NBA All Star Game Reaction, Incognito vs Martin, NFL Draft Top 5

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It has been years since the NBA put on a good All Star Game. It's been a minute, and now the players are starting to feel the pushback. You got Kevin Durant on Twitter saying, well, why don't you just give us a week off instead of if you hate the game so much? And this and that Draymond Green is upset that the Rising Stars actually played on the

same floor as the NBA All Stars. So there's so much to break down, everything from the format to what's going on, how to fix it, dunk contest, three point contests, and a one on one game that we're probably gonna get next year. But we're gonna start with just the

pushback from the players. And here is the biggest problem with the NBA is that the players have forgotten that there is a relationship between them and the fans, that there is an unspoken contract between them and the fans about you show up and play hard, will show up with our time and our money. And players are now like, yo, I mean y'all, y'all supposed to show up. We're supposed to get get paid. This is the NBA All Star Game. We're gonna do it how we want to do it.

And then they're upset that people are pushing back and even they're complaining about it. And we're gonna start with the Draymond Green Green complaint. Actually, no, no, no, no, We're actually gonna start with the disaster that actually started first on Saturday night, which was the skills competition the three

point contest and the dunk contest. We're gonna start with the skills competition because Victor Winbanyama and Chris Paul, former head of the Players Association, that Chris Paul NBA veteran long time Hall of Fame guy. So at first, when him and Victor women Yama went up there and they were doing the ski challenge, You're thinking, Okay, this is a cool little pairing. They just instead of shooting the ball like they normally would, they just threw them at

the basket. They were going for time because they knew that they could execute it in time and get passed even if they didn't make the baskets. So that was an issue. And then so they essentially tried to cheat the system. And initially this was pinned on Chris Paul, and I was like, Chris Paul, what's up with you, bro? You're too old for this. You were the president of the Players Association. You can't be doing this. This is ridiculous.

But then we find out that it was Victor winbn Yama's idea, and this is his second year in the NBA, so that means that Chris Paul, the savvy veteran, the guy who knows the inner workings and understands the stuff about the ratings, everything that's going on with the NBA, the pushback from the fans, and he went along with this. That's the issue. You got the blind leading the blind right now. And Chris Paul is too old, too long

the league. He was playing when all Star games were good, and now all of a sudden you went along with this BS to like cheat the fans. Do you realize it was people in France that stayed up to watch this trash that they put out and they're like, yeah, yeah, we're gonna move on to the finals. We're gonna win, we're gonna get a tighter we're gonna get the check. Forgetting about the entertainment value for the fans. That's the

most important thing. Everybody keeps putting all this emphasis on championships. Championships are the the furthest thing from what fans need and deserve because a particular fan base, yes they want a championship, but NBA fans and basketball fans in general, they want great basketball play, entertaining games, and stars to play. That's what fans want, and the idea that the players

are putting this trash out there is ridiculous. And then and when calls for change happened, they're like, oh wait, wait, wait no, just just pay us more money, shake Gildess. Alexander said that after his first NBA All Star Game, and it turned me off from him, not permanently, but at least for a while. He's standing there in a mink coat making twenty thirty million dollars a year saying, oh, well, I mean hell, if you pay us more, will will play hard in the All Star Game. That is an

absolute utter lie. You could pay these dudes a million dollars each to win the game and they still won't play hard. You know why? Because this is an internal issue. Do you know why? Kobe and Michael Jordan played hard because it was important to them And the older players Lebron James who I love, Kevin Durant who I love, Steph Curry who I love. These dudes have allowed this. These players who I love, the Kevin, all of the great players. Pay dudes have been the face of the NBA.

They allowed this. They are responsible for this. Yeah, who else are you going to blame? This ain't the league's fault. The league can't force you to go out there and play hard. And then you got Draymond Green out there. Oh, oh my god, this is terrible. The Rising Stars were on the floor with the NBA veterans. This used to be a sacred ground, a hollowed place for the NBA All Star Game. You know what, On one hand, Draymond Green's one hundred percent right. It used to be a

hollowed ground for the All Stars. It used to be a special place where only very few got a chance to step on that All Star court. Put that All Star jersey on, and now you got dudes in the Rising Stars game on it. He's one hundred percent right. But do you know whose fault? That is your fault? It's the player's fault, because the NBA would not have needed to go to this drastic four team, single elimination tournament, these many games if it weren't for the players coming

out there not playing hard. They are trying anything. They are like parents with a bad behaving child and they're like, Okay, hey, i'll pay you to get good grades. Okay, that's not working. Okay, I'll cut your phone off. Okay that's not working. I'll give you a whooping like that. They're literally trying every single thing that they can to get with in without the whooping part. In the new gentle parenting age. They're trying everything that they can to get the players to

play hard, and the players still won't do it. So yes, drastic changes have to be made. The NFL literally cut out the Pro Bowl because players refuse to play hard. There was nothing they could do to incentivize them. And the same thing is true of the NBA because it is redamndiculous that we're I've been playing in you know, pick up games with the older guys in the NBA when I was when when I was in my prime, fresh jumping out the gym, and they play harder in

open gym and open runs in the summer. Then they doing the NBA All Star Game. And that's for the fans. So games that they aren't even getting paid in they play harder than they do in the NBA All Star Game. That's why there needs to be a fix. So you can, they can get mad, Kevin Durant can push back on the fans. Oh well, then just just get give us a week off, give us this. Yet, this is the issue with Jimmy Butler in his contract, Joel and b Paul George, other guys. And I'm not saying that they

haven't been hurt at times. I'm talking about the load management crew because there comes a point in time where you are just curbing the what the fans need and what the fans want, and you know what you're You're gonna get what you deserve. The league is gonna get what it deserves. There will be a pushback unless there is some sort of change because if you keep putting

bad television out for fans, they will stop watching. I don't care about Yes, they have signed lucrative TV deals, but the difference between the NBA and the NFL is NFL is always trying to put out competent products. The difference in the NBA is there is a percentage of the player salaries. It's either five or ten percent that's held every single year in escrow and it's held in case they don't meet revenue projections and then when when they do, which they typically do, players get paid that

money back. But if not, the league keeps it. There is going to be a year if they do not change where the league ends up keeping that money and players are not going to like that. And this is why the Dallas Mavericks traded Luca, this is why they have been pushing back on players contracts and everything else. And you are going to see it more. This sixty five game rule to make all NBA and all that stuff. That's not going to impact the older players because they've

already gotten max deals. They're on the way out. For the younger players, this is going to be huge because you're gonna have less players qualify for max deals because they haven't won MVP, they haven't made all NBA teams because you're not playing enough games. So that's where they're trying to push it back. But let's go back to the All Star Game for a second. You had them three teams drafted by TNT and inside the NBA analysts you had Kandas Parker, Shaq Yet Kenny and you had

Charles Barkley and Candas had the Rising Stars team. But the issue with it is it was a three hour game. You ended up three games to forty points, so you only got one hundred and twenty points from one team. It took three damn hours, And I know I did not mind the tribute to T and T because they have been honestly a bigger part of the NBA then the NBA has been, especially recently. You knew you could count on Chuck and Shaq, Kenny and Ernie to entertain you.

Even if the game didn't entertain you, they were going to entertain you. So yes, I did not mind the saying good goodbye and all of that. But Trey Young, Shake Gilders, Alexander Jalen Brown, all of them were frustrated with the amount of breaks and the you know, the long layoffs and everything else. It was terrible. It was terrible for the players because they got to calm down, get rapped up everything else. But the league and the

players have no fault but of their own. Now, if I were a governor slash owner in the NBA, I would be savage and I would be ruthless because on one hand, I am four player empowerment. This is where I don't want this to get lost. Is I am all four players getting as much money as they can in the shortest period of time that they can, being able to have some freedom to move. But there's a responsibility to that that the players are not holding their

end up right right now. They're not. And I'm talking about the players as a whole. They're not holding up to their end of the barget, which is to show up, play hard, night after night. That's it. But I want to give a shout out to the exciting whites and

the exciting whites. Mac McClung and Blanking Ship over with the Philadelphia Eagles and Cooper degene over with the Philadelphia Eagles as well. Those are the exciting whites. They are playing positions in dB at the NFL level and playing it at a high level, and people are not used to that. I even had a white offensive coordinator when I was in the NFL, when I was playing in Jacksonville, and we had a call that if a white dB came in the game. He was like, white dB, white dB,

we're throwing at him. But the exciting whites are saying, no, no, no, not so fast. You got Mike mac mcclun over in the NBA. Dude has only played like seventy one NBA minutes his whole career, but he's a three time NBA Dunk Contest champion, and honestly, he's been fantastic. He's been entertaining, But here's how to fix the dunk contest. Since you know the Lebron James is the Anthony Edwards. The current stars now aren't getting in it, which is which is whack.

But they need to do either one or two things with the dunk contest. Either actually make it an award for the best in dunks in season dunk going from last All Star game to this All Star game, and you give it out an award. You turn it into a show right of the best dunks like Shocked in the Full and then allow the All Stars to vote on who had the best dunk like people would be going crazier for the in game dunks, which would actually

increase interest in the NBA. Or the second option that you can do is take take Mac mcclunk, treat him like the professor and one let dude hit the road and find marginal basketball players who can jump out of the gym and do the spectacle dunks. Because the reality is NBA players are more focused on their moves and skills than they are with perfecting dunks, as they should be.

So but I'm sending Mac McClung, like the Professor, on an and one tour all over the country, find the best dunkers from every single city every year and bring them to the NBA Dunk Contest. That's it. That's it. And with the Skills Contest, it's clearly a joke now that Wenby and Chris Paul did what they did trying to exploit the loophole, and they got disqualified, which I am thankful for. Like, don't put that bs out there and expect us to think it's okay, because it's not.

It's not. So you can throw the skills challenge in the trash if you want to, and replace it with a one on one game. That's what you need to do, because you know what players will do. They will play

one on one and there's no hiding there, there's no uh you know, of faking it. Oh, I'm not gonna play defense because you will get embarrassed. You know who said he would play James Hard hell of a one on one player, Kyrie irvit. He even baked Wimby. I want to see these one on one games. I want to see Victor Women, y'ama plan. I want to see

Jason Tatum versus Jalen Brown. I want to see Anthony Edwards. Yeah, yeah, bring all y'all to the one on one game, because that may actually well not even may I believe you give the winner of the one on one tournament million dollars. Oh they're gonna show up and what they were already gonna play hard with it, but you give him a mill on top of it. Oh yeah, oh yeah, buddy, I love it, love it. That will actually work one

on one next All Star game. The women just did it, and this is ridiculous that the women who are just getting All Star games. WNBA is young compared to the NBA, and they got to show the men the way in this come on, man, and like the women were actually out there playing hard in their one on one tournament. Loved it and the feast of caller baller. So but here is the truth about the NBA All Star Game is that the older players played harder and now this

generation has messed the game up. And yes, it's the players that we love the most have messed it up, because think about this. From nineteen seventy four to two thousand and eight, there were as many overtime games in the All Star Game as there were fifteen plus point blowouts in six and then since two thousand and eight, We've still had eleven games decided by ten points or less, but the average score of the winning team has been up over one hundred and eighty points. That means nobody's

even trying to play defense. These are the best players in the world, and it is hard for the NBA to compete with the nostalgia, like it's hard for you know, Lebron, James Steph and all the great players now to compete with the ghost of Michael Jordan when Michael Jordan wasn't perfect either, because in order to get a game like you had thirty years ago, you probably have to limit three point attempts to ten or fifteen per half. You

would have to do that. But this what they're putting out there right now ain't gonna cut it at all. All right, next thing up, now, this is a story

that goes back to when I was playing in the NFL. You got Richie Incognito versus Jonathan Martin, and ESPN did a profile of Jonathan Martin, who is now at the Wharton School of Business just like Josh rosen Is, and he's moved on from football and is now into crypto. So now Jonathan Martin also had to buy at like a shooting threat at a high school out out here as well. People just gonna glance over, but here it

is so going back. So Richie Incognito, known asshole, like known jerk in the NFL, he was accused of bullying Jonathan Martin. They both played offensive line, and it was said that Richie Incognito did all sorts of stuff to him and this and that, and Richie Incognito was like, yo, actually we were a friends, right, And I have talked about this for decades. I well for almost this has almost been twenty years now, and I've been talking about this this whole time whenever anybody asked me about it.

I know somebody who's making a documentary about it as well. And Jonathan Martin essentially admitted that this story was not true in terms of him being bullied. But the question is how did it get so out of hand? So Jonathan Martin said that he confided in his parents about a situation with his teammates that made him uncomfortable, and

then his mom used the word bullying in a subsequent interview. Now, how NFL locker rooms work is it is like the Lord of the Flies everybody is clawing for a position to be that alpha dog, and people will try you. They will test you, and if you don't step up and draw the line of boundary, they will continue to push it over on you. They will. It's just the nature of the locker room. And I was asked about the bullying, and here's how NFL locker rooms work. And

this is true of anything in life. Because I had a little kid on my team that I used this prime example because he was being bullied by another kid. If you stand up for yourself, people will come help you. If you do not stand up for yourself and just let things happen to you, people are gonna be like, oh, okay. He was cool with it, and it wasn't that big of a deal. He liked it. They were just joking.

They were just piling around. So if you don't stand up for yourself in life, people will not stand up for you. But if you stand up and make noise

about it, oh, now they don't have a choice. And so after his mom came out with that, it came down whether to whether Martin was gonna stand up to his teammates and then also clear the error about a narrative that he didn't entirely believe or he was gonna have to participate in the Ted Wells investigation and go along with his parents' attempt to protect him from a toxic situation. And then now the rest is history. The report came out, the phone call recording of Richie Incognito

calling John Than Martin. N word was included along with the other accolades accusations from the other people, and then Incognito ended up missing about a year and a half of his career and up to about ten million dollars in career career earnings. So now Richie Incognito, obviously after hearing that his parents made it up, he's like he's pissed and he's on the internet taking a victory lap.

Now I understand his emotions are understandable, and neither Jonathan Martin or Incognito has had it easiest in the last ten years. And Incognito smashed the car in his own yard. Martin publicly threatened suicide that that's what I was talking about, and people were scared on his former high school campus out here in Cali, and then the story faded. But with this last revival, it's back in the news cycle. So you got Incognito acting like he's an innocent victim

in the situation, but he's not. You called the dude the N word on the on the voicemail, and we supposed to feel sorry for you. No, you you were not vindicated like you were some like there. You were not guilty. That's what it was. You were not guilty, Richie Incognito of the bully, but you are not innocent. Those are two separate things. There is innocence and then there is being not guilty. This was an this isn't a circumstance of being not guilty. Yes, Richie Incognito is

not innocent. He is this two days he wasn't the best person around in a Walter Payton Man of the Year. Nobody would ever describe that about Richie Incognito, got kicked out of college, got and all of that. So we were not even finish. Sit here and act like the dude is innocent. But and this is what I will tell parents, This is what I would tell people out

in the world. Stand up for yourself, make enough noise if people are bothering you, because otherwise people will say that you liked it and then if somebody lies, man, this is like somebody making a false allegation. You cost this man ten million dollars. He should sue you or you should be thrown in jail. This is what I believe. You make false allegations on people, you should have your ass in jail. Book it all right. The last thing I want to talk about is in the NFL. The

NFL Draft is coming up, and the top five draft selections, well, top five picks right now are as follows Tennessee Titans and one Browns, two Giants, three Patriots for Jaguars five. Now, four of these five teams stink that. I think the Jaguars roster is the best out of all five of those teams. But then you get to talking about who is going to be drafted where, And I have looked

at this. I like Shador Sanders, I like cam Ward Love, Travis Hunter, super Love, Mason Graham out of Michigan, like Abdual Carter, Love Aston gent Love, Will Carter, like Tyler Warren Love, Coaston Lovelin. That's where I'm at right now, at the top of the draft, and everybody's like, oh, well, you gotta pick Travis Hunter number one. If you're the Titans, No, you don't. Picking Travis Hunter number one if you are

the Tennessee Titans makes zero sense. Travis Hunter, as good as he is, even if he turns into an All Pro, has zero impact or minimal impact on winning and losing. Look at Myles Garrett with the Browns, who got the second pick. Dude is an MVP, a defensive MVP caliber player for the last three or four years. And you know what team stinks teams drafting number two. Overall, you

have to boaster the offensive line. Yes, your defensive line matters, but your offensive line matters, and you gotta find a quarterback. That's what you gotta have. So if you're the Tennessee Titans and you're not in love with Sharda Sanders or cam Ward, you need to trade this pickback, trade back and let somebody else like the Jaguars, who have a quarterback. Let them move up to one and pick Travis Hunter. Let that happen. But the Patriots, the Giants, well, actually

the Patriots have a quarterback too. But the Giants, the Browns, and the Titans, any one of them. Drafting Travis Hunter at the beginning of the draft makes no sense. This was like the Browns. The Giants draft in Sakuon Barkley and then not having a quarterback and then being like, oh, well, we're not gonna pay Sakwan you don't have a quarterback. Running Backs are useless without a quarterback. They just are. They're useless without an offensive line. This is just the

reality of the situation the Browns. So if with the current draft order from the Titans, I'm probably taking cam Wored because I like my offensive line is okay, Then if I am the Browns probably taking Shador Sanders. Now do I think that either one of those two dudes is the two best dudes in the draft? Absolutely not. But you gotta go with what you need at this point in time. And then if I'm the Giants offensive line, probably I gotta go offensive line, or I mean because

Mason Graham helps. And then there's a lot of people who are on the Abdul Carter train. I think a Carter is a little bit undersized, and that may matter. But if if the top five picks are going to be Shaduur, Travis Hunter, Camore, Mason Graham, and Abdul Carter, then the needs have to matter the most. Because the Raiders are sitting at six, Jets are sitting at seven, and they need a quarterback as well. So if you're any one of those two team, any one of those teams,

up front, I'm trading back. I'm adding draft picks. I am taking the Oklahoma City Thunder roundabout way to get good. I am getting rid of all my bad I'm getting rid of all the dead weight. I'm getting rid of all I will trade away a good player like Miles Garrett for significant draft capital. I wouldn't even think twice about it. If you go on the price is right and you win a Bugatti, a two million dollar Bugatti, and you can't pay your bills. Prior to that, you're

barely making ends. Me sell the Bugatti, and then your life you can be debt free. You can just have a whole new life and start over fresh. That's what these teams need to do, instead of trying to hoard your good players. Nope, Nope, because eventually you're gonna have to pay them, and then you're gonna be having a player like Miles Garrett on a super big contract when your team is bad. Nope, reset that whole thing and just draft year after year after year after year, multiple

first round picks. I'm trading away. Everything is not nailed down right now if I am the Titans, and if I am the if I'm the Titans, if I am the Browns, trading away everything about Giants too, even on down to the Raiders at six, Jets at seven. Everything must go that is not on a rookie deal right now. Anything that anybody else wants, you can have it now. Then there goes to Deon Sanders factor. Is he going to step in and prevent any of these teams from

drafting Shadoor Sanders and Travis Hunt. I do not believe he would stop either of them from going to the Giants because he wants especially Shador. He wants him in a big city, because he knows big city quarterbacks make money. Big city quarterbacks, you can be a star, you can be a megastar. So he will not object from there. And the Patriots and Jaguars ain't drafted Shoudre. But as far as Travis Hunter goes, he's marched to his own drum. I tell you he's gonna have to fin for hisself.

He is not going to stop any team from drafting him. He might say that publicly, but that ain't happening. And you guys, though, we still got so much to go here on on a praise show. Make sure you guys tell a friend about it, like subscribe, get notifications, give me a thumbs up, go share the show because we come Monday through Friday, and coming up in a couple of weeks we will be on Rise Network, on Google TV, Hulu TV, well not Hulu TV, excuse me, Samsung TV,

and a bunch of other fast channels. You guys, thank you guys for the support. We are doing it big great things coming up in twenty twenty five. Peace out. Catch you guys tomorrow with some college football action.