Michael Porter Junior gave voice to something that I'm so glad that he said it out loud.
Because I say this, but it's really just.
A lot more credible when an NBA player says it, which is this what he said on the Nuggets pod, Harrison Wind he said, what it takes to be great dropped this from the clouds.
You know, there's a lot of guys.
Who never become as good as they can become because once they get to the NBA they take their foot off the gas.
I see that, I continue to work harder.
Ooh. Basically, when you get a lot of money, you stop working. Yeah, that's pretty obvious, but people seem to think that, like these guys are robots. I'm gonna say this until I'm blowing till I'm blue in the face, till the end of time. The difference between a great player and an excellent, elite, all time great, one that has more than just physical gifts is that mental maniacal.
Drive to be even better even when.
You're at the tippy tippy top, even when you're an All star like Ben Simmons, you add to your craft even when you're the top one percent in the world and you're rich as fuck when your body is tired, when you're injured, when it's July.
And you've got max money.
That's the difference between really good and really really great. And like, truthfully, that's only like ten to fifteen guys, sure at a four to fifty right.
At a given time?
Yeah, at a given time.
Yeah, elite skill wise and elite mentally, and like can you blame them? Like there's for that extra two percent? It's like so much work. It's just so much work, so much time, so much sacrifice, so much.
Giving up other things that you love.
Almost you have to just kind of move away from the whole like work life balance, yolo. I want to experience and enjoy things, Like there is no enjoyment.
Other than that. Like that's it.
And your wife or a girlfriend or kids probably never see you because that's all you give a fuck about. Think about that, Like you're what it really normally is is you're a lottery pick. The team that chows you has a ton of incentive to make it work. You are, like you're working, you're getting yourself into the league, you're already making good money. You're feeling yourself. The folks from
back home are telling you you made it. Your friends around you telling you nothing but yes, telling you nothing.
But you're great.
You're in party cities literally every night.
Yep, you're in. You have bottle service and bitches.
You're there.
Yeah, like you get in minutes, you're getting buckets.
And then if you're just okay, the team still has an incentive to pay you because they think when you get older and mature, that you're gonna put the time in and the effort in to be ultimately very great for them. And they don't want to look like idiots because they chose you at six, you know, and like they there's another four or five players that are already producing more than you, But they don't want to look like dummies, so like, pay you one hundred million and see, like what.
Are they going to do?
Trade you?
Like no, okay, So we're firmly in Ben Simmons land. So you don't even have to be that good to get the contract. You actually have to be very very bad to get the contract.
Because again teams, teams have egos as well.
They don't want to admit that they fucked up and that hey, this guy is a Ferrari, but he's not like the prestige version of the Ferrari. Like, there's the premium I'm looking for cars, there's the premium, the premium plus, and the prestige. All these guys are premium, some guys are premium plus. Almost no one prestige and the team doesn't want to say listen, like, I mean, he's a premium, We'll pay him like a prestige and see maybe if he like becomes that guy. It's normally not going to happen.
But that's the deal, right, Yeah, you've got life changing money. You're good enough to keep playing probably for the next fifteen years and getting paid.
Will you continue to strive for greatness? Probably not?
Probably not.
I mean I wouldn't.
That's what makes Lebron James so fucking amazing.
Yeah, it really does.
Yeah, if you think about that and put that all of that into perspective and know that it's three a days, like twenty four to seven, not just one year, not just two years, but like twenty years of that a million dollars in healthcare costs a year on your body and food and nutrition and all.
Kinds of other things. That gets your mind and body right, bitches and shit.
Uh, twenty years, best of the generation and never took his.
Foot off the gas. Pretty nuts, pretty fucking nuts.
Other guys four years in the league, just fucking chilling, just not getting better.
Looking at you, mar Bley, that's you. Andrew Wiggins, Andrews.
He's so good Andrew Wiggins like skill wise. And you know that's the thing about us as people. We expect that because Andrew Wiggins is so physically gifted and so genetically there.
That he should want it like Braun or Kobe did. And it's like he's just like us.
Right, I mean, it's so easy for people like us to say, but like when you really like dissect it, like, okay, do you give one hundred percent of your job every single day? Like are you going the extra mile at your job every single day? Like you demand like of these guys, which I mean not saying that, like we shouldn't hold high Kyleer athletes to a high standard.
But where does it end? Right? Just yeah, where does it end?
Like you're you become almost like that crazy person in the colisseum. It's like die for me. It's like no, like these are human beings. But you know that that's interesting that I think Michael Porter Junior peeled back the onion on that, because when when NBA players are saying, like, listen, I'm looking at my counterparts and my colleagues and they are lazy.
Yeah, they are chilling. That's how you know it's real. That's how you know it's real.