Now I want to get to the ongoing war words between JJ Reddick, head coach for the Los Angeles Lakers, and of course mister Charles Barkley himself from TNT NBA Hall of Famer. By the way, let's not forget that it started in late December when a head coach for the Los Angeles Lakers spoke about the media bashing the game instead of celebrating the game.
Now, listen, before I even play you this.
Sound, understand, there's a lot of people that's been saying stuff about the game of basketball. They've been talking about the NBA ratings have dipped even though they're doing quite well. They've been talking a lot about the product that they're watching on the court.
And you've had people.
In media thinking that the media has contributed to the demise of the game because the media is complaining about the game too much instead of celebrating the game.
That prompted JJ Reddick to speak, which.
Prompted Charles Barkley to come right back at him, which prompted JJ Reddick to say something else, and Charles Barkley to say something else.
All of that is what I'm about to show you right now.
Sit back for the next couple of minutes and take a listen and a look to this.
If I'm a casual.
Fan and you tell me every time I turn on the television that the product sucks, well I'm not going to watch the product. And that's really what has happened over the last ten to fifteen years.
I don't know why. It's not funny to me. Nothing is entertaining to me. This game should be celebrated. A hey, JJ, Riddick says something about me, JJ, you better calm down. So when you come for the King, you've been not did he need you specifically or she's just talking about folks on TV. He said something about with the reason people are watching this praffic product we got yeah, like we know, jacking up one hundred threes. JJ, I don't know Jason Monroe. I don't know who that is. But JJ,
you've come for the King. You've been not missed, and I can get you, brother, because I got Remember, I got your Lakers games. You can't hote them flalls they got if you just a dead man walking. They got rid of Frank Vogel, who did a good job. They got rid of Darburnham, who did a good job. If you came out there thinking you were gonna change things with that same ugly girl you want them to hate with. I'm jj Reddick. I can make this thing work. Please
got being a professional. You come for me. You bet not missed. We're the reason ratings are down. We reason like we plan a hour listen shots exactly right. If men shot play, haven't, rating would be down. But in fairness, we'd be like the third or four best players on that Laker team right now. But it's Frank Vogel and Darburnham's fault. I don't follow nobody, but if you hit me, I'm gonna hit you back.
Make it always all the way through the clip. I gotta be honest with you. My arresting part grade is probably sixty four. I watched it. It was sixty four. Literally, don't care. I have other thoughts, but don't care.
And the Lakers proved to what I keep saying, The Lakers think playing and simple. We have to talk about him because the media is infasciated with the Lakers. But the Lakers are not a good team. They got zero athletic ability. I mean when you watch him, Jason Kidd coach to masterpiece tonight, he like, we can go one on one and get any shot we want. They got a good shot every time. The Lakers could never keep
him in front of him. This was a coaching masterpiece by Jason Kidd, because there's no way that team that the mass put out there, especially one winning by twenty.
Couple of things.
Number one to address JJ Reddick the person. JJ Reddick doesn't suffer fools, and he's a brilliant, brilliant basketball mind, very smart, very intellectual. Prides himself on being an intellectual. And so when JJ Reddick essentially an and that second sound of him saying, I have my thoughts, but I'll keep it to myself when he was talking about his art rate hadn't changed, et cetera, et cetera.
I can tell you what JJ Reddi's thinking about.
He's thinking about film, he's thinking about analytics that he reads up on. He's thinking about the nuances of the game of basketball that ultimately made him a head coach. And he's saying he knows that it's something that Charles Barkley doesn't necessarily do. So he doesn't know more than I know. Please, that's how he's thinking about it. Charles
Barkley is a bottom line kind of individual. He's a Hall of Famer, he's one of the greatest players to have ever played, seventy fifth Anniversary Team, et cetera, et cetera, Olympic gold medalists, a member of the Original Dream Team, one of the great great forwards in the history of basketball, whose credential speak for itself even though he's devoid of a championship.
And Charles Barkley is a results.
Oriented dude that's looking at the Los Angeles Lakers team that ain't going no damn place, one that bounced out in five games in the first round last year against Denver. He's looking at those kind of things and he's saying, don't come to me with all of this technical, analytical stuff and all of that.
You guys suck. Period.
That's how Charles Barkley is thinking. Now, let me into the fray. First, on the complimentary part, I don't think JJ Reddick is doing a bad job. They're twenty and sixteen, their top six seed in the Western Conference, Okay, And I think that the things that are happening with the Los Angeles Lakers are not of his doing.
I think if he had better talent, he'd do better.
The issue with that is one could say the same thing about Frank Vogel. One could say the same thing certainly about Darvin Ham. Darvin Ham, as he articulated just a couple of weeks ago, came near his first year. He got him to the Western Conference Finals. After that, despite a bevy of injuries and other issues, they won
the nd season tournament. They got the play in, went through the play in, got to the playoffs, and the only reason they got bounced out in five games and went home was because they were playing against the reigning NBA champions at the time, the Denver Nuggets, who had swept them in the Western Conference Finals the year before and took them out in five this go round. So when you're looking at Darvin Ham in the job that he did, you could easily ask why is.
He gone now?
JJ reddick what he has to own up to? And I don't fault him at for this at all. This is all on Lebron James. This part that I'm about to mention is all on Lebron James. How the hell you gonna have a podcast about basketball and the nuances and the expertise and the intricacies of basketball with JJ Reddick, who you knew was aspiring to be a head coach, and you knew you wanted your coach darphin ham out. How you gonna do that and think that ain't gonna
look cool? Yeah, come on now, I mean Lebron James. That's the classic case of spitting somebody's face and saying it's raining. It's the classic case of somebody passing gas religiously fartening your damn face and calling it perfume. That's what Lebron James did. Let's stop that. But that's not JJ Reddick's fault. JJ Reddick was an aspiring coach. Only experience he had was coaching his son and you know, little league basketball, and he became the head coach of
the Los Angeles. Like, let me stay for the record, not to throw any shade on anybody. I'm just telling you my personal belief, no inside information or anything like that. But if something walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I'm not gonna call.
It a mongols.
When you offered Danny Hurley, I thought you wanted Danny Hurley as an organization until you offered him eleven million a year. He was a two time national champion, considered universally is arguably the greatest coach in college basketball at this particular moment of time since Mike Ryzewsky has stepped
away from the game. Danny Hurley is that dude that you can and after all that success, you offer him eleven million when Eric Sposter, Greg Popovich, Steve Kerr, now tyd lou and others were all getting paid over fourteen to fifteen.
Million dollars a year.
Come on, now, you wanted Danny Hurley that badly, you come up with more money than.
Eleven But they didn't do that.
And so because they didn't do that, the belief was you really didn't want them.
You just used them.
As cover to get the guy who you really wanted, which was JJ Reddick. But you wanted to gloss over that because you didn't want Lebron James and the Lakers organization. Look what so bad for wanting JJ Reddick all along? After Lebron James had made it so obvious that he was looking for a new coach other than Darvin Ham.
That is the belief period. There's nowhere around that.
Having said that, back to JJ Reddick in Charles Barkley in terms of what JJ Reddick said about the media, And I was watching Colin Cowhert because I happened to respect the hell out of Colin Cowherd at Fox Sports. He's my former colleague, he's my colleague, my contemporary, my former colleague at ESPN, and he did an outstanding job as a radio for years for ESPN Radio. I've always considered us at ESPN suffering a loss by losing Colin Cowherd. And I forgot the name of the guy that's with him.
Jason's something I remember correctly. And he was talking about how tnt you know they messed up the game of basketball because they're so ultra critical. I call BS on that. When guys deserve to be celebrated, they celebrate you. When guys deserve to be criticized, they criticize you. Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O'Neill are exceptional. The Emmy Award winners, they're the A listers, They're class beside the five.
They don't get personal.
They're just talking about your game and what you put on display, and if that's what you put on display as a product.
They didn't blame the league.
I'd say you could blame the league because of the rule changes that were incorporated and the fact that you took defense. You compromised defense to a strong degree by the way you compromise the posing defenses because you wanted to be more viewer friendly, you wanted more offense. You wanted to, you know, basically bring more Europeans into the game, and by doing so, you also incorporated more three point shooting.
And when people are doing all of that and you see post trokes jacking up thirty forty three's a game that's not the most attractive thing to see period.
It's not a crime to point that out.
Maybe they go a bit obsessive with it because they're having a good time and they're having fun. But the reality, JJ is that sometimes I'm not talking about the Lakers, I'm talking about overall. Sometimes we watch the game and it sucks. And here's where JJ hurts himself. JJ knows that's true. JJ can bring up the modern day game compared to old school, and I get all of that. It was far more physical in the eighties and the nineties.
The athletes weren't as great as they are today. They didn't run like Zell's the way they didn't do today. They didn't do a lot of things. I get all of that, but it doesn't take away from the fact that the game at times is less attractive than it
once was. And it certainly doesn't take away from the fact that sometimes you look at dudes and you are questioning their effort, whereas before you didn't, and because you couldn't because players would have to go out there and earn their money, because the rules in terms of you
getting your money didn't work in their favor. If they didn't put in that work, you certainly didn't get the endorsement dollars and the endorsement deals that you ultimately are able to get now if you didn't have success attached to it.
So people like JJ.
Who's been around long enough to see it, and along with the Cat, the crew at TNT, they.
All know it.
It's not that they're right every time, but their points are not to be summarily dismissed.
And so to blame the media. And this is another thing too.
And this has nothing to do with JJ Reddick and has nothing to do with T ANDT. This is about these these these idiots social media. Everybody's a hater. You think we fools. You're just doing that because you're creating clickbait.
Oh he's a hater. Somebody disagreed it. Y'all had a discussion, and it's the word destroyed this person, destroyed this person when all you're doing is to create a headline and drawer clicks.
But then it goes a step further because you got former players that come out and they go like, yo, you know what, always hating on the brothers. Well, if you're playing against a brother and I'm pointing out a brother bust your ass? How the hell am I sitting up there hating on the brother? How am I not supporting the brother that whipped your ass?
It don't make sense.
But this is what people do, and so we have to pay attention to that and see that for what it is. That's the reality of the situation. We've had a height level of sensitivity. People come up with all of this kind of shit to put to bitch and moan and complain about instead of dealing with the real issue. Are players playing as hard? Are they as committed? Do they take care of their bodies and their conditioning?
In the off season. Do you earn your money? Are you committed to earning your money?
Do you come back with the next season with the same game you had last season, the same level of conditioning you had last season, et cetera.
Do you do anything to improve. That's why we should marvel at Lebron James. It's not because of his dunksist game whatever. It's because of age forty.
Still from age seventeen, eighteen, nineteen twenty all the way to forty, Lebron James always is ready conditioning wise. He doesn't cheat the game, but JJ.
There's quite a few people who do.
So JJ's not totally wrong because we should heighten our level of sensitivity in terms of excoriating the game. That don't mean we got to put blinders on and ignore what the hell is seeing.
And I think that's important to say.
Hmm.