Iverson, Kyrie, Aaron Mckees discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
Automatic TRANSCRIPT
I'm throwing this at you unfairly. Yeah, no, thanks. I appreciate it. I think Iverson has a little weirdness to him though towards the end. Just because it was over so for the last 5 years. It was like a boxer who all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, this guy's done. You know, I'll never forget like Ricky Williams is a running back. And just seeing from one year to the next once everything had taken its toll on him physically, he wasn't breaking tackles anymore. The first time you made any contact with him, he went down. It was just so alarming. And that's something you see with a fighter, all of a sudden, it's like, okay, the punch is hurt him now in a way that never hurt before. And it's not apples to apples with Iverson, but like Iverson has the standing. And you know, I feel like there are certain players today, although I'll give harden a lot of credit here. You're sort of hostage to that player, like the packers are hostage to Aaron Rodgers. They were hostage to Brett Favre from the past. We have basketball players who are kind of held hostage by his skill. And that's what the sixers had with Iverson. And it does remind me of some of the stuff we're talking about at the top of this pod is like, okay, what's the perfect thing to do? Like his Dallas actually done the right thing with big switchable shooters and trying to maximize everything around Luke, 'cause you don't want Luca playing off the ball for extended periods of time when he's the best option with the ball in his hand and the leak. So I still don't know, look, Kyrie's gonna score a million points and everybody's gonna get excited at some point. And so maybe it's a quick run through it all. But when Iverson gets to Denver and then you realize like, oh, it's hard for him to play with another one as talented as Carmelo, so maybe the Eric snows and the Aaron mckees and like maybe these were always the right people to have around Iverson. And then I should just starts going from stop to stop to stop. And it wasn't like Kyrie's done a good one himself. But you know what I mean? Kyrie has self sabotaged in a way that we've never seen before. You could talk about Iverson's professionalism or whatever, but like, do the always wanted to play basketball. So that was the only one I could think of. Yeah, it's hard because it sounds like we're talking about guys who may not have fulfilled their true promise their true potential. So it takes off guys whose careers were cut short by injury, so like not Derek rose, because his career was derailed by injuring. Right, exactly. So it's like, is it Derek Coleman? Like, you know, who we had growing up, you know, the kind of guys where it seemed like they had all the tools, they should have come in. Yeah, that's almost like a different conversation. To me, C web is just super weird, looking back. And I'm still disappointed by it, but when you think like he came into the league and it just seemed like he was going to be the best power forward of all time. And he was on that really fun Golden State team. And then it totally flamed out and your team traded for him and they traded a bunch of picks for him and googs. And it was like, this is going to be great. Joanne Howard showed up, and it was never great at any point. Except for that one playoff series, and then, you know, and then they just became a distressed asset almost. They get Mitch Richmond for him. And then he flips it around again with the kings, but then he has this whole last stage of the career where he's like on Philly and Detroit. He's bouncing around for like, what was it like three, four years? I thought that was a really weird career. I want to update my answer. I think my answer is Dwight Howard. Honestly. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. Because of, you know, what he showed us early on in his career and thinking about guys at sabotage themselves kind of in every situation. Once he got himself out of Orlando, he didn't really cover himself in glory. Yeah, the thing with Kyrie, you know, grown up when we love basketball as kids. And it was the cocaine era and there would be these guys that had drug issues that teams would keep talking to themselves into taking a chance on, right? Like microwave Richardson, you know, the Utah traded for him. Golden State traded for him. The nets. Each time, no, no, he'll be fine here. And then after 6 months of winning, get rid of him. And Kyrie's like, the modern version of that, where it's not a drug problem, but it's just his behavior so erratic, but at the same time, the talent's there. And these teams over and over again are like, nah, maybe, you know? Different situation, put them next to Luca, like I'm sure, don't you think we're solo that they must have watched the 2016 the last three games of those finals? And watched how Kyrie played off LeBron and thought like this is the one guard in the league that would be the perfect guy to play off a guy like Lucas he's done this. There's a track record of him succeeding. And then you start watching those tapes and you just go, oh baby, and then all of a sudden you're making the trade. I don't know why, maybe it was 7 years ago. That's what I say. You're watching those on VHS. Where do you want to they burned onto a DVD? Yeah, I mean, the only reason we care, keep bringing this up is because he is so damn talented, you know? That's what it is. If I owned a team or a