to those "Seven Seconds or Less" Suns? It's already been proven that the Phoenix Suns of the mid-2000s will be one of the slowest teams in the league today. So it's really amazing how fast teams play today. But let me also say this, there's this sentiment that the teams today are playing faster than ever in NBA history. That's just not true. They actually played faster and there were more possessions in the early to mid-80s than there are now. They're just starting to catch up to the pace of play that teams played at in the early to mid-80s, and also in the 60s. In the 60s, they played at an ungodly pace. And of course, if they played that fast today, they will claim that it's because the athletes are so much bigger, better, faster, and stronger. Well, I think stylistically, we're gonna be different. If you look at that "70 Seconds or Less" team, the way we played actually would have been towards the bottom of the left, absolutely, that's a couple years. So teams in general are playing faster. I think what this team has advantages, we've got a level of length and athleticism. I saw that the Lakers were on that list of the fastest teams in the NBA last season. I would expect their pace of play to slow down, especially as they implement more of the LeBron James system itself. Playing incredibly fast because we should be able to defend at that pace. And the article did capture some of that. But we're really excited about the youth, the athleticism, and length we have, and all of the playmaking we have that should enable us to play again at a pace that makes sense for our talent and the fit of those pieces could potentially be very good.
If I won't ask you because you are not just the guy who once put the team together around LeBron James, who now you're the guy who drafted Dilute. So the last we saw him, well, that will be traded off Summer League. Only he will play half a game. And you could see him throw the football around with Drew Brees. But what can you tell us about your company and rookie? In a weird thing, stand as where you know, a month enough away from training camp. Well, he has an absolute cannon of an arm and throw it 65 yards on the spiral. Michael Jordan could do the same thing. There's actually footage of Michael Jordan throwing the football 65 yards, easy, easy. He threw a football 65 yards. This is well over 25 years ago, but you could search for it on YouTube. He's done a really good job with us here, with our coaches, with our strength coaches, with our actual on-court coaches. He's putting in the day workouts right now because he cares about being great. He's really driven to be as good as he can possibly be, and and that's fantastic. And again, the piece touches on the fact that we went really long on the human of this draft. We cared a great deal about who these people were as human beings. And we've called it a recruiting class. They sort of look at themselves as a family. And I think Zion feels a great deal of responsibility to that recruiting class and also to the team as a whole to deliver his best effort. And I know he's working towards that.
Grif, lastly, about Zion, what, if anything, has surprised you with your time with him? To be honest with you, just how grounded he is. You know, it's well-fit. Now, he better be grounded, he's a damn rookie. I talked about it from the very beginning when we, we sat with him the first night in Chicago after the lottery. He's incredibly humble, he's incredibly team-oriented. And you can hear that from other people and believe it, but when you feel that from him, when you realize how much he does not want to be in the spotlight, how much he does not want it to be about him, it really does make you feel like there's an organization you have a responsibility to protect him from some of those things. And again, obviously, I did an exceedingly poor job of explaining it in the article, but some of what we learned from the noise around a LeBron James-led team, we certainly hope helps us put him in a better position to succeed.
Grif, you seem like you really enjoyed doing this interview. [Laughter] Of course, he wasn't not happy to this [expletive] ass interview, having to go before this fake-ass pro-LeBron James counsel, as if he has to answer a bunch of questions like this is the Inquisition of some [expletive]. Are you a balloon? He's like, "Come on already." He made some statements about LeBron James. Move along. Gives a [expletive]. No issue with doing the interview again. It just proves the point that I was attempting to make in the first place. Nothing could have illustrated it more clearly than the need to come do this right now. Absolutely. It's just like the damn Inquisition. I'm surprised they didn't just dip his head in some hot oil until he decided that he was going to convert from Judaism or Islam to a Catholic. This is crazy. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. Talking you. Best of luck this season. We'll catch up with you soon. Thanks so much, guys. All the best. America. The, yeah, look at David Griffin's face. David Griffin, he got with him. Looks on it's daylight. As soon as the interview ended, and he pulled his microphone off, he probably said, "[Expletive] all you guys. [Expletive] man. Be a [expletive] around David Griffin. You better watch yourself. Don't end up like Lee Harvey Oswald." So, peace.